1st Day of Preschool!

Liam's 1st day of preschool was on Tuesday September 4, 2012. He is attending the same  preschool he attended last year at our church we go to.  He goes Tuesday & Thursday from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m.  His teachers this year are Ms. Jamie & Ms. Candy. He had a great first day and was so excited!

Happy 4th Birthday Liam!

It's so hard to believe I have a big 4 year old boy now!  Liam has grown so much and is such a smart, sweet, fun guy to be around. I'm amazed how much he talks now and asks questions. He loves to play on the learning website starfall.com, his match box cars, Disney Cars movie, Math, numbers and counting and using his calculator. He just started to show some interest in playing sports with Daddy like  T-ball, basketball  & tennis. He loves to swim and play outside.  Enjoys going to Sunday School each Sunday and singing in the children's choir. Loves to watch Woody Woodpecker, Mickey Mouse Club, and Charlie Brown of coarse. We are so blessed to have you in our life Liam. Mommy Daddy and your little bro love you so much and we are so proud of you. We can't wait to celebrate more wonderful birthdays with you celebrating the miracle that you are! Love you!

Some of Liam's favorite phrases:
 "Stop that brother, stop that brother!"

    "143 Mommy I love you."

    "Go to the car store please?"

       "No, no thank you."

        "Where's Daddy?"

Liam's favorite bible verse to recite is 

John 52:16    "Lord you will keep us safe and protect us"

                                                  

This year we did things a bit different. Since Liam's birthday is on August 29th the week school starts and the week before Labor Day weekend, we decided to have two parties. One with family on the 29th and his big party with friends on Sept. 16th. a few weeks after school. This way we would not have to compete with the craziness. I think it worked out much better. We have friends who have their birthdays around the same time also so this let us have more time planning. I think we may keep this tradition.

BIRTHDAY PARTY #1 

Birthday cake #1 at his family party on his actual birthday Wednesday August 29th

Yummy cake from HEB

So sweet Liam blowing out this birthday candle on his cake! So sorry for the sun I should have closed the blinds but I thought his party decorations would fall down oh well still cute! Mommy, Daddy, & baby Blake, & Scamper helped celebrate Liam's special day. We missed Grammy. She was not able to come this year but she will here for Blake's birthday.

BIRTHDAY PARTY #2

Party #2 was held at Spring Loaded Trampoline Park. The kids and parents had so much fun jumping and playing at the trampoline park. We had the party after hours and had the park to ourselves! Perfect place for Liam's party! Especially since it was pouring rain outside we picked the perfect venue. 
Chris is friends with the owners and they went over and beyond 
to be sure Liam had a great party!

Spring Loaded Trampoline Park  
www.springloadedtsr.com

Liam's Peanuts Gang theme birthday party invitation! SO CUTE!!!

The inspiration for Liam's birthday cake!

The ADORABLE Charlie Brown birthday cake we had for Liam was a BIG hit! I was so pleased and absolutely loved the outcome. It was a 10 inch round german chocolate cake with 24 vanilla cupcakes decorated in the yellow & black chevron design of Charlie Brown's shirt he wears in the cartoon. I can't believe it only costs us $36 for this cake! Unbelievable!

Liam LOVED his birthday cake!

Yummy Cupcakes!

We served pizza, juice & water, cake & cupcakes  YUMMY!

The party table I did not have much time to set up so I had to rush but still cute. We had peanuts balloons, snoopy cups & plates, snoopy stuffed animals around, Peanuts Theme music playing and other birthday music including a special birthday song just for Liam. 

Birthday Boy Jumping!

I made him pose with his Charlie Brown birthday t-shirt on Too Cute!

Blake even had fun jumping!  
He was so well behaved at his big brother's party.

I wish I took better pictures. I didn't realize how difficult it would be trying to take pictures of our guest jumping but oh well. We got what we could.
I also was so busy as a host making sure everyone was eating
and drinking and having fun!

Liam unfortunately was not able to blow out his birthday candle thanks to the cool fans blowing overhead they blew it out for him LOL! 

All well he still loved being sung to.

Blake is 6 months old today!

