Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Four and a Half

Dearest Samuel,

You are four and a half today.  You have been waiting for this day for a long time, and I am so glad that I remembered before 6 in the morning when you came to my room and said, "Guess what day it is??"  You were thrilled to have a little dessert after lunch and get a new umbrella.  So sweet.  Samuel, sweet is a word that describes you so so well.  You are my sweet boy.  You say sweet things, you love to kiss and hug me lots at bedtime, you sit on my lap and play with my hair, you are the sweetest big brother to Sophia, and your smile is pure sweetness.

Ah, that smile.  Oh, Sammy, your smile melts my heart in a million ways.  You are such a little charmer, with your raspy, excited voice, your full cheeks, and that amazing smile.  Your cuteness is indescribable.  

Daddy and I adore you and talk about it frequently.  We love your excitement about life, and we love how your eyes light up when you talk about something you love or are looking forward to.  It is precious.

Sammers, you were thrilled beyond thrilled to start school this week.  You have wanted to school all day, and you were even in my bed this morning at 6:00 with your kindergarten workbook and a marker, already starting on your work.  You are learning (just this week!) to read and are so excited that you want to keep trying and trying to read more and more books to me.  It is such a delight to watch your love for learning take off.  You literally ask me, "What else can I do for schooling??" after you have already done multiple things and could just go play!  

You seem to have the same incredible gift of memory like your brother.  You love maps and numbers, and you have the fifty states memorized, as well as many of the capitals.  You are on to learning the countries of the world.  You know more than Mama about geography, Buddy!  You love calendars and dates and time, and you know exactly how old each member of our immediate and extended families is, as well as their birthdays.  You remember the days in which things happen, and you love to look through old calendars.  You are so interested in the time and this helps you to be motivated to stay in bed until 6:00 (by looking at the alarm clock) instead of the awful 4:30 wake up time you pulled off for sooooo long.  I will take 6:00, any day.

You enjoyed playing t-ball this summer, and you love to run and jump and dance and be silly.  You love doing anything Micah is doing.  You love Mario Wii.  You love playing video games on the computer.  You and Ella have so much fun together, but you also bicker about specific toys, too.  You were delighted recently when Sophia started saying, "Sammy," and you love to be with her and hug her and carry her around.  Oh, and you adore Daddy.  You can't wait for him to get home everyday.  You guys are special buds.

You love the Bible and you love worship songs.  You love to listen to the stories we read, you memorize verses, and you love to learn new songs from church.  You love dance parties, and you love being together as a family.  Daddy and I joke that you are the "class clown," always finding silly things to do to make us laugh.

You continue to love seasoned noodles, like your siblings, but unlike Micah, you love meat...ground meat, hamburgers, steak, meatloaves, pork, and chicken.  You love vegetables and fruit, especially broccoli and strawberries and spinach!  I recently caught a picture of you eating fresh spinach right out of the bag!  Your favorite breakfast includes hashbrowns and bacon.  You love bagels and toast and rice and fresh bread.  For a long time, you were allergic to dairy and had no dairy for years, but now you are starting to eat more and more and are doing just fine!  And you have discovered that you LOVE cheese (way better than your vegan cheese slices!) and ice cream!  Fun to see you enjoy these new foods.

You just started getting the hang of your bike this summer (still with training wheels) and you love going for walks or bike rides around the neighborhood.

Samuel Alan, it is such a delight to be your mommy.  You are sweet and funny and brilliant and kind.  You are creative and talented and full of joy.  I love you more than words can express and am so proud of the boy that you are.

Happy Half Birthday, Son!

I love you!

Love,

Mommy















Monday, September 9, 2013

First Day!

Today was our first day of school!
The kids (and I!) were all so excited to jump back into our routine, and we enjoyed our first day back with new books and new plans!  So fun!  

Ella is officially joining us for school this year, focusing on colors, shapes, and letter recognition!

I think Sammy was the most excited to start school today.  In fact, at a couple points of the day, he started crying because I wasn't giving him the next activity fast enough.  He wanted to school ALL day.  So cute.  Such a little lover of learning.

Micah's day was successful, and he enjoyed starting in on multiplication and some other new books!


Our attempt at getting Sophia into the picture.  As you can tell, she was not really wanting to stand still (but does she ever?).  Sophia napped through some of our schooling time and made mischief the rest of the time.

Our new plan: Start the morning with a walk.  This was really nice, and I love how Ella wanted to push her baby in the stroller too.  And notice Sammy...doesn't everyone carry a croquet mallet along for a walk around the block??

Some highlights:  Ella started learning about the color RED, and she colored red things, ate red tomatoes, made a red sticker page, and read red books.  This girl has not been wanting to learn her colors (other than pink and purple) so we'll see how this goes!


Micah and Sammy did a fun Skittles math activity for the first day!  (Thanks, Kim, for the fun idea!)





A couple of other victories from the day:  Sammy read his very first book all by himself.  Actually, he read four!  My goal for Sammy this year is to learn to read, and he is off to a great start with these little BOB books from the library!
And Micah started learning cursive!  I was on the fence about this, but we decided to take the plunge, and he loved it!  Yay!
And lastly, their self portraits from the first day of school.

So thankful for a fun first day!  Excited for many more days of advenure and learning ahead!  

Happy New School Year!!!