Wow, I don't even know where to start!! SO many things have been changing, evolving, starting, ending at the same time.
I guess the biggest thing that has changed our everyday life the most around here has been Dakota starting school. We don't do preschool (well, not "official" preschool anyway. The kiddies learn their numbers and letters and all here at the coop ;), so starting Kindergarten is a huge change of pace for us. The schedules, the lunch packing, the socializing, the DRIVING. Oh my gosh...the driving. I can definitely tell that we have entered the "taxi" stage of raising our kids.
But, in actuality, I
love being busy. I would take being busy over having nothing to do any day. It makes me feel alive and productive.....and exhausted.
As for her school, it is absolutely awesome. I'm 100% stoked that we chose this school for her. And the most important part is that she loves it. She goes to school excited, she comes home excited and I feel like she's totally blossoming there. I credit this mostly to the fact that it's a Montessori school. It's pretty amazing. No homework, and very little "corporate teaching", meaning her teacher rarely stands in front of the class and instructs them. It's all about the kids working at their own pace and on their own level.
A surprising aspect of Dakota's school life that I wasn't really expecting was how quickly she made friends. I think I've actually had her pegged wrong. Which, in reality, I shouldn't be "pegging" my kids at all, but I think it's almost impossible not to to a certain extent. I always saw her as more of an introvert. But I had noticed at playdates that she is an introvert for about the first 45 minutes, then once she's assessed the situation, she totally comes out of her shell! Not surprising, both Davey and I are the exact same way. I think it's because we're both
super analytical. It's kind of in our nature to "sum up" the environment before we act or commit to full fledged interaction. A little side story...it was SO funny on our honeymoon when we very first got to Paris. Davey had never been (although he had been to Europe before, and he was born in Germany, so you would have thought he would be used to the culture already) and his reaction to Paris the first day was totally unexpected to me. He was
stone quiet for 24 hours. And okay, all you who know Davey, you know he is NOT a quiet person. Talkative is definitely one of his personality traits. So for him to be completely quiet for 24 hours straight was amazing! I was really worried that he didn't like being there! The next morning we got up and he was bouncing around the city like he owned it. We had the time of our lives. And to this day, he says that was the best week of his life. It was the best week of my life too :) But it just goes to show where she gets it from I guess. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
On the topic of socialization too, I would have never in a million years thought that kindergarten could be such a soap opera! Wow...we've already had our day of Dakota crying in the back seat on the way home from school...
over a boy. Yep. Five years old people. It really does start this young. Well, for girls at least. I always thought I was going to have it hard with two boys. Yah right! They might be difficult toddlers, but man, once Dakota gets into the pre-teens, we are going to have our hands full for sure.
Speaking of brothers and sisters, first of all, I have to comment on my Levi Love. I can officially say....WE ARE OUT OF THE TERRIBLE TWOS!!!!!! Sound the trumpets hallelujah thank you sweet Jesus!!!! Seriously, there were many, many,
many days that I thought I really was not going to make it out of his second year with my mental abilities in tact. I really thought I was going to loose it at least, oh, probably 200 times. I'm not kidding. It was that bad. On average, at the height of his terrible twos, probably about 9 months ago, he was going to time out about 8-10 times a day, for about 20 minutes each time. My entire day was putting him in time out and keeping him there. It was literally the week of his 3rd birthday that he starting making huge behavioral strides. All the sudden, the temper tantrums subsided, the time outs got less and less, and the biggest and most helpful part of all, he had this explosion of speech ability happen. He went from only being able to form simple 4 or 5 word sentences, to saying whole paragraphs and describing things and memories in about the span of 4 weeks. Which leads me to the most awesome part of him coming out of his terrible two's; his and Dakota's relationship. Last year they DROVE me crazy with their constant fighting. It was about 80% fighting all day, everyday. But as soon as he started talking more, their relationship totally transformed into a friendship. Now, they fight maybe 20% of the time, and the rest of the 80% of their time together is playing. Whoohoo! I really never thought this day would come! But it has and I couldn't feel happier. Another part of that I think is her going to school and them getting to see one another less. It's the old saying, "Distance makes the heart grow fonder."