I can't begin to explain how much these past 6 months have really flown by. Hard to believe our little guy Blake Conley is 6 months old today! He completes our family and we are so blessed he has touched our hearts. He lights up the room with his glowing smile and his two adorable dimples. He has a contagious laugh that starts out like a whisper then turns into a full on belly laugh. He loves his Mommy and always looks for her whenever he's not with her. He loves to sit with Daddy and watch football and basketball. Big brother Liam is his hero. I never thought it would start this early but Blake idolizes Liam.  He always looks for his big brother and laughs at everything he does. Blake will even cry if Liam leaves the room. Liam taught Blake how to blow raspberries and this makes dinner time lots of fun for Blake and messy too. The two have bonded in ways I know only they will understand.

Blake weighs over 13 lbs now. He might be a little guy but he LOVES to eat. His favorite foods are Mommy's milk :), sweet potatoes, pears, carrots, avocados, bananas, apples, and oatmeal cereal. His not so favorites are Zucchini and peas. He eats three times a day now at least 8 oz a feeding WOW! Thanks to the Baby Bullet he's enjoying nutritious, organic, homemade baby food made by Mommy.

Blake can sit up now with very little assistance, roll over on his tummy and back.
His favorite toys are teething toys, little piano, little basketball hoop, Baby Einstein play gym, an exersaucer,  and the jumperoo.

He's not too fond of tummy time he usually will cry  after a few minutes. But Liam likes to entertain Blake while he's on his tummy by letting him watch his Geo Track trains. So Cute! :)

Blake has two bottom teeth! He started teething when he was 4 months old and they both came in at once. OUCH! He was not a happy teether. He would cry a lot and had a hard time sleeping at night.

Blake is doing so much better since he outgrew the colic after 4 months old. He's such a happier baby now. Laughs and coos and always loves to grab grab grab anything and everything.  Since he had colic it was hard to get him on a regular schedule but now since he's turned 6 months old he is on a schedule that he likes and it works well for us.

Blake's Schedule  

7: 30 a.m. - Wake up

8 a.m. - Nurse

9 a.m. breakfast  usually oatmeal w/fruit

9:30 a.m. - Playtime

10:30 a.m. - Nurse/Nap time

12 noon - Lunch usually veggie

12:30 p.m. - playtime

2 p.m. - Nurse/Nap time

4:30 p.m. - Awake/ Nurse/ Playtime

5 p.m. - Dinner veggie w/ rice

6 p.m. - Nurse/playtime

7 p.m. bath/story time w/ Liam

7:30 p.m. nurse/bedtime

Blake loves to go outside for strolls in the stroller. He's already been swimming and loves the water :) His all time favorite water activity is taking a bath with Liam.  I find it so funny that Blake loves to get splashed. Sometimes Blake will come and sit in his bouncer seat in the bathroom while I give Liam his bath. Blake gets a little fussy and then Liam will splash him with the water and Blake will just make the silliest belly laugh so precious!

So much has happened in such a short period of time. Blake is definitely growing up so  fast. It is true that the time goes by so much faster with the second baby. Blake is such a strong boy. He's been through some tough times, colic, jaundice, bronchitis, weight gain etc. He's a healthy  lovable little guy. He's definitely a mover and shaker It will be exciting to see all that he accomplishes in the next few months. We are so blessed to have him he has changed our life for sure. I can't image our family without him. Love you sweet Blake. Mommy & Daddy are so proud of you.

Fun with EGGS!

So Chris & I are seriously thinking about  home schooling Liam. Chris has always been an advocate for home schooling and I was not sure but now I'm leaning towards going the home schooling route. There are a lot of reasons. Although Chris & I both were not home schooled we like the freedom it will give Liam. We've really noticed how smart Liam is. We're both shocked that at the age of 3 1/2 he can count to 250, add, subtract, count by 5s & 2s. can say the alphabet & knows all his letter sounds, and can even read. He is already advanced in math doing grade school level math. I really think he would be bored in kindergarden. Also with Chris' work schedule he would never see Liam or Blake. He works evenings and when the boys would be getting home from school Chris would be leaving for work. His day off is Monday and the boys would be in school all day. So there is still a lot to think about and I hope we make the right decision for both the boys. There are so many resources and tools now for home schooling and Texas is a state that really supports home schooling and makes it easy to do. I guess my only concern is that Liam gets to socialize with other kids, and even though Chris will be teaching too, I just hope  I will be confident enough to teach him. 

