"Giant baby lands in Waconia"

Well, she has finally arrived! Sophia Joy Spaulding was born at 12:01pm on Dec. 8th to the tune of 10 pounds and 6 ounces.

Sophia will share her birthday with her oldest brother Max, who was also induced and born on Saturday, December 8th in a snow storm, only at 12:01AM instead of 12:01PM. Uncanny!

We are very thankful and feeling so blessed. The boys are enjoying their freedom from parents with Auntie Sue and Grand at home, and Kent, Sophia and I are enjoying our quiet time together, hunkered down at the hospital. 

Sincerely,

Kent and Naz

Photo of the Day

After being sad because Quinn couldn't go to the park with him, Max
decided he would "put his shoes right here by the door for when he
feels better and can come outside and play".
sent from my Project 365 app
http://bit.ly/5G0JwQ

School Time

this kid, max. has me at a loss. it's a given that i'm boring him to
death with this instruction. the only way i can keep him interested is
if we literally move through 4-5 handwriting lessons. i had emailed
this lady about a program called "all about reading", teaching
pre-readers to read. he wants to learn, i have no idea how to teach
that, so i wrote this lady who had reviewed the curriculum and she
gave me a list of things that he should know in order to start the
kindergarten program instead of the preschool program. anyway, one of
those was that he needs to recognize all the lowercase letters. hmmmm,
didn't think he knew because we've only been working uppercase. so
after we did 6 lessons of handwriting, i showed him the flashcards for
lowercase, and well he knows them all. and was playing with something
else, glanced over to humor me through the process. "h", "e", "y",
"f". . .okayyyyy.

as far as the five in a row part goes. he really enjoys the
activities, as long as he's interested in the topic. he would really
do much better if he could just pick a topic to investigate. he
naturally wants "depth" instead of "breadth". with the story of ping,
he just wanted to know everything about ducks he could possibly know.
kinda like dinosaurs now. more, more, more. i don't know what he's
retaining, but he really enjoys that. so i think i'm gonna tweak the
five in a row so that maybe we are picking a book that naturally
interests him, or maybe find something interesting within the book and
just dive full-on into that.

i think it is a given at this point that he will be writing before
next fall. if i knew how to teach how to read, he'd be doing that too.

we also did 5 addition problems. he adds in his head without counting
the blocks. whatever. 45 minutes today, and when he's done, he's done.

July, the Month of Questions

Well, July 4th, 2012 will go down in history, not for it's historical
significance or celebrations, but it is the day that you first asked
"what happens when you die". Are you kidding me? Your Dad and I
definitely did not come prepared for that one. Something like "people
believe different things", "we believe you go to heaven"(we do?), "you
won't have to worry about that for a long time". Yikes. Now on the
17th, on our way back from Target in Minnetonka you ask "how does the
Sun stay exploding". To which I answered "ugh" and "I honestly don't
know". I tried to recover by saying something about gases burning, the
sun being very hot which gives us our warm days, but I was bluffing. I
would say the highlight of today was before bed, you asked about the
Sun again, something about it burning up, and I remembered we had a
book on the solar system. So from 8:50pm to 9:15pm I used the balls in
your balls bin to try to illustrate our solar system and how we all
rotate around the sun. The book informed me on the gases the sun was
made of and provided some nice pics so you could see the fire. But,
hands down, the best part was, you totally got it. Then you explained
it to me. You put the planets down again, and told me how it worked.
So AWESOME!!

Love you,
Mama

Our first race discussion

You were being particularly talkative and insightful, so I thought I'd
ask if you ever wondered why I have a different color skin than you,
or why Grand is a different color than both of us. You said "No. Some
people just have different color skin, but we're all the same."

Okay, hopefully our birds and bees talk can be this simple!

Love,
Mamma

max's upstairs pee-pee

So I don't know if you heard this morning when Max came upstairs to pee. 6AM "Mama, I'm going pee."

