Tommy's 6th Birthday

I wish I was a kid in my family when I was a kid. 

Wait. That doesn't quite make sense. But you know what I mean.

I don't remember having any birthday traditions growing up. So when we started to have children and celebrate birthdays, I really wanted to establish traditions that our kids could look forward to and find comfort in year after year.

I think it's safe to say that we've made up some pretty fun traditions. 

Tommy had a great birthday. 

His birthday fell on a Tuesday this year. On the Sunday evening before his birthday, he had a family dinner with the menu of his choice: pizza, greek salad, and apples. In lieu of cake, he requested strawberry ice cream. He was very clear on the fact that he wanted ice cream for his party, but cake on his actual birthday. Okay buddy. You got it. 

So he got to celebrate his birthday a few days early surrounded by some of his favorite people: his cousins. 

One tradition for the last four years has been for us to make his birthday cake together. I have pictures of almost-2 year old Tommy licking frosting and helping me to mix the batter. By next year he could probably make the whole thing himself.

This year he wrote out the exact specifications of what he wanted in a cake: Lemon cake with vanilla frosting. Strawberries on top. Sprinkles. Round. Two layers. Big.

I tweaked his specs a bit to fit my idea of what our family would need in a birthday cake. (ie: not too big). Since the cake was eaten on his actual birthday, and it was just the four of us, I just made a half cake. And if you only have half a cake, how else would you decorate it but as a lemon slice?

Another tradition: Birthday cereal! Our family doesn't normally eat cereal: not out of any strict code of good nutrition, but because it's messy and it doesn't fill the kids up for more than one hour. So it's a very special event to get to pick out birthday cereal. Tommy strayed from his usual choice of Lucky Charms and chose Trix. I have to admit that I've never actually had Trix before. They tasted like a cross between Kix and Jolly Ranchers.

He also got a lot of thoughtful birthday presents: 

The Iron Giant because it's a tradition to get the boys a classic hardcover book for birthdays and Christmas; and because we read an excerpt of the story once and he loved it so much we had to keep reading the same excerpt every night for a week.

A book about origami, because he loves paper crafting so much. It's the perfect level for a kid to follow the directions by themselves.

The movie Aristocats because it's his favorite. I think he likes it for its swingin' music. We rented it from the library a while ago and kept it for a long time because he liked it so much. Ever since then he's been asking to get it from the library again and again. Since I knew we were getting it for his birthday, I kept making excuses like, "Oops, it looks someone already checked it out! Oh well." Hee hee. 

A microscope, because he's one science-lovin' kid. He's always talking about germs and wanting to know what things look like "teeny-tiny". It's by far his favorite birthday gift. He learned how to use it himself and for the past two days has been sticking everything he can find under the lens. 

In the evening we had a family dinner of Tommy's choice (cheese pinwheels) followed by birthday cake. Then we tucked one seriously tired and happy six year old into bed. 

Tommy's Birthday Interview, Age 6

I originally conducted this interview with Tommy on video. Then my ornery computer lost it, so I had to do it again and write down the answers. The answers were a lot more interesting the first time around, but this will have to do for now until Mark can figure out where my video went! You can read earlier interviews from Tommy here: Age 5, age 4, and age 3. It's so much fun comparing his answers from previous years!

So how do you think it'll feel to be six?

I’ll still feel five, but later on I’ll get used to being six.

What kinds of things can you do now that you’re almost six that you couldn’t do when you were littler?

Lift a gallon of milk.

What is your favorite color?

Red

What is your favorite food?  

Ice cream.

What is your least favorite food?  

Cooked spinach.

What is your favorite book?

How Things are Made

What is your favorite toy?

That star thingie (He meant a star chart that shows constellations)

Do you have any friends? Who are they?

All the kids at community group. And my cousins.

What is your favorite thing to do?

Going on a date with Dad.

What is your favorite thing about yourself?

That I can ride my bike really well.

What is your favorite thing to do outside?

Play with my cousins.

Where is your favorite place to go?

Legoland. And Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

What do you want to do for a job when you grow up?  

That’s easy. Firefighter.

Where do you want to live when you grow up?  

San Jose maybe. (Why?) Because there’s a lot of cool places to go there.

Do you think you’ll get married when you grow up? Who do you think you’ll marry?

Yes. I’ll try to marry Hannah. But if not, [whispers] maybe Meghan.

How old will you be when you get married?

Twenty.

Where do babies come from?

Tummies.

Is there anything you’re afraid of?

Nothing much.

If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why? 

Giraffe, because then I could reach leaves on tall trees.

What do you love most about your brother? 

When I ask him to help me, he helps me. Like when we’re making fun things together. 

What do you like learning about?

Snakes. And how snails fit into their shells and how they move.

First Rainy Day

This week we celebrated the first rainy day of the season. 

I had been looking forward to this day for a long time.

