September kids update

What's been happening recently...

AUSTIN
Austin's struggled with behavior issues in the past couple weeks, pushing both Amy and me past our limits more than a few times. He uses a variety of tactics...ignoring, arguing, defiance, sneakiness, even intimidation. He has this "mean face" that he puts on and gets right up on us like he's trying to bully us into changing our minds. It's gotten to the point that we immediately put him in time-out anytime he gives us the mean face.

I'm not saying he's always bad, he just acts out more than I'd normally expect--especially when Jonas is in the room. He's constantly testing and pushing buttons.

However, it seems like he's been improving slowly over the last week. And he's been on best behavior the past couple days, not least because of our impending football weekend. I think his kindergarten teacher's discipline methods are helping him too (especially when I try to mimic them). He's so much more pleasant when he's behaving. It's amazing to see how creative, loving, affectionate, and funny he can be when we're not constantly struggling with him to control his behavior and temperament. He's taken to randomly hugging me and saying things like "I love you, Dad", "you're the best dad", and last night he broke out "you're wonderful". It's so sweet.

In the last 2-3 days he's even started being markedly nicer to Jonas, which is eye-popping in its contrast to the usual dynamic there. There've been times when Jonas has pinched, grabbed, or hit Austin with little or no provocation, and Austin's just looked at me and said "I didn't hit back and I still love him even when he's mean." *boggle* WHO IS THIS ALIEN AND WHAT HAS HE DONE WITH AUSTIN?!!

I'm leaving in about half an hour to pick up Austin from school and take him to Clemson for the weekend. He is so excited he can barely stand it. I am too! But I'm excited about football...he's more excited about "special time with daddy", eating in restaurants, and staying in the hotel. But hey, whatever works. :)

JONAS
Jonas is talking more and more these days--he has a rapidly growing vocabulary and is putting together fairly sophisticated sentences too. He's still pretty hard to understand unless you're used to him, and even then it's not easy, but he seems to improve daily.

He is OBSESSED with books. If he can get away with it, he'll make us read him 10 books before bedtime...some nights we literally have to pick him up and carry him away from the bookshelf to go to bed. He's even starting to memorize some of the books because he's read them so many times. It's pretty awesome. He watches TV, but not a whole lot of it--he'll watch Blue's Clues till the sun goes down, and likes Phineas and Ferb because Austin watches that one a lot. But other than that, he doesn't really pay a whole lot of attention to TV (as far as i can tell, anyway).

He's got all his colors down pretty well now. It's funny to hear him say them...."duh-wed" ("red", actually we think it's "the red"), "bwoo" or "duh-woo", "wee-whoa", "geen" or "duh-geen", "or-nange" (this is cute enough to melt steel), "buh-wack", "duh-wyee" ("the white"), "duh-peenk", "purple" (oddly, he says this one almost perfectly). Guess what his favorite color is? ORNANGE! I'm raising him right. :)

Much like Austin, Jonas has distinct and developing musical tastes. He tends to like high-energy music like dance, electronica, and old-school hip-hop (while Austin prefers electronica, heavy metal, and speed metal). He loves to ride in my car because it's a "special occasion", and we always listen to energetic music. He laughs and bobs his head and "dances" in the car seat.

Jonas still an incredibly sweet boy with an incredibly big mischevious streak. I really love being around him when he's not driving me crazy getting into trouble. :) He is a specialist at getting into trouble, though. He'll grab anything that he can reach, even if he knows he's not supposed to. He knows how to use chairs and toys to climb on and reach higher spots. He can be a real terror at the table, pushing the table and his chair around, tipping backwards, etc. He really loves to step on and/or destroy things Austin has built (lego buildings and cars, forts, etc). And lately he's developed an interest in the computer too, which leads to fights over whose turn it is to be in the computer chair.

On the sweet side, though, he always comes sprinting to the door when I come home, laughing and shrieking "DADDY!". He likes to sit on my lap and watch TV or read. He can sit still for much longer than Austin can, so it's nice to chill with him on the couch. He loves to share with everyone in the house--his new thing is to say "here!" and share whatever's in his hand. He's really good about going down to bed, FAR better than Austin ever was--it almost never takes more than 15 minutes to get him down for a nap or for nighttime. He has a great sense of humor and sometimes he flat-out cracks me up, especially when I'm singing lullabyes or holding him. He loves being a comedian. He is also getting much better with Devon, backing off on the intentional startling and the random smacking. We still can't leave them alone in the same room because Jonas will still try something every now and again, but at least now we don't have to be right next to the baby every second.

DEVON
Devon's been off Zantac for the past several days and seems to be responding well. He's started to eat oatmeal and pureed fruit. He really loves applesauce. We think he might have an allergy to rice cereal, as he developed a really nasty rash a few weekends ago that we couldn't get rid of. When he stopped with the rice at his doctor's suggestion, though, it was gone within a day. Weird.

He's also holding his head up very well and turning over with ease. He loves to be on the floor. He's figured out how to push himself military-crawl style across the floor in small intervals, so he's becoming somewhat mobile--at the very least, he can turn himself in a circle to see everything around him. He's constantly trying to get his knees underneath him so he can start crawling (and keeping up with his brothers). We introduced him to an exersaucer a couple weeks ago and he seems to like that pretty well...won't stay in it for a long time, but often will go long enough for us to eat dinner.

