Jeremy is going to college

Jeremy loves to do math problems on his board. The other night I was reading to Chloe and Jer kept wanting me to give him math problems. He was doing the basic add, subtract, multiply, divide problems too fast so I decided to give him a little algebra. I mean, what 5 year old doesn't love algebra, right?

I started with something simple like "a+1=3, a=?"  That took him all of 5 seconds and I needed to get him out of my hair to finish Chloe's book. So I gave him a problem with 2 equations and 2 unknowns. Why not, right?  I handed him the board and said, "If you can do this one you can go to college."  So he gleefully took it off to his room to work on it.  About 5 minutes later he came in with this (he wrote the 2 and the 3):

I looked at him with a bit of amazement and said, "That's right".  Then he exclaimed, "I CAN GO TO COLLEGE!!!"  I couldn't imagine him more excited than if he had passed an actual entrance exam.  He then wanted to rush off to inform mom that he didn't have to go to kindergarten in the morning because he was going to college.  I had to let him know that it wouldn't be tomorrow, but he definitely would be going.  He still has to learn how to cut along lines and sit still during reading time.

Oh, and on a related note, Venessa went to his first parent-teacher conference last week.  He reads so well that the teacher was curious, so she had him take a computer reading test.  (Sorry, this is shameless bragging, but we're his parents, so we're allowed).  He tested at a 3rd grade 3rd month reading/comprehension level.  He's not even really supposed to be in kindergarten yet.  Next semester he's going join the 1st grade advanced reading group for an hour each day.  We love our little egghead.  It's fun to watch his little brain work and how excited he gets to learn new things.

31 weeks - we're slowly getting there!

Yup, time for another check-in with our baby lady still cooking in her personal oven! I'm almost 33 weeks now, but I was about 31 here.

She's still cuddling with my placenta (seen to our left-hand side in nearly every pic) and most of the session she was busy trying to get some part or all of her hand(s) in her mouth.  Oh no, another thumb sucker might be in my future!

The umbilical cord is blurring her left eye a little.

"I know I can gnaw on something around here."

Long fingers like Phebe

Aw, look at that smile!

My little acrobat had her feet by her face!

Man, that girl can open her mouth up!

Sticking her tongue out

"Wanna play peek-a-boo?"

So Ryan and Sharon think she has the following features: Chloe's nose, Ryan's eyes and chin (first kid to not have my pointy chin), my cheeks.  At first we thought she would look like Chloe, but now I'm not sure; she seems to be a little melting pot!

Awwww!

Family Snapshot

For Family Home Evening we decided to interview our kids for posterity:

Jeremy (age 4 and 11/12)
Q: What is your favorite food, color, and animal?
A:  Pizza, green, monkey (and horses)

Q: What do you like to do before bedtime?
A:  Math problems on my magnet board - halfs (fractions), subtracting, and dividing.

Q: What do you want to do for your next birthday?
A:  Get lots of presents and eat lots of food and cake.

Q: What do you want for Christmas?
A:  Candy and a race track that runs into pretend cans at the end.

Q: How high can you count?
A:  "Uh, a hundred, no, 101, actually 104"

Q: Do you love our kitties? Why?
A: Yes, cause I like to play with Chloe and try to catch them.

Q: What do you like to do with mom?
A: Help make food.

Q: What do you like to do with dad?
A: Play on his phone and wrestle with him.

Q: Who is your best friend?
A: My sisters - both.

Q: What is your favorite thing to watch?
A: Phineas and Ferb

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A: Firefighter - to help people if their house catches on fire.

Chloe (age 3 and 1/2)
Q: What is your favorite food, color, and animal?
A:  Macaroni, pink, "HORSEYS"

Q: What do you like to do before bedtime?
A:  Read ABC books

Q: What do you want to do for your next birthday?
A:  Eat cupcakes

Q: What do you want for Christmas?
A:  Princess stuff

Q: How high can you count?
A: "Um, 9" What's after nine? "28" (she can actually count to 20, sometimes skipping 15)

Q: Do you love our kitties? Why?
A: Yup, because I love them, because I want to pet them.

Q: What do you like to do with mom?
A:  Hug her, and I love her.  And makeup.

Q: What do you like to do with dad?
A:  Jump on the trampoline, and hug him.

Q: Who is your best friend?
A: Cali, and Katie, and cousin Ruby.

