over the rainbow

Monday! When the kids got home from school, Sammy told Madison that her car looked beautiful and asked to take a picture in front of it.

SSA earn a prize for every six days they get stars at school. They earn a star if they’re a good listener and a good friend, as reported by their teacher. (Side note: If I haven’t mentioned it, Steven has recently struggled with school behavior a bit. He can get handsy with his friends and sometimes chooses not to listen. To help keep the rewards top of mind, his teachers created a chart that lets him earn one star/hour toward his star for the day. It seems to be helping.)

Here, Sammy is playing with an alien that he earned last week. He had to be patient while it took a day or two to hatch in water. It was a bit of a struggle at first because the prize didn’t have immediate gratification but, in the end, I think he liked that Amaya and Steven were so interested in his prize. Plus, he got to keep a bowl of water in his room for two days.

Bubbalish – lining up his squishies.

Lots and lots and lots of legos in our house.

On Tuesday, the kids had a treat when Madison’s mom took them to lunch after school. Madison said that Sammy’s face lit up when he saw her. In fact, they were going upstairs as a group at the same time as Ms. Shannon and Sammy had a hard time figuring out where to focus his energy and excitement when he could be with Ms. Shannon and Madison’s mom.

Big goodbye hugs

Sammy, sporting some Belle dress-up.

I mean, who wouldn’t like to twirl?

Sammy also got a much-needed new sweatshirt for spring. He picked Marshall!

Steven, Sammy and Amaya have been very into these Melissa & Doug painting sheets lately. I love them because they’re mess free. No need to put paint in trays or do a ton of clean-up. (I do wish the sheets were perforated, though.)

Steven’s cheetah

Sammy’s shark

Amaya’s owl

Bonus Bee for me, from Steven. I want to save every piece of artwork that says “Mommy”. <3

On Wednesday the JCC had a Red Robin fundraiser to raise $ for the kids’ school so Madison and SSA at lunch out for the 2nd day in a row.

After lunch, they stopped by home depot to pick up some potting dirt for seeds that needed new pots.

Steven wasn’t thrilled about the Hi-Lo cart.

For the kids’ birthday, Grandma Sunshine got them an Amazon STEM kit subscription. This month’s gift came and it’s great math-based board game.

Thursday dance class! Madison texted me as class was starting to let me know that Sammy was very upset and crying. There was an incident where he was caught in a lie and Sammy really struggles when he’s called out for doing something “wrong”. He couldn’t get himself out of it so I jumped on the phone with him. I shared that, when I’m upset, tap class is a great place to go because it helps me forget what’s bothering me. (True.) He wanted to see me right away, which obviously wasn’t possible, so I also promised him that he could sit on my lap while he ate dinner – a rare treat. The pep talk did the trick and Bubba was back in action.

Steven, Sammy and Amaya saw their first real rainbow on the way home from dance class! They asked me to put the pictures in the blog so they can see them again. Here you go, kiddos!

Sammy love after work.

I couldn’t help but get Amaya a set of Captain Marvel pajamas. She looooooooves them. This girl is ready to save the world from danger. (And she loves to pose.)

A pooped Captain Marvel, with a bunny on her head. (Amaya sleeps sideways on her bed with her feet dangling off. I just thought to ask her why and she said it’s because she wants to keep it beautiful like how it looks after Claudia [our housekeeper] makes it when she cleans our house.)

We had some thunderstorms on Thursday night. At one point, Steven facetimed me to ask how to spell “there”. He called back later to ask how to spell “lightening storm.” Then he called back again to show me this sign.

At the time the lightening had paused so I said, “no” and, in return, ended up with a crossed off sign (above) and the one below.

Friday was Disney day at school so we had Captain America, Captain Marvel and Sammy in a superhero cape that wasn’t Marvel (or Disney) but continued the theme and made him very happy.

Madison was off on Friday but the school allowed us to pay a full day rate and keep the kids at school from 8:30am- 4:30pm. Jason dropped off and I picked up.

The night before Sammy asked me to keep reminding him about what would happen because he didn’t want to forget. When I got to school to pick up the kids, Steven ran over to me and said, “This was awesome!” He was particularly excited about getting to go into the Kindergarten room and play with a toy from that classroom. Sammy told me the day was overwhelming and Ms. Bri confirmed that he had a lot of questions throughout the day. “How will I watch my shows if I’m at school all day?”

When we left, Steven gave Ms. Shannon a piece of art he made for her and she showed the kids where she keeps all of the art that the kids make for her. She’s wonderful.

More art from Steven on Friday. He called to ask how to spell “from” and was very proud that he knew how to write “to”. That’s a picture of the two of us. I love it.

On Saturday, in preparation for school photos on Monday, I added a little pink to Amaya’s hair. It’s been a while!

Happy Samscicle. He was excited to do a pupped show.

The magnatile creations are getting more and more complex so we ordered some more pieces for the kids. Can’t wait to see what they can do!

On Saturday afternoon I drove to Columbus (Dublin, really) to meet my friends Heather, Karie and Dianna for a short girls’ weekend. It’s a 3 hour drive for me. Heather’s about 2 hrs away and Karie and Dianna are in the area. We’ve been trying to do this for a while and I’m so glad we made it work! 17 kids between us – incredible.

While I was off having fun, SSA played a game of Blokus together. I love how they’re evolving with game play together. It’s fun to play with them but it’s also a lot of fun to watch them play independently.

Free from Three in Columbus!

The kids had a nice morning with Jason and I was home by 2:30pm, in time for MSU to win the Big 10 tournament.

Sammy, specifically and in particular, likes independence in the kitchen. He was the first to want to pour his cereal milk on his own and the first to want to do his own dishes. He also likes to get things from the fridge and pantry independently and there are semi-frequent meltdowns if he someone does it for him or “helps” him in any way. I’m convinced that the extremes come when he’s hungry.

Here, you can see his instructions to me to “stay back and don’t look” while he was getting his sandwich out of the fridge.

Daddy Steven and Baby Amaya were on the walkies with Sammy who was taking care of things at Steven’s workplace. Leading up to this, Sammy and Steven were playing together – just the two of them – which I love to see. Sometimes I feel like Amaya is the glue in their friendship.