But Dakota doesn't go to school everyday. Mondays and Tuesdays are her homeschool days. Okay, let me lay it out here....I was pretty terrified of homeschooling her. I knew I wanted to do it, I knew it was on my heart, but that never changed the fact that I was so afraid of "failure" that it almost took my breath away sometimes. All I can say is, I was so, so way off to be that afraid. Her homeschool days have become my favorite days of the week. I would say that our homeschool style is actually the closest to "unschooling" that you can get without actually "unschooling".
One of the most unexpected benefits of homeschooling her has been the photo documentation of everything we do. In order to prove that your child actually did what you say they did (if there's no work pages or physical evidence to prove it) is by giving weekly picture work samples. So, throughout the day as we homeschool, I'm snapping photos to turn in with her work log. This has given me such a treasured collection of memories! And I know she will love getting to look through all these photos of everything we did together. I plan on making a book every year just of all her homeschool activities. Here is what an average homeschool day looks like....
We usually start the day with some sort of outdoor activity like watering the grass, or watering the plants or even planting new plants....
There's always some sort of educational conversation that goes on...why the plants need water, talking about seasons, learning about bugs. Homeschooling is just an extension of the learning that naturally goes on in a kids life. And it's really exactly how I want my kids to learn. What makes me the most proud is when Dakota comes home from school and I ask her, "What did you learn in class today?" And she says, "Ummm...I don't know. But we did this project and I got to color the Earth green and blue because that's where we live and the blue is water and the green is land and the land has rocks in it!" Hahaha! YES! Now that's it right there! Learning without even knowing she's learning! That's how it's supposed to happen! I don't ever want that little passionate fire burning in her for knowledge to ever get squelched.
Anyway, so we start of with an outside activity, then we move inside and usually go to some kind of craft or art project...
A couple of weeks ago we made this Autumn banner for the playroom. Fun! And I love seeing it hanging over the window everyday. It makes it feel so Fall-ish in the house :)
Next, we usually go on to some sort of math activity or work. She's just starting in the Math-U-See curriculum. Her teacher handed me the book and manipulative's and said, "Just start wherever you think she is." I love it.
Then it's back to crafts. Art and crafts are a super important part of her schooling. It's probably the center focus of her day. And it's not just by my choice, but she requests these types of activities the most. I've made it my mission to let her interests guide our day. We get what we need to get done. But most of the day is really not specifically "planned" out. I have a rough idea of what we're going to do for the day, but many, many times when she seems interested in something specific...we go with it! My favorite memory with her so far was one day when we were doing our morning watering and we saw SIXTEEN hawks circling over our house...which is way more than usual. So we sat there on our patio for at least 20 minutes just watching these hawks and talking about what we thought they were looking for and why. Later, when we went inside and they left immediately, I realized they were circling over our house because they were hungry...and my chihuahua was outside in the backyard with us!! Thank goodness we were out there with the dogs because I'm pretty sure if we hadn't been, we would have been minus one little chihuahua right now. Anyway, afterward we went inside and spent an hour looking at hawks on the computer, talking about them, making a bird book, it was so cool! And it more than satisfied her science requirement for that day.
Anyway, back to crafts, she recently learned how to use a sewing needle...
Go Dakota! You are well on your way to being a sewing queen ;)
So, aside from arts and crafts, we also get some earth science in there, a little history, and of course language arts...
She's not reading on her own yet, but we're definitely quickly going down that path. We do some reading together everyday and then she practices her flash cards for sounds and site words...
Usually toward the end of the day we'll do some sort of other outside activity. One of my favorites to watch her do was when she made a rock collection...
She categorized them into colors and then of course made a book about rocks. We have quite the library going on over the past year of all the books she's made. I treasure them!
Of course, I can't go the length of blog post with out writing about something else I treasure...my Kade!! Oh man is he growing! I have one word....MOBILE. The boy can get around! Full on crawling throughout the entire house! His favorite activity right now is to hold on to the bottom stair and walk along the length of it, back and forth, back and forth, he'll do this for half an hour easy! So cute.
