Many Milestones

 

 Happy St Patrick's Day!

 Both kids have been learning new skills lately, so we thought it was time to share.  Rachel has been learning to roller skate.  Brian is a great teacher.  He is really good at breaking things down and explaining them.  I may be able to teach academics, but I am glad Brian is around to teach Rachel other skills like roller skating.  We make a pretty good team.
 

Joel will be 9 months tomorrow and has been working on pulling up.  A whole new world of things to get into are now within his reach.  He is also getting to be quite the speedy crawler.  Thanks to his army crawl he is currently sporting two lovely rug burned arms, but it doesn't phase him. 

Mobile Baby and Other Fun

I am posting these videos mostly for the grandparents because I realize that watching more than about 30 seconds of other people's babies doing baby things is not all that exciting.  So without further ado here are multiple videos of my adorable children.

Snacking (I must have been in a very generous and relaxed mood to allow the kiddos to eat on the carpet.)

 Rolling Around - Joel's favorite way to get from point A to point B

And finally....Joel is just learning to crawl

Rainy Day Fun

I has been raining the last couple of days, and we are so excited and grateful for the rain.  There has been lots of conversations with Rachel about leaving her mittens out so she can be ready for Tahoe and the snow (she has been asking to go sledding for the last month) and how the plants need the water to grow but not too much or they might drown.

We have mostly been staying inside these last couple days.  Rachel has been into pretending to go camping lately, so I thought it would be fun to bring out the play doghouse.  We all crowded in Rachel's "tent" to go camping.  She kept us safe from bears which all turned out to be nice, so we fed them.  Joel even got to play the role of "Joel Bear" one day, but he was not such a nice bear.  He had to stay out of the tent until he cried to be picked up.

This afternoon Rachel begged to go outside and play in the rain, so I let her go outside of a little while.  Really so what if she gets a little wet.  She will dry and can always change her clothes if they get soaked.  Rachel had quite the ensemble on to brave the cold and wet: snow boots, snow jacket, dress, and capris.  She looked so cute and happy I had to take a picture.  Joel and I stayed inside and watched the fun from the window.

A Completed Project (wow!)

Last weekend and this weekend during the kids' nap time I worked on putting in a new shelf on the wall of our garage to hold my tool boxes and my drill press. This was my first under slung shelf that I've put up and it seems to be pretty sturdy.  This evening I finished it and I think it turned out really well.  It's a little over 24" deep.  I would have made it exactly 24", but I already had a piece cut that was a bit more than that, and it seemed a shame to waste a few inches of expensive ply wood so I just made the shelf extra large.

Joel came out to check it out this afternoon.

Now it's all done, and the lawn mower fits underneath the shelf!

More Work Bench Progress

I took a whole bunch of days off work over the break and Rebekah worked really hard to get me an hour or two most days we were home to work on my work bench. It's coming along nicely!  In fact, I was able to get the out feed table portion of the work bench complete.  And it's 5 feet from the end of the blade, to the end of the out feed table so I can run an 8 foot piece of plywood through the table saw and it will only over hang 3 feet so it doesn't fall off. This is very nice.  Anyway, here are the pictures.

Work Bench Progress

The first stage of the work bench is to get the frame together and put a smooth board on top to make it work as an out feed table for my table saw.  Over the Thanks Giving break I was able to put quite a few more hours into it.  The next step is to glue and screw the verticals into the top horizontal frame which is just clamped on right now. Here is my progress.

What the Kiddos Are Up To

Rachel:

Rachel is still my fiercely independent, energetic, sweet preschooler.  She is intelligent and loves learning.  We are probably homeschooling her for a couple years and then will reevaluate.  We started this year with preschool so that I could get us both in the habit and establish a routine.  She loves school and learning.  She is one smart cookie, picks up concepts very quickly, and is quite articulate.  When I gave her her preschool pretest earlier this year I was surprised how much she already knew.  This year we are using ABC Jesus Loves Me.  It is a bible based curriculum that includes pretty much everything I need.  I like that I don't have to pull together materials from multiple sources. 

She loves to dress herself and I am learning to let her even when things get a little crazy for my taste.  My style tends to not stand out.  I wear a lot of darker solid colors and tend to accessorize very little.  Rachel loves bright colors, especially pink, mixing prints, and hats/crowns.  We do talk about how to match clothes in terms of colors and patterns and there are some rules like clothes must be weather and venue appropriate.  For example I was raised you dress up for church, and so Rachel follows the same rule.  Dresses/Skirts for church.  You do it because you love and respect God.  You bring him your best.

Rachel just finished up a six week gymnastic session.  She loved it, and we will continue the class in January after the holidays are over.  She does a great job trying to do everything and listening to her teacher.  We figured gymnastics would be a good fit for her because she is high energy, loves bouncing, somersaulting, going upside down, swinging, twirling, running...

Joel: 

Joel is just about 5 months.  He is improving his muscle tone and is now able to lift up to his hands on his tummy and hold himself upright with minimal slouching when being carried.  At his last well baby we found out he is pretty weak in his upper back/shoulder muscles.  He has been working out with extra tummy time.  We got the jumper down for Joel, and he loves it.  Within the last couple days he has figured out how to jump in it.  The toys are also fun to spin. 

Joel is a social guy.  He loves people and hates being alone.  He has learned the crib means he will be left alone to nap and now if I put him in it for a minute or so to say wash my hands after a diaper change he almost immediately screams.  Needless to say nap time is still challenging.  Other than the whole nap and crib thing he is pretty happy and mellow.  It is still easy to make him smile and laugh.  Sometimes all we have to do is look at him and we are rewarded with a big grin or a little giggle.

Well, that is what the kiddos are up to.  I hope you enjoyed the update.