A Nearly Perfect Day

What a great day! The weather was fantastic, school was done before noon, no major tantrums or complaining and I had dinner made by 6:30pm. So today - Maicol finished painting the cat house, we jumped on the trampoline, wrestled on the trampoline, built a fire to burn up an old wooden garage door, played hide and seek, went to the lake to throw rocks and sticks, Andrew and Juan played in the bathtub, Dan read bedtime books, I rocked everyone and I think they are all asleep! Why can't they all be like this? I guess we wouldn't appreciate the good days if we didn't have some not so good ones.

The anticipation for Halloween night was almost more than any of us could stand! Next year I am going to have to lie to them or something and say it's later because the days and hours leading up to going trick or treating were just crazy. They could hardly stand to wait and I could hardly stand them! They were so excited. Jonathan and Kristen came and took them out and evidently it went very well. I guess Andrew's system was to stand at the door and wait until he got at least 2 pieces of candy before he would say thank you and move on. That explains why he seemed to have more candy than the other two. Maicol was so excited he was running from house to house. Juan Pablo wants to sleep in his costume.

We have been trying to get outside as much as possible since I know this great weather can't last. I really dread those days when they can't get out and jump on the trampoline, run and ride bikes to wear themselves out. We've also been working on projects outside - insulating under the house, raking leaves, planting grass, and building the cat house. We're still having hot dogs roasted over the fire at least once a week. Unfortunately, winter will put a halt to that.

Maicol still has his difficult days, but most days it seems his unhappiness with me is less. He so obviously desperately wants, loves and needs me, but is so afraid to just relax and let me be his mom and take care of him. We go through days were everything is fine and then the next day nothing I do is right according to him. I think it's the up and down of one day to the next that makes me crazy. Juan doesn't like doing schoolwork (and asks me every night if there will be school the next day), but really does well once he gets going. He's trying to learn the "2-vowel rule" in reading. It's going pretty well - he can identify the two vowels in a word and knows that the first one says it's name and the second is silent. Those short vowel sounds are so ingrained in his brain it's hard for him to remember to not use them when he shouldn't. Andrew has evidently learned to count to 8 by listening to Juan Pablo. He's not sure about associating numbers and objects, but he can count. He also has started teasing his brothers by calling them "baby" and "stinky underwears". He is so much fun and so much work! He's always up to something and most of the time, it's not something good.

That's it for now. Hope you enjoy the update.

Karen



Juan Pablo - his face describes our day - good all the way around!

Juan Pablo - the Power Ranger

Maicol - Batman

Andrew - the white Power Ranger - looking cute and getting lots of candy!

Andrew, Juan Pablo, Maicol

Maicol, Juan Pablo, Andrew

Painting the cat house. They wanted to help paint the house, but we thought that wasn't a good idea. :) I guess we decided the cats don't need quite the level of workmanship that the rest of the house deserves, so we let them paint it. They think they're master painters now.

And last but not least, a picture to make the Grandma's nervous!