We stayed in our PJs all morning. 

We spread a big fuzzy blanket out in the living room and built our first fire of the season. 

We had our school time on the fuzzy blanket in front of the fire. 

We made popcorn and hot chocolate and watched The Iron Giant on our fuzzy blanket.

We rang in the rainy season in style.

Why Ben Needs a Wife

Today I took my second born on a date to the coffee shop. We were overdue for some one-on-one time and coffee is something we both enjoy together. Well, I enjoy coffee and he enjoys pretending to drink coffee while really drinking a kids' cocoa. And he enjoys sips of my mocha.

We had some good conversations. One conversation was so priceless I had to scramble for a pen and write it on the back of the tiny brown bag that our cookie came in. I didn't want to forget it. And, I have a feeling it will be incredibly funny to share with his future wife someday. 

Mom: So, Ben, what do you want to be when you grow up?
Ben: I just want to be a dad.
M: That's a great thing to be! So, who will you marry?
B: I'm not going to be married. I'm just going to be a widow.
M: Well, a widower is someone who had a wife, but she died. Is that what you mean?
B: Oh. No, I mean I'm just not going to be married.
M: Then how will you get children, to be a dad?
B: I'll just go to San Jose! [choking on my coffee]
M: You mean, like how Dad and I go to San Jose to pick up our foster children?
B: Yep. But just the babies...[thinking]...But then I'll need a wife to change the babies' diapers.
M: Why can't you change them?
B: Because I'm afraid poo will get on my hands!
M: .....

And there you have it, folks. Even as wee children, men are afraid of changing diapers.

Baby Four

On the day before Kid C went back to be with her family, we got a call for Baby C. It was a sad story that we simply couldn't say 'no' to. So despite already having a foster child, we said 'yes!" and just like that became parents to four. Truth be told, we only had four children for less than 24 hours. It actually wasn't as crazy as I'd expected, at least the hands-on task of caring for four kids. It was a crazy time, but the craziness came from having to communicate with two different social workers at the same time, about events occurring on the same day, returning Kid C to her dad, and then turning a two year old girl room into a three week old boy room, which involved playing musical furniture and lots of laundry.

So now we are back to two big kids and a newborn, which seems to be the usual pattern for us. I love newborns because they are portable and they can sleep through anything. Our new little guy is "Baby C". He's a skinny little thing, and despite being almost a month old, is still swimming in his newborn-size clothes. He is such a cute little guy. He will be leaving us within the next day or two to go live with his grandma, so we're soaking up all the newborn cuteness we can until then.

Five Days with Kid C

We got " Kid C" late on a Wednesday evening, just over a week after Baby B left us. She was just shy of three years old. This was our first placement of an older child (well, older than an infant). It was quite a learning experience. We learned that there is a life cycle of a new placement of an older child: 

Day 1: Easy, with few problems. C probably figured she was just visiting us and was on her best behavior. She mostly played with the boys and didn't make much of a fuss about anything. Two exceptions were sleeping and eating issues. I knew enough to expect eating issues, so I stocked up on foods I thought any kid would like, things like apple juice, cheese sticks, crackers, grapes, and cereal bars. Despite all my preparations, she still refused to eat anything except a few bites of banana now and then.

The other exception was naptime and bedtime: getting her to sleep was quite a battle. Thinking I would have her for at least a few weeks, I immediately went into "training mode" and was strict about enforcing sleep times and our 'no getting out of bed' rule. In retrospect, I should have focused on comforting her, instead of the goal of getting her to sleep. 

Day 2-3: She seemed to realize she wasn't just visiting. She let her guard down and started to assert her will. Lots of tantrums ensued. One epic tantrum lasted for forty-five minutes, over a request of ice cream for breakfast which I (kindly) denied. These two days were probably the hardest we've ever had in foster care.

Once I found out that she was only going to be with us for a few days, I loosened up on my sleep rules and rocked her to sleep for bed and naps. It didn't take much effort; she was exhausted and dropped to sleep without much effort once she felt nice and snuggly.

Day 4-5: We finally started to figure each other out. I learned what foods she liked and incorporated those with our own meals, so she started eating better. She learned that tantrums don't work so well, so those started lessening. And she didn't need to be rocked to sleep anymore. She still protested naptimes with "No! I not going to sleep now!" but she crawled into bed anyway, listened to a story, and fell asleep right away. So much for that. 

On day 5 she was returned to her family. It was bittersweet: sweet, because it was clear that she was loved and wanted by her family, but bitter because it seems like she has many challenges facing her. We have one more little person to hold in our prayers.

The night C came home with us. Ben quickly attached to her. He talked her ear off about everything from how traffic lights work to how chickens eat, and showed her the ropes of living the Knapp home. It made us realize that while Tommy prefers the cute cuddliness of babies, Ben prefers the fun interaction that comes with bigger kids. 

