3's Preschool and Young 5's

This fall Sebastien and Eden are starting Young 5's. I can't tell you how much we (ok, I) debated about whether to send them to Kindergarten or do a year of Young 5's. But now we have started the year and so far it is going very well.

Here are some pictures from their first day of school. 

Violet was not starting school this day, but she wanted to "practice."
 

 

 

 

Violet's first day of 3's Preschool came a few days later. The first day is a visiting day with the parents. Amazing how she can look so big and so little at the same time!

 

 

  

Violet loved our visiting day; we learned some songs, explored the room and did some crafts. She had so much fun that when the time came for her first day by herself, she was ready.

 

She was a little apprehensive going in, but the teachers are so good at welcoming the kids and loving on them, that she had no trouble at all. 

And when I went to pick her up, she came out looking like this:

 She was happy to see me, but very proud of what she had done that day.
 And of course, I was proud too!

Happy 3rd Birthday Violet!

Our wonderful little Violet turned THREE! And what a sweet little honey she is.

I was a little concerned that this would be a tough birthday for Violet. Her brother and sister just turned 5, and she had it in her head that she was going to have "all of the little children come over" for a bouncy house birthday party. However.... that's a 5 year old thing...which of course I *tried* to explain.

 Despite my worries, Violet had a wonderful 3rd birthday. Wanting our sweetie to feel just as special as her brother and sister, we made sure to celebrate her big day with a few smaller parties. She had a lot of fun.

On her actual birthday, we took her to lunch and went to ride Go-Karts at Craig's Cruisers. Being 3 years old means you can ride Go-Karts! She felt pretty big, despite the fact that nobody else could see her sweet little head in the car while she was racing around. Grandma and Grandpa Tuls joined us for the fun.

   

 

We also had a small gathering with some of my local extended family. They were getting together for a BBQ and so we had cake for Violet there, just another excuse to celebrate our little girl.

 And of course, celebrated with the Navis family while we were all together for the weekend.

 Violet is a sweet girl, with her own personality developing more and more. She is clearly growing out of the toddler phase and into a preschool, big-kid phase. She speaks and sings clearly, and she loves to do both. She makes up the funniest songs and is very creative in her language, putting pieces of different words together and then telling us with confidence what they mean.

However, she is quite shy yet, and so there are times when she is in a new setting or with new people that she will not say a word. And that is just fine. She is very excited to be going to school soon. In fact, Eden will often say, "Violet if you are nervous about school, I can tell you what it will be like." And Violet will just shrug and say, "I'm not nervous."

 

Violet loves puppies most of all. If you want the girl to smile, present her with a puppy. This has been true for some time, and this summer we saw just how true her love is when the Deurs had their puppies - real live soft, squishy, sweet puppies. Violet was in heaven.

 Violet wants to do everything that anyone bigger than her can do. Mostly she wants to do it by herself (whatever "it" is) but she will ask for help if it means being included. She plays very well with her big brother and sister most of the time. I think it's become natural for her to be a "communal" player, as she does not always know what to do if she has to play by herself. However, she does not let herself be pushed around either; she definitely has her own voice and she is learning to assert herself more and more.

 Violet is great at drawing and can write her name. She has had an almost perfect grip on pencils since she was just one year old. Plus she loves to draw and write; so she gets lots of practice. Lately she has been practicing a lot of letters that are not in her name and it won't be long before she will be writing the whole alphabet.

 Of course, we just adore Violet. She is truly a delightful, fun, spunky, smart, sweet girl. And every day I feel so thankful that I get to be her mom. Happy Birthday Violey, we love you so much!

Here's Violet's 3 year old Birthday Interview:

And now they're five

Sebastien and Eden turned 5 a few weeks ago. We did their annual birthday interviews and I was blown away when I compared it to last year. They both have truly grown up so much. We had their first "friend" birthday party this year, and we invited their friends from church and their preschool class. It was a lot of fun.

Sebastien is as tender-hearted as ever. These days it shows up a lot in how he interacts with his sisters. He is so sweet and good to them, quick to share and compromise, gives hugs easily and is happy to play together. And when he wants alone time, he happily keeps himself busy. Music is still his favorite thing, though his love of horns seems to have waned somewhat as he has focused his efforts on singing and dancing. He memorizes lyrics very quickly and often listens intently until he has a song memorized. He also loves to play with numbers and letters. He is reading like a champ and he loves it, along with doing workbooks, coloring, drawing and practicing writing his letters. This summer we did a lot of swimming and bike riding. He is getting pretty good at riding his bike, but he is still a little nervous about taking those training wheels off.

Here's his interview:

At 5, Eden is articulate and inquisitive. She likes to know why, how, for how long...the purpose of things and the origin of them. And then she wants to know what everything will be like in the future. She is also pretty literal. She likes to joke but she is quick to correct if someone is exaggerating. One of her favorite things is making friends. When we go to a playground or the library (or anywhere!) she introduces herself: "Excuse me, my name is Eden. What is your name?" "I'm Eden and I'm 4 1/2, how old are you?" She also is doing wonderfully with her reading and writing, practicing her lower case letters often. She can sit and color or draw for a long time, concentrating on staying in the lines, and takes pride in her creations. Eden is a very helpful girl, and she takes any opportunity that she can to be alongside Mom or Dad, but especially Daddy.