Q: What is your favorite thing to watch?
A:  Little Einsteins

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A: A mommy.


Phebe (20 months)
Q: What is your favorite food, color, and animal?
A: Ice and spicy food, purple?, doggies (woo woo)

Q: What do you like to do before bedtime?
A: Read books - Mr. Brown can Moo (boom boom) and Pajama Time (damas) and There's a Wocket in My Pocket (wok)

Q: What do you want to do for your next birthday?
A: Eat cake with my hands.

Q: What do you want for Christmas?
A: (Boxes and wrapping paper will probably trump anything)

Q: How high can you count?
A: "free", sometimes 4

Q: Do you love our kitties?
A: Yes, too much for their own safety.

Q: What do you like to do with mom?
A: "Cudool" (cuddle), makeup

Q: What do you like to do with dad?
A: Be a helper

Q: Who is your best friend?
A: (From Jeremy) Totally mom.

Q: What is your favorite thing to watch?
A: "Steins" (Little Einsteins) and "Rella" (Cinderella)

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A: Pro wrestler

Wrapping up FHE with some treats.  Good times!

Hungry? Try eating your own lip.

There I am being a good little pregnant mama and working out at my friend Megan's house when I get a call from Jeremy's school saying he fell at recess, bit through his lip, and needs to be picked up to get stitches.  Awesome.  I'm usually home during the day, which is a two minute drive to the school, but my friend's house is about 20 minutes from the school, so the poor guy had to wait forever for me to pick him up. (By the way, shout out to Megan for watching Phebe while I went through all this drama.  It was hard with Jeremy and Chloe and the long waits, but with a nap-deprived Phebe, it would have been torture!)

I called the doctor on the way to get him, and his office said they don't do stitches (they don't even have sutures in the office) and to go to urgent care.  Then I find out urgent care won't do stitches either, and they want me to go to the emergency room (which has a $100 co-pay) and even then some stranger is going to work on my kid's face.  Luckily, we know an amazing oral surgeon from church, so I gave his wife a call and she was able to get his office to squeeze Jeremy in in between surgeries.

Jeremy was quite the trooper and very brave.  He hardly complained.  When they brought him back, they tried to do the cleaning and stitching with just the anesthetic water (how cool is that?  no needles required!), but he was nervous about the tools in his mouth and kept twitching even with me at his side trying to calm him.  They decided to give him laughing gas, but since I'm pregnant, I couldn't be in the room around the nitrous oxide.  They did pull up a chair and let me watch from the door, though.

Jeremy is hilarious on laughing gas.  They had given him a sheet of stickers earlier, and so as he's getting loopy he starts babbling and echoing himself.  "I love stickers, stickers, stickers.  This is my favorite, favorite, favorite.  I love cars, cars, cars."  He even faded with each echo.  It was great.  He wouldn't hush, though, and Rob kept laughing about having to hit a moving target.  I tried to video some of his babblings, but the case on my phone makes videos sound horrible.  Still, if you wanna crank the speakers, you can try to hear.
Basic gist is that he yaps and yaps, and they keep having to tell him to be quiet.  I didn't really catch much of the funny stuff he was saying here.

Ok, so that video is pretty boring, but this one, this one is great.  This is Jer coming off the laughing gas (on oxygen, but still a little loopy):

Anyways, besides the fact that an amazing surgeon did these stitches, so I know the scar will be as minimal as possible, I think the whole experience was much more bearable for Jeremy because
a) He knew the doctor and likes/trusts him.
b) A surgeon has the equipment to do this right.  He was telling me the emergency room doesn't have this numbing water.  My friend who had to take her son to the emergency room when he bit through his lip had to hold him down while they gave him a local anesthetic shot, plus I don't think they had the laughing gas to help calm him down either.  Not a pretty sight.  The whole experience was traumatic for her son.  Jeremy wasn't upset by all of this at all.  And I'm so grateful for that.

Plus, he got an ice cream date with Dad for being so brave, so that'll cheer a boy right up!

Now, if I can just keep his hands off his stitches for the next five days, all will be well with the world....

Some recent adorableness

Here are a few videos from the last couple of weeks of the kids being stinkin' adorable.

Phebe "talking" on the phone to Nana while a super loud kid game plays in her ear.