One of our sweeter moments together: C helped me make beef stew while Mark and the boys went to church. She is wearing what I am told is a Cinderalla dress, given to us by a friend who knows a thing or two about girls. She wore that dress for three of the five days she was with us; she refused to take it off and I decided it wasn't a battle worth fighting.

On To New Adventures

This precious little one left our home mid-day Tuesday. Of course we knew she was going to be leaving sometime soon, but we thought we'd have at least a few days' notice to physically and emotionally prepare. Through a series of miscommunication and missed messages, we ended up having a half days' notice. 

We met Baby B's new parents Tuesday morning and had a good three hour visit with each other, and then they all left together. They were truly very good people and it is easy to imagine Baby B having a long and well-loved life. 

It was a rare human experience. One day you have a child whom you love and have raised since birth. Twenty four hours later, she is gone, never to return. Normally when this happens to your child, it is a tragedy, usually due to death or kidnapping. But this is foster care, so it is a good thing. So we find ourselves very emotionally confused and drained. We are in the difficult position of both mourning and celebrating her departure. After she left, Mark took the rest of the day off and we spent time together as a family.

We've put ourselves back on the list to get more children and we are looking forward to having another little one. But we want to squeeze in some fun with our family of four before we get The Call. So today we had 'crazy school day'. I took the boys out for bagels for breakfast and they did their school work at the street cafe. Then we went on a field trip at a local fire station. They saw how the fire truck works and how the fire fighters live while they're on duty. They got to climb all over the fire truck and inside the cab, and were able to play with the fire hose (which, if you asked them, was probably the coolest part of the whole trip). 

After the fire station, we hit Target and the library. It's amazing how much you can get done in a day with only two school-aged kids!

Baby B at 7 Months

Happy seven months, Baby B!

You started solids on your sixth month birthday. You had pureed avocado. You seemed to like it because you ate the whole avocado! You have solids three times a day, at each of our meals. After avocado you had pureed banana, and then peach. You made really funny faces when you ate peach and didn’t seem to like it. I think the taste was a bit too tart for your tastebuds.

Foods you’ve tried in your seventh month: avocado, banana, peach, broccoli (your favorite so far), cauliflower, mango, carrots, peas, corn, zucchini, butternut squash, pumpkin, strawberries, pears, prunes, apples, egg yolk, tomatoes, cantaloupe, potato, leeks, apricot, yogurt, and rice cereal. Many of these foods were blended together, for example leeks blended with potato or corn blended with butternut squash. You've been quite le gourmand this month.

Now that you are eating solid foods, your schedule has changed a lot. You dropped two of your naps and extended your awake time to two to two-and-a-half hours instead of just one hour. You have just two long naps a day, two hours in the morning from 9:00-11:00 and then three hours in the afternoon, from 1:30-4:00. You go to bed at 6:30pm and sleep until 7:30am. This schedule is so much nicer for us: your long awake time allow us to get out of the house for a few hours during the middle of the day and your long naptimes line up perfectly both with morning homeschooling and afternoon quiet time. 

For the past few weeks your babbling has gotten a lot more sophisticated. Instead of your normal cooing sounds, you're trying out different ranges of sounds, from super high pitched to deep sounds.

This month you started physical therapy for a slight developmental delay. You have something called "truncal hypotonia", which means that your trunk muscles have low tone. At this point, you should be able to sit up tripod style, but you're not able to just yet. You usually just bend right forward when we try to sit you up. So your physical therapist showed me different activities I can do with you to try to promote stronger muscles. We've been doing the exercises for just a few days and you're already showing a big improvement. I think you'll be sitting up independently in no time.

Foster Update:
This will be our last update on Baby B. She is going to live with her new parents 'as soon as possible', in the words of the court. We are still waiting to hear exactly when that will be. We will miss our little Baby B so much, but we know she will be in good hands.

Thomas Matisse

This month we are studying a few paintings by Henri Matisse. I keep four prints displayed on our bulletin board so the boys can see them throughout the day. When it's time to do our picture study, I ask the boys to choose their favorite painting, and then I ask them to describe it to me. Tommy's description of this painting, The Green Stripe, went something like this: "This man has yellow skin. It's all splotchy and rough. He has a green stripe down his face. I'm not sure why. He has blue hair and red lips. He looks sad."  

After he described it, he drew it himself:

Baby B at 6 Months

You are half a year old! This month was uneventful as far as physical milestones go. You're still rolling around, still babbling happily, and still sleeping well. You had a cold this month, probably given to you by your foster brothers. The only new thing is that you spent most of the month drooling and chewing on everything in sight in efforts to get your two bottom teeth out. And you are starting to bear weight on your legs, something you never wanted to do before.

You are so happy and mellow. You smile at anyone who talks to you. Your favorite 'big brother' is Tommy - you watch him closely whenever he's around and you always have a big drooly grin for him. 