Here's Eden's interview:

Eden and Sebastien have always had their own personalities, but we find as they are growing up, they are diverging in their interests more and more. They still play together very nicely and love each other's company, but naturally they are inclined toward different things and it is fun to watch them grow into those interests.

Sebastien and Eden will start Young 5's this year at Grand Haven Christian. They are very excited about going to school 5 (half) days. We have been going back and forth about this all year and I'm still not entirely sure that it's the right choice. We could go either way I think, but in the end we have gotten a lot of advice from a variety of different sources (educators, other parents, family members etc) to let them be older in their class, and we just had to make a decision.

Bash and E are a tremendous blessing to Adam and me, and to Violet as well. There is just never a dull moment around here, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Moving....

This post has been awhile coming, but I have been actively avoiding it. I'm a sentimental person. So, as soon as we decided to put our house up for sale, I knew that a time would come when I would sit down and write about leaving our house. And I knew when I did, I would sit and cry. Then we took it off the market and I thought I dodged that bullet. But then the offer came - the unexpected offer that we could not pass up.

Last night was our last night at home on Park Ave, and I was so avoiding feeling my feelings about it. I had some wine and watched Jim and Pam fall in love on a few episodes of The Office that I've seen a million times. And I giggled over IM on Facebook with my friend over silly emoticons that neither of us knew existed. I didn't want to sit and think about the fact that it was our last night in this place...

This place where our family went from two people to five. This house that we bought just in time to move in and settle before the twins came. This home where I sat for the second half of bed rest and watched Adam unpack boxes paint walls, and assemble furniture... all the while happily accepting his offers to run for the Culver's milkshakes that I craved.

This home where my two labor stories begin. This place where I heard first giggles, watched first steps, rocked sleeping babies. And where I felt fevered heads, walked crying babies until the carpet wore thin, washed accidents and cleaned smooshed blueberries out of the carpet. Where we have spent so many hours sitting on the floor, reading and playing, and later dressing up, playing house and school, listening to music and playing "puppies."

It's a small brick ranch with an unfinished basement. 3 bedrooms. But it has a great family room and a nice living room. It was beginning to feel like we were on top of each other. We wanted a bigger house. But for those first few years, I wouldn't have changed it. While the twins were babies, and then while they were little toddlers and Violet was a baby, it was perfect. I always knew where they were. I could hear them, I could get to them quickly. Yes sometimes I would have loved more space, and eventually we wanted a play room for the kids so badly that we put all their beds in one room so that we could make the other into that play room.

But truly it didn't matter how much space we had, or how little energy and time I had put into decor (which was very little), because it was our home. And we had a thousand dance parties there. And we spent hundreds of afternoons in the backyard. And I kissed a million owies there. And no matter where we were coming from, how long we had been gone, that was home, and that was where we all slept the best, felt the most peace, and could be ourselves. It was not the first home that Adam and I owned, but it was my family's first home.

Tonight we are sleeping somewhere else. And we've done that before. But Eden, my articulate child, was upset at bedtime. "I know we've slept here before, but now we are moving." Later, she got tears in her eyes, and told me "This isn't our home." Long after Sebastien and Violet had fallen asleep, she was laying there thinking about home. And I feel for her, I'm sad too. As an adult I know that we are moving to wonderful things, but to her it's the unknown, and she's feeling very uneasy.

So together we'll navigate our sadness and we'll remember the fun, warm and happy things. And of course we'll talk up the cool things about our new house and hopefully the excitement will grow. But for now I'm ok with the fact that she's sad. I'm sad too.

Winter Fun

A certain VIP made a request for some new pictures. So here's a handful from this winter.

The winter started with so little snow, we were often taking walks outside.

Violet went through a phase in which she wore hats around the clock. (Literally, she even slept in hats.)

Then it started to snow. The first day we were snowed in, we declared a "Jammy Day." In the afternoon the kids piled up some pillows and blankets and we watched a movie.

We have played in the snow a lot.

When we weren't outside, we made forts... 

Worked on our potty skills...

And did a major room change. 

The kids all moved into one room and we turned the twins' old room into a play room. Here we let the kids paint on the wall before we started our painting.

Creating a play room was a fun project. 

We don't have a picture of the room totally done, but here you'll at least see the wall color and a cute little Violet face. Having the play room has been wonderful.

And just a few more....

Here is Violet trying to put on make up like Mommy.

Another version of this picture was on Facebook. I like this one of my Super Girls too...

And of course, when we can't play outside, we just have to wrestle with Daddy to get our energy out! 

We are all now very much looking forward to that snow melting and the return of Spring.

Any day now!