Raising the Raines Rascals: September 2011

On September 1st Josh & I went to parent-teacher conference at Ethan's school. His teacher says he is a "star student" and he's a little leader. She said he's always on his best behavior and he's always willing to help out any of his classmates. We could not be any prouder of him! The only things that he needed to work on were his accelerated reader quizzes (last year he was top in his class) but this year they have to take initiative to do it on their own without the teacher saying "Ethan, go take an A.R. test" and I don't think he was sure enough to do that just yet. However, we talked about it and he is now well on his way to being caught up with where he should be. The other area for improvement is that he writes several letters/numbers backwards. His teacher said some of them are common for first graders but we believe some of it could be coming from him being left-handed as well. Anyway, homework is beginning to go a little smoother now than it was the last time I blogged...thankfully.

Our Labor Day weekend at the lake didn't go so smoothly but we enjoyed it anyway. Our boat battery was messed up so we didn't get to ride the first two days and then it rained the last two days! My parents had a flat tire while coming over on their motorcycle, and Landen suffered from an ear ache while we were there. BUT, we did enjoy swimming, shopping, fishing, and just being with family!

Ethan has had four ballgames in the past eight days so we have been crazy busy running back and forth to the ball park! He's really enjoying it though and we're loving that it's keeping him active.

This past weekend we celebrated my mom's 45th birthday and my brother's engagement with parties. I enjoyed every minute of it but come Monday I was exhausted. Luckily, Josh had a dentist appointment before work that morning and was able to take Ethan to school for me. Landen & I took full advantage of our morning to sleep in ...he slept until 10am and I am ashamed to admit that I did too!!

Landen is learning new words every single day now!! There is no way that I can keep up with them all but a few that I know are new are deer ("deah"), balloon ("bwoon"), boat, there it is ("eah tis"), Derek (my brother "Dek"), and Amanda (my brother's fiance's name and also one of my best friend's "Amana" sometimes "Anana").

Yesterday, I visited Ethan at school and had lunch with a friend. This afternoon I am grocery shopping (and I'm pretty excited about it since I have my price matches and coupons already...I'm kind of a newby at that). Tomorrow I plan to yardsale with friends and take Ethan to his ball game. And this weekend we are going to enjoy a low key, stay at home kind of Saturday. The only productive thing I am going to do is pull out the boy's Fall clothes and reorganize the bottom of my pantry. Other than that we are going to play, watch movies, and enjoy having nothing important to do. We are all looking forward to the fun Fall events that October will bring....pumpkin carving, birthdays, costume hunting, deer hunting, our annual Fall camping trip, and Fall break from school!!!

As, I sat down to write this I heard a crash and then the sound of liquid dripping so I ran to the kitchen to find Landen's cereal bowl upside down on the hardwood floor and milk splattered for 4 feet in every direction. As, I am on my knees cleaning up the mess our crazy alarm clock that will not stop going off at random times is screeching and a commercial on Playhouse Disney says "What a great way to start the morning" in the most chipper voice ever.....I couldn't help but chuckle to myself and think "really??". But I think I'm going to run with that positive thinking....this is going to be a good day in spite of it's rocky beginning. We are, after all, heading to the lake this evening for four days full of boat riding (thanks to our wonderful friend and mechanic, Ben), swimming, playing cornhole and board games, and enjoying some down time with our family! Speaking of which, I really should be packing instead of blogging....procastination at it's finest :)

While I am avoiding the tasks of choosing, folding, stuffing, remembering, zipping, loading, and stuffing some more I think I will fill you guys in on what's new with the boys. Ethan is finally getting adjusted to first grade. He hops out of the truck every morning without any tears now. One morning this week he did tell me he would miss me but he didn't cry. I am so thankful for this and have prayed many prayers over the last few weeks that the Lord would help him to adjust and enjoy school again because it was very hard on both of us when he was crying every morning. Ethan loves his teacher and he was chosen to be "celebrity of the week" last week. I went to his class on Wednesday and he and I both read his two favorite books to the class. And then on Friday Landen and I went and had lunch with Ethan and stayed for his "walk of fame ceremony" where he put his handprint on a star, signed it an hung it up in his classroom. I think this really helped him feel more comfortable at school because throughout the week he was able to share his home life with his teacher and classmates by taking in pictures and some of his favorite things.

Even though he has adjusted to school, homework in the evenings is NO fun! I give him time after he gets home to play and have a snack before we do his homework but it is still like pulling teeth to get it done! Homework that should take 20 minutes takes the better part of an hour because he won't concentrate. Ethan has a reading log for school to track how much he reads and he LOVES to read so getting him to do that is easy. Most nights he reads triple what he's supposed to but math worksheets are where we battle. He can do the problems easily and once I get him rolling he does very well. But if anything else gets his attention, such as the dog walking across the room or his brother saying something, or even something as simple as a pencil rolling across the table then it takes me 5+ minutes to get him back on track. He is his momma's child though.....I love reading and English and can't stand Math! So, we are working on the homework issue and it's getting better slowly. But I took a picture of him during homework time yesterday and his enthusiasm is evident.....this isn't posed...he had no idea I was going to take the picture...

This is his silly face...looks more scary though, lol!

The Reds (Ethan's Fall baseball team) had their first game on Monday. The Pirates won but the Reds played a good game and Ethan got a base hit every time he batted. He also got the and threw it in twice. I was so proud of how well he played and he didn't seem to mind a bit that his team didn't win, he was too excited about how much fun he had. And that's exactly how it should be!!!

Ethan has become quite the performer lately...he loves to sing. Some of his favorites to sing are "This Little Light of Mine", "The B-I-B-L-E", and whatever that Justin Beiber song is that says "Baby, Baby, Oh". But the other night he caught me a little off guard. I keep the radio in the truck on 96.7 The Beaver (that is, when he boys aren't watching a movie, which is rarely) and half the time I don't even pay attention to what's actually on, you know how it is, it's more background noise to my thoughts than anything else. Well, Ethan was taking a bath the other night and he said "Hey Mom, listen to this new song....."Does anybody out there wanna' have a cold beer, kick it 'till the morning light, if I have to re-sell (raise hell) all byself I will but ya'll that ain't right". Yeah, that got my attention! Guess I'll be monitoring the songs that are on more closely since my son can pick up every single word from hearing a song one time!!! Thankfully, he really does think it says "re-sell", ha!

Now, that I 've rattled on forever (hey, I did go start a load of laundry in the meantime), we'll move on to Landen. My sweet, chubby boy turned 20 months old on August 28th. He is now picking up words left and right. His new words are "bow" for bowl, "Nana", "hi" and uses it appropriatley, he has picked up "baby...baby" from Ethan singing Justin Beiber, and just yesterday he mocked me and said "pack-pack" for backpack. He went around all day saying "pack-pack"...."pack-pack"....it's adorable! Landen has been giving wide-open mouth kisses for a while now but in the last few weeks he has started actually kissing. He goes around the house now carrying his toys and smacking away (giving them kisses). He has sat on the pottty once but doesn't have much interest...we are just taking our time introducing it but plan to try again soon. He is wearing all 3T's now 2T's/24 months are a thing of the past. We tried his tennis shoes on him this week (he hadn't had them on since last Winter) and neither pair fit him so we have been browsing the Stride-Rite website for new Fall-Winter shoes. His foot is so wide that we pretty much have to shop only at Stride Rite because you can get an x-wide there. Landen is a character and never fails to keep us laughing...