non-photo kid update

Was writing an e-mail today about all the kids and it sounded more and more like a blog post, so I figured I'd mirror the content here. Enjoy.

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Devon has found his voice in the last 10-14 days and likes to "talk" ("aahs" and "ohhs" and "oohs") with impressive volume, but even more he likes to squeak. He sounds like a creaky door that's constantly opening and closing. We originally thought he was trying to convey displeasure, but it turns out that most of the time he's just squeaking. It's not particularly cute or endearing, but at least he's getting verbal (and it's much less annoying once we figured out he wasn't fussing). I'm starting to wonder if he's teething, as he's a bit crankier than usual; but we haven't seen any evidence of that yet. He still sleeps through the night, at least, except for last night when he was up at midnight. First time that's happened in at least a month, though.

Jonas has 2 molars coming in, continuing his miserable tradition of having multiple teeth appear simultaneously. He doesn't seem to be having *too* much trouble with them, but it might be making him crankier, I dunno. He has more of a hair trigger these days but it's hard to tell if it's teeth or just the fact that he's 2. He's definitely full-swing into the terrible 2's, that's for sure. He's still climbing out of the crib, which began a couple weeks ago--we just leave the drop rail down, as he's figured out how to climb out that way w/o hurting himself.

We had a disastrous experiment Saturday removing the drop rail--he thought it gave him free license to just up and get out of bed whenever he felt like it. So his nap was half as long as usual, getting him to bed was a nightmare (never stayed in bed more than 5 seconds, kept coming out into the living room, then bolting as soon as I spotted him...a fun little "game" that almost got his neck wrung), and Sunday morning he woke up at 5am and never went back to sleep. So the rail went back on that day. It's a nice psychological deterrent, if anything. Jonas also got into the Mother's Morning Out program so every Thursday, he'll be spending 3 hours with kids his age. I think he'll like that a lot, though we're a bit concerned how he'll do the first few times. The last time he was in a room without parents he only lasted about an hour before getting upset, but he was also the only 2-year old in the room. We'll see how he does with a roomful of peers and directed activities. It'll be a nice morning off for Amy, as once school kicks in she'll be down to just 1 kid once a week.

Austin had his kindergarten placement test yesterday and impressed the test-giver; he got 62 out of a possible 64 points on a test that's designed to measure what kids should know by the *end* of kindergarten. He recognized a couple "sight words", which I didn't know he could do, and even tried to write a couple of words (no success there...he got as far as "C" for "cat" but that's it). Pre-K was worth every penny! So he should get pretty good placement; in addition to class sorting they have reading groups sorted according to ability, and kids will move up or down if they improve at different rates (I think). So that's cool.

We were also told that class size should be about 24 students, which is awesome. At pre-registration they told me 28 students, so 24 is a great improvement. I'm most worried that since he's so well prepared, he'll get bored and into trouble! Hopefully the teacher's prepared for that, though. I'm looking forward to meeting his teacher and developing a good relationship to make sure Austin's consistently engaged and challenged. I'm next-most worried about the long days--7:25 to 2:30 or something like that. Wow. Amy and I are both going to have to get up at least half an hour earlier, I think...considering I already get up at 5:15 or so this will not be fun.

New pics

New pics up in 2009 folder:
+ June 2009 [just 4 new pics here]
+ Austin's 5th birthday
+ July 2009

Also, recent photos up!

I forgot to mention yesterday that photos through June 2009 have been uploaded and include Austin's 4K "May Day", 4K graduation, and birthday; Jonas's birthday; and Devon's entrance into the world and his first few months. Enjoy!

PHOTO LOCATIONS CHANGING

As of today, I've reorganized the photo album structure for our family. Instead of splitting albums into Austin, Jonas, Devon, and [other] I've simply gone to a chronologically-based system. All 3 kids, as well as other family members/events/pets/etc. will be in one album: Our Family. From there sub-albums will be broken down by year, month, and the occasional special event (birthdays, holidays, trips, etc).

I think this will make it a lot easier for me to put up photos, and a lot more organic/intuitive for everyone to browse through. So hopefully that means more frequent updates.

I'm leaving up the existing Austin/Jonas/Devon structure for another few days but it won't be up long, so if you have bookmarks be warned that they'll all be broken pretty soon.

Here are links to the boys' photo sites.

• Austin's Photo Page
  
• Jonas's Photo Page
  
• Devon's Photo Page

NOTE: Almost all photos in the album have been resized to non-ridiculous sizes; this will make them sub-optimal for printing. If you want original large (i.e. high pixel count) images to download for printing, wallpaper, etc, please contact me.

I'm thinking about re-organizing the photos to go solely by month/year, not subdivided by kids. As I've discovered the hard way with Austin and Jonas, whenever there's a photograph that has both of them in it, I have to duplicate the photo in each kid's folder. That's a huge pain. And what do I do with photos of just me, just Amy, the cat, etc? So in the future I may just wipe it all out, create an album called "Family", and run with it. It's a huge project, though, so finding time may be a challenge.

Next challenge: figure out how to perma-stick this post to the front page. I don't think it's possible, actually, so I may have to find another place to put these links. [Update: aha. I put them in my profile, which shows up on the right side of the page. Awesome.]

This is a new blog. Geocities is shutting down soon, so I need a place to put links to kids' photos; I might use the blog for other stuff at some point, but right now I just need a good launch point.

Ryan