She is such an AWESOME big sister. And Levi is really a great big brother too. I'm really enjoying watching their relationship grow over the past couple of weeks. Now that Kaden is mobile and bigger and sturdier, him and Levi really have fun together. I definitely have a couple of clowns on my hands. Kaden has a lot of similar personality traits as Levi, they both love to laugh! It's so funny, Levi will get in Kaden's face and be completely ridiculous crazy, doing all sorts of weird sounds and faces and Kade will just crack up. I love hearing their laughter through the house <3 Oh, and another thing about Kaden, I've finally decorated his room! That's the one sucky thing about not finding out the gender of your baby, you can't really decorate very well until after the babes born. So, it took me 7 months, but his room is finally looking really good! I love sitting in there and rocking him now. These are some of the elements I've gotten for his room...
The background is the color I painted his accent wall, it's kind of a dusty, light, slate blue. I love it! And the fabric swatches are what I'm making his bedding out of. I'm excited to start his patchwork blanket, but a little intimidated to do the bumpers. I think I'll have to call the pro in (Mooooooom!!)
Ok, so even though we've been CRAZY busy, we still have been able to find time for the important things.
Kaden got dedicated back in August! Here we are with him outside church afterward...
We took the kids hiking today and Kade got gis first glimpse of giant oak trees. He was in awe! (It's crazy to look at the picture above which was taken only two months ago, then look at the one below and realize how much Kaden's changed in only the matter of 7 or 8 weeks. His legs aren't as chubby and his face looks sooo much more mature! He's growing too, too fast for sure.)
Just look at that little face! So stinkin' adorable. And Kaden's kinda cute too. Just kidding! Hahahaha!
And luckily, I've been handy enough to record a lot of the best moments we have with Kade. Here he is talkin' and laugin'....
And he walks with help too!
So blessed to have these kids of ours. And even more blessed to have this husband of mine. I want to start talking less about the kids, and more about us. After all, this blog is called "David and Corin", not "Dakota and Levi and Kaden". So what about us? Well, basically, Davey and I have a lot of dreams. One of our biggest goals is to travel. And I'm pretty darn excited because I've started a travel savings account for us! And it's actually growing!
And that's something super exciting that's going on right now...I started a new etsy shop! And it is doing really well.
It's cool how life comes full circle a lot of the time. A while back I started in photography, and it was fun, but I really lost the passion for it pretty quickly for a few reasons. The biggest was that it simply required too much time away from my family. Hours were required for shoots, then more hours for editing, then more hourse for building client relationships, more hours for branding! It was very time consuming, and I didn't find that the time it required was worthy of the money I made from it. I could have probably made a really good living doing it, but that would have required massive amounts of input. And I just wasn't willing to give what was needed. BUT, God has a plan for everything. I never would have gotten into designing my own cards if I hadn't of gotten into photography. When I did start designing my own cards, I found that I really love it, and I was good at it. Then I realized that I could profit from it. And so I did! Meet District Nine Design!
Even the name has massive meaning to me, it's my favorite district in Paris :) The one where Davey and I stayed on our honeymoon. It's known as the "Opera District" because it's where the famous Opera Garnier is. Such an incredibly beautiful part of the city. And so peaceful too. Just huge, sprawling, tree-lined boulevards, punctuated by tiny cafes here and there and a whole lot of up-town shopping! The most perfect place on the planet.
I'm so excited for where this new venture is going. It's no longer just cards, but is quickly expanding to include photographer resources like templates and eventually (hopefully soon) custom made OOAK logos! I've gotten the huge honor of getting to work for a prominent christian charity organization in L.A. that ministers to foster children and helping them find new families and homes. I'm SUPER thankful to them for making making me a part of their events.
So, the profits from District Nine Design are our travel fund!!! My goal is to earn enough money so that we can take one international trip a year. And right now, I'm already 30% the way to my monthly profit goal. Our first trip we are planning is something we've wanted to do for a long time, going to Israel with our church. I can not wait. We're planning on going in February of 2013. It's about a 14 day trip. If all goes well, it will be the first of many for us.
