Toddlers, Babies, & Teens

This afternoon Daniel decided he wanted to go outside on an adventure. He got dressed on his own and had his little backpack ready, then he headed out. He wandered around the backyard looking pretty adorable. I called him over so I could take his picture.

A toddler close up. Do you know where you're off to, Daniel?

Cute kid. All dressed up with no where to really go, but that's ok cause he was content to just wander around the back yard for a bit. He had toy food and random things in his backpack.

Toddlers are pretty easy. Busy and noisy, but fun.  They're pretty independent and along with that comes plenty of messes... I like them.

Babies - I'm torn right now with Peter, cause part of me is eager and ready for him to grow and be more independent/need me a little less, but I'm also going to be so sad if he's our last! A few pics of me snuggling with him on New Year's Eve...

Such a snuggle boy. I love it, so sweet

So then there's that side of me that just wants him to stay little and to savor every baby moment.

But I've never nursed any of my babies this long. I'm blaming my inability to lose weight on the interrupted sleep and the physical stress placed on my body by the demands of breastfeeding. I've read and heard it's good for them to nurse as long as possible, and he seems happy to continue with this thing we have going, so maybe I'll just keep doing it? But I'm super frustrated with my weight right now. I try not to be, but I am. I could probably also blame it on violin, cause for the last several months instead of doing sprints, HIIT, or lifting heavy weights to impress myself, I'm am impressing myself when I practice or learn something new on the violin. Violin has ruined my health! I know I should be able to do both, but there are only so many discretionary hours in the day. Sigh. I'll just take one day at a time, control the controllables, work hard, pray harder, and keep on keeping on.

Teens - Sometimes Corey and I feel like we're falling short and so in over our heads. There are too many kids and too much to keep track of for us to keep on top of it. Or if it's just a matter of us learning how to keep track of it all, then the problem is that we haven't learned it yet. The high school kids got their grades back recently. Ethan got straight As, but Hyrum and Wes' grades were not good. Like several Ds and Cs between them. Thankfully there were fews As and Bs too. Luckily no F's this time but we've had one of those last year, still need to get that fixed. So we're trying to step it up there with checking their current grades every day and following up on them and breathing down their necks, cause just trusting them to stay on top of it hasn't worked. We went over Wesley's grades with him and there's still time for him to turn this around and have a good cumulative GPA by the time he graduates, but he's got some ground to make up. He's got to start now and he's got to do it. So yeah, Corey printed up and taped their poor grades on the wall in our closet where we will always see it, so that it can always remind us every day to have them show us their grades and take care of missing assignments and make up any tests asap.

Things are going well with the kids in elementary school. And Abi in jr. high is doing ok... we think there are problems there with her grades, but we haven't had that as our priority to examine that yet since its' just 6th grade. But hopefully we can teach her how to work before it starts counting toward her academic record. We've got lots to work on here!