A blatant, shameless brag on my two brilliant boys!!!

Dang I have smart kids! Okay, I've said it--and I'm not ashamed to admit I'm hopelessly bragging here! I mean heck, they deserve it--they're smart cookies!

So here's the scoop:

My oldest, Devin, he's been reading for quite a while now and his kinder teacher got him set up with the 'excellerated reading' right away. There are 71 books in the group and he's blown through all of them already. So, she moved on to 'upper level' reading pages--basically comprehension pages where he reads a couple of paragraphs and does a few fill in the blank questions--blew through 6 of them in about 10 mins. So, now he's onto some harder ones--I'm not sure of what grade level they are, but he's enjoying these as well!! Ahhh ain't it grand? I am so proud of him!! I can only hope that he continues to enjoy reading and going to school! He's also whipping through his homework packets (usually 6 or 7 pages) at light speed--please oh please oh please let this love of school last!! lol

Now, onto my second little genius! Ryan, my 3 1/2 yr old, the boy who's never really been interested in sitting still long enough to let me teach him letters and how to write his name, this boy who can barely sit still during a story--this boy...this boy can read!!!! Now, before I continue, I must admit that he and Devin are completely responsible for this! I've had almost no time at all to devote to teaching my little guy the sounds the letters make, let alone how to put them together to form words, but somehow...he got it.

About 2 weeks ago, I had a rare day where both the girls were sleeping and it was just the boys and I. Devin was busy doing his homework and Ryan decided he wanted to do some too. So I said, 'okay, let's do some letters!'. I knew he knew his letters and some of the sounds (Devin likes to read to him a lot and sounds things out for him), but I was truly surprised to find that he knew them all! His only hang up was on the letters that had multiple sounds. Anyway, once I discovered that, I put 'at' on a piece of paper and asked him what it said. He looked at me like a I had a monkey on my head and said, 'I dunno'. I told him to sound it out and did the exaggerated 'aaaa-t, aaa-t, aa-t, a-t, a-t, at, at!' and went from there. Within about 10 minutes he was reading little words like bat, cat, fat, hat, etc. So, we've been working on different words, mostly phonics, but practicing sounding things out. Also the beginning sight words as well.

But here's another amazing fact: he's writing!!!! Now, I have been trying to get him to learn this for a while now, but he's usually only interested in writing a few letters--but since he's started reading he's been writing words all on his own! He uses his maganadoodle mostly (oh how I love that thing!) and he'll write words like cat, bat, etc. Today he even wrote his name (I helped with the spelling) and his penmanship is pretty good--especially considering he holds his crayon really strange. ;)

Ahhh, I am so, so proud of him!!!

So, there you have it--I just had to shout it from the roof tops so to speak. My boys make me so proud!!! :)

Looking for extra hours...

Yeah, that's about it--the total sum of my quest. I need more time. More time to sleep, more time to relax, more time to play with my kids, more time to teach my kids, more time to clean...

Okay, so that's really what I need--cleaning time. It seems when I finally get the motivation I lack the time. It's never easy to clean in my house it seems, if my 2 older kiddos aren't messing up the joint, my hubby is--although not nearly as much as he used to, I must give him a little credit--and if they aren't--I am! I am finding myself leaving stuff in the weirdest places these days--mainly cloth diapers that end up all over the house. I carry them with me as a sort of clothing accessory it seems, yeah, that's it--spit up covered scarves and sashes...

But I digress--I need time folks and plenty of it! There are simply not enough hours in the day. I need ample time to do the things that desperately need to be done or else I'm going to lose it! My house is so bad these days that I'm truly embarrassed when someone knocks on the door--heaven forbid they see the crap everywhere! It doesn't help that the 'playroom' is the first thing you see--oooh it's bad!

And thanks to our generous friends and family we've got baby clothes everywhere! I'm not kidding! In the living room there are 2 separate piles, in the hallway there's a laundry basket filled with clothes that need to be washed, and their room--egads, what a disaster! Let me tell you, I've been through a tornado and had less clean up to deal with!

I attempted to clean that room today, even managed to multi task and squeeze in a phone conversation with a certain Dawg while I cleaned. However, (there's always a 'however' isn't there?) one of my sweet little cherubs woke up earlier than I had expected and cut the cleaning short. Sigh...and I was making good progress too!! I mean, I could actually SEE the floor people!!!

Ah well...there's always tomorrow right?

But here's a question for ya, will I have the motivation? Heh, heh.

Ever wonder what life would be like without modern inventions like the cell phone, in car navagation systems, remote control everything...the vacuum.
Yeah, okay, so vacuums might not seem so fantastic to you--but to me, they're a Godsend! You see, I have 3 mo old twins and as you can imagine it can be quite a feat to get them to sleep...enter the vacuum! They LOVE it and it knocks them out almost instantly! To be honest, I sort of laughed when my brother told us that his daughter slept with a vacuum going all night and it never entered my mind to try this with my other kids, but when you have 2...well, all bets are off!
So, when you think of all the things you can't do without, don't forget the vacuum!!! It turns out they're not just for cleaning floors anymore!