Frweeeeee!

This sweet little love turned three this week!  This is what he's like:

He loves trains and cars and balls. But mostly trains.  Lucky for him, a busy railroad cuts right through the center of town. He gets to see trains ALL THE TIME while we're stuck waiting for our intersection to open up. At least it's fun for someone.

He loves to play with his big sister. He's usually really very nice to her and will give in to her demands for the most part.  They share a bunk bed, which works well for them most of the time.  He's not too interested in his little sister, and when he is, he's usually a little rough with her.  But he does like to feed her bits of his dinner.

He learned how to pedal his big wheel this spring and loves to ride it out in front if our house.  He also likes to water our flowers and swing and run.  The thing he likes to play the VERY most right now is play dough. He and Madeline sit at the kitchen table and play with it for hours. They learned how from YouTube. It's all very weird but I'm glad they're entertained.

He likes to sing and be sung to. And he's obsessed with listening to "Fwozen" in the car. I can't tell you how many hundreds of times we've heard that soundtrack. He never tires of it. Never.

He has a heart of gold. He has a little cousin who was in an accident and is in a full body cast.  Benson's grandma asked the kids to gather something to include in a care package she was sending.  Benson came out of his room carrying his most prized possession: his talking Edward engine.  He absolutely loves this toy and sleeps with it most nights. He said, "I give baby Kreg my Edward", and set it right in the box. He hasn't asked about it since.  

We just love this little boy and feel so lucky to have him!

Kindergarten Graduation

We had kindergarten graduation a couple of weeks ago. Why they can't just have a kindergarten presentation instead of 'graduation', I don't know.  Silly.  But cute.  We had to have a little talk afterwards when she was sad that I didn't bring her flowers or a huge bunch of balloons like some of the other parents.  I assured her that I will bring nice gifts when she graduates from high school and college, milestones that take a little more work.

Kindergarten was so good to Madeline. She had a really great year.  She made her first best friend - a sweet little girl that she also goes to church with.  She's grown and matured so much this year.  Her teacher assured me that she was a delight to have in class, after I said "really?"  She often had multiple children give her goodbye hugs when I would pick her up from school each day.  She really loved everything about school.  She wasn't bored at all - just glad to be there with all of the other kids.  She loved having homework.  And the biggest milestone of all was that she decided she wanted to read.  She really hadn't wanted to read with me at home, she would much rather be read to.  She told me she thought I wouldn't read to her anymore if she learned how to do it herself.  I assured her that wasn't the case, but didn't push her to read at all.  I think she loved the confidence kindergarten gave to her.  Now she's reading Junie B Jones: First Grader all by herself. I'm so proud of her!

On to first grade!

Soccer

Well, we gave soccer a try this spring.  It's actually the first extracurricular activity we've put Madeline in.  It ended up being fun, but busy.  I felt like we went from not having enough to do to having too much to do, just overnight.  They had practices twice a week and games once or twice a week.  Our evenings were pretty full for a couple if months.  

I was so proud of Madeline. We missed the first practice because we were delinquent parents and forgot all about it.  When she got back in the car after the first practice she went to she said, "mom, I really shouldn't have missed that practice because I don't have any idea what they're talking about"!  I felt for her - it sounded just like me when I played soccer at her age. I didn't have any idea what was going on.  The couch had to hold my hand and walk me onto the field to show me where to stand. 

She didn't want to go to the next practice and was tearing up in the car.  But she was brave and went.  After they had their first game and won, she loved it.  Thank goodness there were a couple of really good boys on her team, because they won all of their games.  Madeline was scrappy and followed the ball all around the field.  The biggest challenge we had was keeping benson off the field! I don't know if we'll do soccer again next year or try something else, but it was a fun first round of sports.  Many more to come, I'm sure!