Devon's personality is also very sweet, he loves to laugh with Daddy and Mommy and his brothers. He doesn't seem to mind strangers too much and is usually in a good mood when he wakes up--even when Amy has to get him up at 6:15am to get Austin to school in time. He's starting to "watch" TV and will sometimes even pay attention when we're reading books. He's really good about going down to bed; by 6:30 or 7 he's ready for his final nursing of the night and then he'll typically stay asleep until the next morning, sometimes sleeping till 8 or 8:30. Hardly ever wakes up in the middle of the night anymore; if anything, he'll wake up around 9-10pm because of gas bubbles, but he doesn't like being awake that late. Sometimes if he's up past 7, Amy will put him down in the crib (so she can take care of some errands) and eventually he'll put himself to sleep. That's something neither Austin or Jonas would ever do as a baby, so it's REALLY nice (almost heavenly) that Devon will do it once in a while.

And lastly he still likes Austin more than anybody except maybe Mommy, but is warming up rapidly to Jonas too. Jonas isn't as mean to him as he used to be, which helps, so often I'll catch Devon grinning and giggling at Jonas like he's never done before. It's really heartwarming to see them interacting better.

I think that's it! "See" you in about a month.

New photos for August; Austin's first day of kindergarten

New photos are up!
August 2009 - includes photos of Austin wearing his new glasses
Austin's First day of Kindergarten

Here's some of the 1st day of school photos:






This is what I wrote somewhere else about his first day of school:

First day of kindergarten went relatively smoothly. I helped with the morning yesterday, but other than Amy's alarm clock not going off it went off without any hitches. Austin was so excited that he was pretty cooperative, and Jonas and Devon both are already used to going out the door every morning--just not quite so early. While we were driving out of the neighborhood we noticed the bus makes a stop at the end of our street, and a TON of kids get on there every day, so we started thinking maybe we'd put him on the bus after all. We got to the school without a problem, got him to class fine. We actually had to chase him down to say bye, so separation anxiety was (as expected) not a problem. :) We stayed a bit longer for a PTA-sponsored breakfast then headed home.

The afternoon was a bit rougher--Amy said she sat in the car pickup line for almost an hour, which is pretty ridiculous even given it was the first day. That was exacerbated by Devon's screaming (he hates stopped cars) and both kids needed diaper changes. Then when Austin got in the car he whined all the way home that he was starving because he had only gotten salad for lunch. What?! For about 4 hours we both thought he'd only been *given* a salad for lunch so we were both pretty concerned, but slowly we teased the bigger story out of Austin and it turns out he got a full lunch, but only had time to eat the salad. They only get 20 minutes for lunch and he's a notoriously dawdling eater, so I think the end of lunch caught him by surprise (despite me warning him several times that that would happen). He got several reminders between last night and this morning to eat first, then play.

Austin being in preschool last year has helped in countless ways, even so much as to make it a routine for Jonas to head out the door every morning. All 3 kids seem to be adjusting to the earlier time pretty well--it's not too much earlier as far as waking up, but they have to hustle more to get out the door.

All in all we're happy with the way everything is turning out; there have been no major hang-ups or irritations (other than the hour-long sit in the car rider lane). I feel better about the school now that I've been there a few times and have talked to some other people around town about its quality, too. The worst part for me is that I have to get up at 4:40am now to avoid interfering with Amy's new morning routine. Ugh! But it gets me to work by 6am if not before, which means I can leave before 3pm and have half the afternoon to be at home, run errands, etc. It's not too bad.

That was 2 weeks ago on August 17 or 18. Since then, a lot has happened:

+ Austin went through about 2 weeks of difficult transition. He was crying every morning in class, saying he missed us, telling us he didn't like school, crying at night about going back, etc. I think it was due to a couple things: longer days, a tighter schedule (especially IRT lunch), the bus not being as cool as he originally thought, and so many new faces. A couple days ago he stopped the daily crying and went so far this weekend as to say he was excited about school. Hopefully that'll stick.

+ He also decided that he didn't care for the bus. Despite the bus driver's graciousness and flexibility with routes--she was willing to pick him up and drop him off in our cul-de-sac, if not literally at our driveway--he just couldn't get used to the loud noise, the windows being down all the time, and the bigger kids. He also didn't like not having a seatbelt, as his feet didn't touch the floor so he slid around a lot. That made it seem like the bus was "going too fast" and it really bothered him. After a few more trial days, we went back to car riding. We might try the bus again later this semester or year, but for now we're sticking with the car (as much of a PITA that is for Amy).

+ I went and visited his school last Friday to eat lunch with Austin, to observe, and to talk to the teacher a little bit. I got to do way more than that--she put me to work! I got to read to the class and run a learning center, then had about 15 minutes to talk one-on-one with the teacher during recess. I'm very happy I went--I feel really good about his teacher, how she operates, how she runs the class, and so forth. I also got to see Austin "in action" and was happy to see that he's a good, quiet student who pays attention almost all the time. He isn't particularly outgoing, but has made some friends and plays well at recess either alone or in groups. He keeps telling us he doesn't remember anyone's name but since I've been to his class, I can help him remember. I hope to go back once a month or so, or perhaps alternate visits with Amy. Austin LOVED having me at lunch so I'd like to do that again; I also tremendously enjoyed being in the classroom helping out, and the teacher was eager to have me help as often as I could.

+ His class is 26 kids--not ideal, but less than the 28-30 we were told to expect. There were 2 kids absent the day I went but when I was there, it was 10 boys and 14 girls. The class was about 1/3 minority children.

I think that's all I have to say!