Little'uns Update

We did a homeschool update recently, so now I'll give some air time to Kenna and Lucan.

As I've already posted, our Kenna is now THREE years old, and we're still finding it hard to believe. She is still the ray of sunshine in the family, consistently joyful, with occasional thunderstorms of rage or tears. Thankfully she is also at the easily-distracted stage, so I can often steer her away from her tantrum and get her involved with other things. She adores helping me in the kitchen, so I frequently ask for her to "help" me make bread or prepare meals, which engages her while the older three do their morning school work. She runs after her stool and stands RIGHT next to me, eager for instructions. She can find many kitchen utensils to bring to me--the can opener, various measuring cups or spoons, the mixer, the beaters, etc. And of course she has to sample whatever we're making.

More and more Kenna occupies herself for longer periods of time, and this also is helpful during the homeschool period of our days. She enjoys coloring and is quite thorough--reminiscent of Tobin's coloring days when he would color every square inch of paper. Thank goodness for Magic Erasers for the tables. She also enjoys puzzles and the plethora of building-type toys we have. I love to listen to her singing while she plays by herself--last week I caught snippets of her own little song about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins! She especially loves it when I announce it's time for "her school," which sends her running for books for Mommy to read to her.

Though she began her potty training eagerly on her own a number of months ago, she has yet to make the decision to be 100% consistent. A sticker chart does help with the motivation, but there are days when she flat-out refuses to wear her underwear and chooses a Pull-up instead. I've learned to pick my battles, and frankly, this is not one of them...

Lucan is scooting around about as fast as you can imagine and has the tough pads on his knees to prove it! Though he could likely walk on his own, he doesn't yet believe he can do so without help and promptly sits down when we let go of him. But it won't be long, I bet. The kids are still learning to put things UP and AWAY, as he can make like an octopus and grab every rippable object in sight before you can say "please don't tear the library book!"

Despite struggles to get Lucan on a predictable schedule, it is so nice to report that he is finally on a consistent schedule each day which does allow us to fit school into our preferred structure very nicely. He's still up early, often by 5:30 a.m. But that's fine with me, because then I can put him down as the kids are getting up! I'll post more about our daily school schedule later...I've been wanting to write about our "Funvelopes" this school year and how that's worked out for us. Anyway, Lucan naps about 2 hours in the morning and is ready for lunch approximately the time the kids are finishing their morning school activities, so then I nurse him and work to feed all the kids at the same time. He absolutely adores his older siblings, who heapingly return the affection!

[Side note: The automatic spell check is not liking my made-up words! A dollar for the first person to list them all in a comment, LOL!]

Let's see...what else about Lucan. Well, he's starting math lessons and is now reading at a first grade level. OK, not really, I just wanted to see if you read this far. :-) He's beginning to babble more and often spews out syllables in response to our talk, so we have "conversations" back and forth that amuse the older kids to no end. No recognizable words yet...Kenna tends to do most of the talking for him these days. (And lots of her words are barely recognizable as well!) He is VERY attached to his "suckerdoodle," which we are trying to limit to nap and bedtime. The nursery workers told me today that he went after another kid's binky so frequently that they put it away...and Lucan went looking for it! Our older 3 "quit" their addiction more or less on their own around 8-9 months of age. We made Kenna quit cold turkey around 16 months or so. Guess we'll see how long we let Lucan go...it's a lot harder to mess with a good thing the more kids you have to try to keep happy!

And now it's time to get dinner on the table. Meatloaf and baked potatoes...oh, are they smelling good! Have a wonderful Lord's Day!