Virtute.org

I feel like I never update my blog these days.  At the end of the day I just want to go to bed and pre-bedtime blogging seems impossible right now.  The last several nights I’ve told myself that I’d sit down and write something–obviously that hasn’t been happening.  So for the next several months, I suppose my blog will be much more intermittent than regular and I should just be happy that I haven’t ignored it completely.  I want to write about Ila and how much she’s been growing and changing the last several months, but instead I think I’ll just free-write some random life updates and work on a more complete Ila update later.  Hopefully this isn’t too dull to read, but it might be.Isaac has jumped into chapter books.  He’s reading two series right now.  “The Magic Treehouse” and “A-Z Mysteries.”  He reads for about an hour a night and typically finishes a book in two nights.

Charlotte loves kindergarten and has gained confidence in her reading ability.  Since starting kindergarten, she has been attempting to read more books (even though I don’t think they’ve worked on any reading skills she doesn’t already have).  I think she’d already be reading more books on her own if I had kept up with her reading lessons, but I had a hard time finding the time between taking care of all her siblings and cleaning.  I’m not overly concerned about not keeping up with her lessons though, I think she has all the building blocks to do great in school and be a fantastic reader.

Nicole doesn’t seem to have made any progress in potty training even though I’ve been putting her in underwear since about the middle of August.  Also, she still changes her clothes often and her favorite thing to wear is Charlotte’s pajamas.

We’ve had some concerns about Nicole for a little while.  I took her in for testing through the school district last week and she has been referred to a child psychologist for more testing. Ila has started adding the word “anymore” to her sentences. This word is very popular in Nicole’s vocabulary, so I’m sure that’s where it comes from.  Here are some examples of how Ila uses it “yeah, toast anymore” = I want toast.  “Yeah, mom anymore.” = I want mom to hold me/play with me.  Nicole says things like “I don’t wear pants anymore!”  or “I don’t hug anymore!”

Zach seems to be doing well at work.  He presented a stellar web strategy for a big name potential client this week, but I don’t think I’m allowed to name drop here right now.  Let’s just say if I did name the company, you’d all be impressed.

Lately I feel like I’m not keeping up with my cleaning goals and I’m struggling to find the motivation to go those extra steps that take me from maintaining a fairly orderly house to making my house impressively clean.  I’d much rather cuddle and play with my adorable girls all day while the older kids are at school.

It has started to rain a lot more here lately.  I think we’re entering the rainy season.