I decided to do a trial run of home schooling to just see what it would be like for both of us. So  I decided to start the first week in April for 5 days. With Easter coming I thought it would be an easy time to come up with ideas for themed lessons etc. I decided to do a Spring/Easter theme.  It was lots of fun. I found Liam really enjoyed learning and all the activities we did. Down side is that it does take a lot of preparation to plan each day's lesson but it was worth it. It gave me the confidence now that yes I can do this.

Here are some pictures of what Liam learned during his home school trial run week. Please note that a lot of these ideas are my own mixed in with ideas I got from others from Pinterest. I'm still learning how to post links up on my blog. So please check out my Pinterest page to see where I got my ideas from. I want to give credit to those wonderful teachers who are so generous to shares their ideas. I don't know how I would have been able to do this without looking to others for inspiration so a BIG THANK YOU :)

First we learned about Eggs. I had  Liam cut out an egg shape with blue construction paper. Then I cut out different animals that lay eggs and let him glue them on his big egg. I had this cute poem I found on pinterest about animals who lay eggs and he also glued it on his  egg.

We also sang a cute song about different animals who lay eggs. Liam really loves to sing so he enjoyed this one. It was to the tune of farmer in the dell. We just filled in the names of different animals who lay eggs and sang.


                                               EGG SONG  (Tune of Farmer in the Dell)

The Chickens give us eggs 
The Chickens give us eggs
Hi Ho The Derry O
The Chicken gives us Eggs

Add different animals such as penguin, spider, duck,  turtle etc.

I threw this together quickly with things I had on hand. I made it an easter/spring sensory tub. I added  rice, beans, plastic eggs, tongs, measuring cups, bunnies, sheep,  & stickers, Liam loved it!

Next up was color recognition. I knew Liam knew all his colors but I wanted to see him practice reading the color names on his own.  He had a worksheet with different easter eggs on it.  Under each egg had the name of a color. He had to read what the color was and color the egg that specific color. He did an awesome job.  He got 100%

Next was a fun game using sounds, and listening skills.

I grabbed some plastic easter eggs and filled them with different objects that made noise like rice, paper clips, coins etc. The trick was that two eggs had the same objects inside.

So Liam had to shake the eggs and see which two eggs made the same sound. For example the eggs that were filled with rice sounded different than the eggs filled with coins etc.

This was lots of fun for Liam. But I wish I taped the eggs shut because he did open some of the eggs up to see what was inside. But I made him start over. Ha Ha!

Next we did  a little science experiment called Sink or Float

I filled plastic easter eggs with different object and had Liam see if they would sink or float

Liam then checked off which colored plastic eggs would float or sink

Here's another song we sang too about Easter Eggs.

Easter Eggs

tune: Jingle Bells

Easter eggs, Easter eggs,

Eggs of orange and blue.

Here are lots of colored eggs

All for me and you.

Chocolate eggs, colored eggs,

Jelly beans bright green

Aren't these the most

beautiful eggs

That you have ever seen?

Next was learning patterns with colored eggs.  I knew this was a skill I had not worked with Liam too much on so I thought this would be an fun way to teach him about patterns & sequence with color.

I would start a color pattern or he would and then he would finish the pattern.  It took  him a few tries in the beginnin but once he got it he was off flying with it. So easy to practice with these eggs.

Then we finished the Egg theme with decorating real easter eggs for Easter.


Some other activities we did that I didn't get a chance to take pictures of were:
Alphabet Scavenger Hunt - It was like playing Bingo. I had a chart with all the letters of the alphabet in lower case. I then hid eggs that were filled with one of each letter in the alphabet in upper case. Liam had to find the eggs and match the upper case letter with the lower case letter on the bingo chart.
We also played Animal Charades using the pictures we had of animals who laid eggs.
We had fun playing with eggs during a Egg Relay Race. We used  plastic easter eggs & a spoon and went outside with Daddy and tried to balance our eggs on our spoons. Fun Fun!

Who thought you could have so much fun with eggs but we sure did!