kid catch up

haven’t done one of these in a while, so i thought i should update what all the kids are up to about now.

shane is busy as usual. he still has little use for ‘school’, but tolerates it and for the most part, is doing really well. he’s currently studying south america – countries, climate, landforms, cultures, history, animals, plants, and the like. we are all now completely enlightened with the discovery of the capybara… the world’s largest rodent, which is apparently the size of our 60 pound dog. he and i also just finished reading the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe which he was enthralled with, so we’re excited to start on the next book. he’s still helping susie with her gardens, and recently has helped her with a couple of ‘trillium tours’ and redoing all the pathways throughout her acre of gardens with ‘hog fuel’ AKA cedar mulch. another neighbor, recently tore off his roof and is in the middle of replacing it with a metal roof, so of course, shane spent last weekend (and is planning the coming weekend) helping with that. his drama class is winding down their preparations for a musical production of STRIKE!, which from what i can gather, is very similar to newsies. he has a couple of smaller roles, as well as being the co-stage manager for the play. so yeah, busy.

layla is having fun in her own little layla world, as usual. she and micah are good friends now, and spend more and more of their time playing together. good weather is very welcome, and they spend a lot of time in the back yard. and, like a good middle child, she also follows shane around whenever he’s around (and will allow her to). she still likes playing with polly pockets very much, drawing, coloring, writing letters, etc. her big achievement right now is working on learning to read. she can work her way through some of the simple BOB books and can figure out almost any 3 or 4 letter word, either in print, or in her head if she’s trying to write it down. she’s signed up for soccer in the fall, and although she’s been begging to play for years, now she’s decided she doesn’t want to. oh well, the fee is paid, as the rule usually goes, if she hates it, she won’t have to play again. she’s very into ‘babies’ right now. not necessarily human babies. her stuffed animals are all ‘babies’ and she has to take care of them; she recently adopted a ‘baby rock’ that had to be fed and take naps and stuff. oh, and she sings all day long and is very into her hair right now. she announced yesterday that she wants to grow it so long that it will touch the ground. that should be interesting.

micah is hilarious, as usual. he’s very into playdough right now, so we have that out almost daily. he’s also obsessed with sports, mostly baseball. he walks around w/ his bat on this shoulder and (when he’s not hitting the dog with it) announces, ‘i’m playing baseball!’ to everyone. if not a bat, he’s generally got some sort of little toy (usually some treasure he’s stolen from shane’s room) clutched in his hand. i think he hangs onto it until he misplaces it (or shane takes it back) and then he goes and adopts a new one. first it was a couple of different monster trucks, then an airplane, then a garbage truck, last night it was a little shopping cart w/ a dog in it, and today we’re back to the airplane. he goes to sleep with them. it’s pretty funny. he generally wants to do whatever layla is doing, and fortunately, she’s usually very agreeable to it, unless, of course, what she’s doing is whatever shane is doing. then he’s stuck being the little brother, since their activities usually take place in the front yard, on bikes, with tools, or in trees. his big ‘project’ right now is POTTY TRAINING! we’ve got him in underwear during the day now, and he’s doing pretty well. he averages only 1 or 2 accidents a day, but it usually happens when i’m not paying attention to how long it’s been since he last went potty. so yeah, in essence i’m training myself, but whatever keeps the kid out of diapers is good with me! he’s also showing himself to be the good younger sibling sponge by absorbing nifty things like being able to count to 10 and knowing all his letters and a few of the sounds as well!

so that’s the kids. as a family, we’re slowly making our way through the ‘little house on the prairie’ tv series. we borrowed the seasons on dvd from my cousins, but we’re still only a little way into season 1. this could possibly take the whole 10 or 11 years that the show was actually on! we’ll see…