I asked him later when he woke up. "Well, Quinn's door was open and that bathroom is so loud I thought I would go upstairs, because if I woke him up I would just get frustrated."

max on ethan, and more!

max: ethan isn't scared of star wars movies, he's braaave.

me: how do you know he's brave?

max: he told me. he tells me EVERYTHING. (hands hold head)

me: what do you mean?

max: i mean he talks about everything, he doesn't stop talking. i get tired of hearing. (hands hold head). ugh!

me: (laughing) what else does he talk about.

max: he just tells me everything. talks about how he doesn't have any games at his house. 

______________________________

max: mama i'd call 9-1-1 in an emergency.

me: that's right! very good! do you know your address?

max: no, i can't remember. but if i forget, i can go outside and look at the side of the house!

me: that's right! i forgot about that. did daddy teach you that? no, i just figured it out.

______________________________

a mama triumph!

max was screaming because quinn snatched something he was playing with and ran out of his room as i was walking in. max, still crying, turned to me and said "mama can you help me?". OMG i nearly fell over!! the first time he's turned to me instead of hitting/yelling/screaming/chasing quinn. maybe it was just my timing walking in the room, but i think it was because i've asked him to do this 35,000 times instead of trying to settle it himself. woohoooooo!! finally a success!!

follow-up

Patricia :-)

I've been meaning to write you since our last conversation on a couple items:

You were talking about your experience with gifted/talented and your expertise, and I realized the way I respond to your assessment of Max being talented would most likely be construed as blowing you off, or not believing you. I think I told you that I definitely respect your assessment, I'm just afraid to believe it. I find the idea exciting, and I'll get carried away with it, and if these talents fizzle out with him, I'm afraid of getting disappointed, or setting the bar too high, or 100 other things that I find exciting AND stressful about him possessing these talents. Anyway, when you said something about how I should believe you, I realized that I must sound like I don't. Am I making any sense? It's like a self-defense mechanism. I don't talk about Max like that with anyone else because I'm afraid anybody else will think I'm bragging or trying to be competitive (they call it "mompetition" by-the-way). I'm just kinda burying it deep until. . .until what? I have no idea what I'm waiting for. . .

I think the other (which is why I cc'd Papa since it's more of an update) item is that the Lego fixation has nearly completely replaced the cars fixation. Max has been playing with cars since he was 18 months, now, at 4 years, he has migrated to Legos. Seemingly overnight. He had been wanting Legos since last summer and so we asked Santa for this one particular set (power miners - still not sure how he found out about this specific Lego set). Since Christmas it has taken over. So it hasn't been a month and he has completely let the cars go. I'd say by 98%. The cars that he would eat/sleep/bathe and play with, left in the cold. . .well actually, left with Quinn :-) Who, by-the-way, shows absolutely no allegiance to any toy. And the only thing he speaks of regularly is "football? football guy? football! football!", so yeah. . .yikes. But back to Max. . .like I told Patricia, he wants the sets that are beyond him in years, usually the 7-14 age range. It's right on the front of the box (which he now understands how to interpret, i.e. which is the model number, which is the age range, how many pieces), but he overlooks that and wants it anyway. We thought the power miners would be a good test because it was for 7-14 and had like 400 pieces. Although he doesn't really care what happens to missing pieces (and mom does), and doesn't stick to the BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS (and mom WANTS too), he is absolutely in love with Legos. We actually had a discussion last night about the power miners, and how it was okay to take it apart and turn it into something else. It gave me an ulcer to discuss it, but you should have seen his face light up. He actually repeated it back to me "So, it's okay if I take off the cage and make a ship out of it? And I could take off the drill and make it into a car?", all happy. I realized then just how much MY need to keep the power miner looking like the one ON THE BOX was getting through to him, without me even saying it. Just a trip. Of course, this has just given me license to buy my OWN Lego sets so I can fulfill that need :-) The close second is his recent obsession with Star Wars, which came out of the Lego obsession because there are so many Star Wars Lego sets. He has had a lot of Star Wars exposure thanks to both Uncle Jerrod and I, but it has taken on a life of its own. He's also given his own names to many of the Star Wars characters which also is giving me an ulcer "No, his name is battle droid", "No Mama, his name is Mario droid, that's what I call him". Another ulcer. Anyway, so my big life lesson is that I'm a big ol' control freak, so that's fun.

Okay, that's all for now!

Love,

Naz