We went to Scooters Jungle with our friends the Kleins.  Our shy children made a new friend, while Phebe watched on demanding to join.


So she did....
We lost sight of her for just a second, and before we knew it, she was at the top of the slide braving it on her own!  It took Jeremy a while to psyche himself up to do this particularly steep slide, but Phebe just went for it!


We went to the Six Flags Hurricane Harbor water park on its last open Saturday of the season, and the kids were FREEZING!  It was nearly 90 degrees out, but it was quite windy and the water was frigid, so they shivered the whole time.  Exhibit A...


And finally...
Phebe thought it was hilarious to dip her hair in the water and then run back to me and watch it drip off.  Over and over.  This last time ends with a big hug to big sis!

Chloe the Gymnast!

In August, we started Chloe in gymnastics, and she's so adorable.  She really loves it, aside from an occasional bout of shyness, and she's doing great.  Here are a few pictures and videos from her lessons thus far.

Coach Steve tells them to lean over the bar and say HI! to their friends!

 Look at the flexibility!  Face to the floor; she didn't get that from her daddy!

Gymnast Montage

9-16 Chloe Gymnastics HD from Ryan Woolley on Vimeo.

Another adorable one of Chloe, just cause. Chloe runs.

IMG 3789 from Ryan Woolley on Vimeo.

Empty

Conversation 2 minutes ago:

Jeremy: (playing iPhone shape game) I made an octagon! It has eight sides.  I'm learning!

Dad: (jokingly) No, don't do that.  Stop learning.  Your brain will get full.

Jeremy:  No it won't.  It's always empty.

Dad:  That's the spirit!

Boating on Upper Castaic Lake

For Father's Day, Ryan got a four person inflatable boat, and last Saturday the kids and I got to go out on it with him for the first time.  He went fishing early that morning on the upper Castaic Lake, and then we joined him a few hours later.  The fish in the upper lake have mostly been biting early in the morning lately, so he caught his only two for the day before 8 AM.  Still, the first was a 3.5 lb large mouth bass, which is the largest large mouth he's gotten so far!

The weather was perfect, sunny with a nice breeze to keep it from feeling too hot.  

Phebe knows how to cheese it up.

She got it from her brother.

In one of the coves, we found a little beach and stopped for lunch and playtime.

Phebe's new favorite trick: TA-DA!

Like feeding a birdie 

Seriously, what a cheeseball! (She's got kind of a Mrs. Brady thing going on, doesn't she?)

Jeremy wanted to get in the water, so we let him hang onto the rope on the outside of the boat for a while when we first headed back towards the dock.  We were going a speedy 3 MPH (that's our max speed), and it's a good thing we only have a trolling motor because Jeremy definitely kicked the propeller (no kids were harmed in the making of this picture).

I'm not even kidding, my girls wanted to stand while we were moving but were having trouble balancing with the choppy waves, so they held hands to steady themselves.  I didn't even tell them to.  How cute is this?  You like how Ryan is photo bombing them?

  Jeremy will not be out photo bombed. 

 We feel kind of silly pulling into the dock surrounded by 50 and 100 thousand dollar boats, but hey, we're on the water and we can fold up our boat and put it in the back of Ryan's Escape.  Yey, people, we rock a blow-up boat!

I guess we're off to kindergarten!

On Thursday I got a phone call from Jeremy's school; it was Mr. Brauneisen, the principal at Northlake Hills Elementary.  He opened with "I bet you weren't expecting this call!"  I thought I was gonna be sick.  What was my boy up to? He laughed and continued that all was well, but that the staff was trying to decide how to address the size of Jeremy's Transitional Kindergarten class.

Let's back up by explaining TK.  The state of California has decided to join the rest of the country by moving up their kindergarten cut-off from December 31st to September 1st.  Instead of making no excuses and saying tough luck to those who now have to wait an extra year, they have decided to extend a special two-year kindergarten program to those children that miss the new cut-off but make the old one.  Since Jeremy's birthday is November 14th, he qualifies.  This works great for me since I don't have to pay for preschool this year, but I still don't understand why California's doing it (but I'll take it!).  Maybe it was a condition of moving the deadline up; I'm sure it was politically motivated because it doesn't really make practical or financial sense.  Anyways, the first year is Transitional Kindergarten, which is supposed to be more academic than preschool but less so than kindergarten.  The second year they go to normal kinder.  

However, the problem was that Jeremy's class had 24 four-year olds in it, which I think was overwhelming for both the teacher and the kids, but the school didn't have the money to hire a new teacher.  Their solution was to test the kids and pull the top 8 students from the TK class and move them up to kinder.  The 8 students are split amongst three kindergarten classes, so that the final number of students in each class is 18.  They stay in regular kindergarten for two years, though if their child does well, the parents do have the option of requesting he/she be bumped up to 1st grade.  They were tested on upper/lower letter recognition, color sorting, sight words, etc. and considering Jeremy reads chapter books already, I was not surprised to find out he aced the test.  The teacher acted so surprised at how well he did; I was annoyed that he'd been in her class 7 days, and she didn't know he could read yet.  Guess that shows you how little one-on-one time she gets to spend with each kid.

So, we're saying good-bye TK, hello kinder!  Not gonna lie, I'm a little bummed because TK doesn't have homework and kinder does, but I think he's academically more than ready for it.  We're probably still going to keep him there two years regardless of how awesome I know he's going to do, though.  We feel like he needs the time to develop his maturity and social skills now (he's kind of a tornado on legs at times) and that it'll be the best thing for him long term.  Plus, I'll get to have him in the house with me one extra year! :-)  

His teacher's name is Mrs. Curtis, and every day he comes home saying he LOVES school (that's my boy!) so I think he's adjusting well.  He has two friends from church in his class, Leilani and Cali, and one friend from preschool, Kayla.  

There you have it!  At least I won't have to explain to every other person I talk to what TK is! 

Baby Ella/Leah/Hannah/Emily/Olivia/Kelty/Natalie? at 24 weeks

Even though I'm allergic to blogging (apparently), here's a super fast post about our upcoming addition that I'm refusing to post to Facebook instead of the blog.

We have the best neighbors; they are always warm, friendly, and generous to our family, and they have become very good friends.  They own a 3D ultrasound company (shameless plug: http://www.insight4dultrasound.com/) , and they let us come see our daughter whenever we ask.  How cool is that??

Anyways, it'd been 10 weeks since I'd seen my girl, so I broke down and asked if we could come in.  Our little lady was not at all cooperative.  She slept the whole time with her face buried in my placenta and practically impossible to see.  With some deft work by Sharon, we were still able to grab a few images:

Her face against my placenta

Cute little baby toes 

Another thing that was pretty cool was when we saw her literally move her fingers like she was counting them.  It was super cute.  Here she is starting with #1.

The only time we saw her moving was when she was working her jaw and trying to get her thumb in her mouth. Oh no, another thumb sucker!! (see her hand against her face with her thumb out to the side under her lip?)

Even though we weren't able to get alot of great pictures, we were able to learn a few things about our girl.  First, she has long fingers like Phebe, though I don't think her toes are quite as long as Phebe's were.  Second, she totally has Chloe's nose.  We think she might look like Chloe, which is neat since Jeremy and Phebe look alot alike.  She was head down and loves to snuggle with that placenta, so maybe I'll get another cuddle bug!  Sharon says that she looks like one of our babies, which I always love to hear.  It was really wonderful, and regardless of her sleepyheadness/shyness, I am so grateful for the opportunity to bond a little more with my special lady!

Fun Weekend with the Coxes

So about once a year, Ryan's sister and her family (aka the Coxes) come to California from Vegas for a Disneyland trip.  They often spend a couple days with us while they're here, so we took them to Magic Mountain, to Kids Fish Day at Castaic Lake, and to a beach in Ventura.  It was a fun weekend.  I'll upload more pictures to our picasaweb, but here are a few of my favorites from the trip.  Jean has an awesome camera, and I'll try to get her pics and add them once I do.

The Grand Carousel

 The Scrambler

 First time in bumper cars

 Playing(?) with my hair

 First time on The Flash

 Phebe and Daddy

 "Come to Mama, Phebe.  You really don't wanna be out there in about two seconds."

 "Jer, you're gonna get wet."

 "Told ya."

Kids Fish Day at Castaic Lake - Stocked trout in a netted area just above the dam.  There were twice as many people as last year, so it was very crowded and we didn't catch anything.  Still, nice to see the kids fishing!

Seth

 Aaron

 Danny

 Rachel

I'll post pictures from the beach once I get them from Jean!