We just went on a five day long family trip to the San Diego area and you did amazingly well. During the long car rides, you played with your toys in your carseat until you dozed off, then took nice long naps. In the park you rode in the sling with me when you were awake and napped in the stroller. You were so easy!

I'm looking forward to introducing you to solid food this next month. You seem very interested in what we eat, and always try to grab my food when you sit on my lap during meal times. We'll have to see if you're interested. I'll probably start you off with avocado or banana.

Big brother Ben helping Baby B 'walk'

Foster Care Update:

We never wrote about some of the details of Baby B's case here. As new foster parents, we were super cautious about sharing any information beyond age and gender about her. Now that we have some perspective, we think it's okay to share a few bits, especially since they are so key to her case. So here goes: 

Baby B is Native American. Even though she was born in California, in the United States, our county has chosen to allow her tribe to have legal jurisdiction over her due to her Native American heritage. Thus the tribe has the right to put her into a Native American adoptive home. Mark does have some Native American heritage, but we don't have the documentation to prove it.

We have known from the beginning that there was the possibility, even likelihood, that Baby B would leave us someday. But we still hoped that she would stay. Now that we know that it's a certainty she'll leave, we're sad about it. We don't know when she's leaving, only that she is. It could be in a week, or it could be in two more months.

Please keep our family in your prayers: that Baby B's new adoptive parents would be willing to have an open transition process, and that we would be flexible and patient as we wait for the details of this case to be worked out.

Legoland 2012

We had our big Legoland adventure this past week. We first went there two years ago when the boys were two and three. They had so much fun that of course Tommy asked, "When can we come back here again?" We told him we'd come back when he was five. Two years seemed like a really long time, so it didn't seem like a stretch to say we'd come back then. Well, when you're a grown up, two years flies by. Not so much when you're three and four. Over the past two years Tommy (and Ben) has asked no less then once a month "So, when are we going back to Legoland?". When he turned five (the magic Legoland age we put forth) the frequency went up to once a week. After a while I finally told him, "I promised you we'd go to Legoland when you are five and we will go to Legoland when you're five... don't ask again!" This seemed to help and they stopped asking about it. That gave us a nice cushion of time to surprise them with "Guess what! We're going to Legoland next month!"

The trip went exceptionally well, even with a baby in tow. The drive down took a whopping 12 hours but everyone did well in the car. We didn't even have to break out the DVDs (which we brought in case of emergency). We stayed at the park for four days to make sure that we tried out everything we possibly could. There was no crying, whining, or complaining - the fact that we saw so many children doing just that made our kids look like angels. The kids were basically pleasant the entire time - it was a blissful family trip.

Point Lobos

This weekend we went on a family outing to Point Lobos. It was misty and cool, a wonderful change from our crispy and hot hometown. The boys had a great time exploring caves and tide pools. Baby B did well in the Ergo, as we hiked all over the paths and rocks. We're working on our method of splitting up to both care for Baby B and at the same time spend time with the boys: often one parent would sit in the car with a sleeping baby while the other parent explored with the big boys. We haven't had very many outings together as a family of five, so we're still figuring all these details out!

First Day of School 2012

Yesterday was our first day of school. We started so early so that we can have more flexibility throughout the rest of the year to take time off when we need to. And because I've had about as much of summer as I can take. Ben is doing preschool and Tommy is doing 1st grade. He was supposed to do kindergarten this year. Earlier this summer I started planning out my school year for kindergarten and realized that Tommy had 'accidentally' learned about 80% of K material. Oops! That meant I had to switch mental gears and seriously consider doing first grade instead of K. I'm not a big fan of changing plans, so I took this decision very seriously. I researched what a first grader would be learning versus what a kindergartener would be learning. I gave him a 1st grade readiness test from a respected homeschool curriculum company (which he totally aced). In the end, I decided that it would be better for Tommy if we made the jump to 1st grade. However, one thing I need to keep reminding myself is that it doesn't matter so much what I call the grade; it is ultimately more important that I teach him according to his abilities and interests, not what a grade number says I should be teaching.

First Day of School special breakfast and gifts. Their gifts were "cool" pencils and an electric pencil sharpener. The sharpener was really for me; the hand-cranked one we currently own is quaint in theory, but in practice is a perfect place for crayons points to get jammed and for pencil shavings to explode from. I also conducted an interview where I asked the boys various school-related questions. 

Some gems from Tommy's interview:

What do you hope to learn about this year?: "Rocks, like what the clearest rock in the world is. And what the shiniest rock in the world is. I just want to learn all about rocks."

What do you want to be when you grow up?: "A builder."

If you could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be?: San Francisco 

And some from Ben's interview:
What do you hope to learn about this year?: "Really cool umbrellas." (huh?)
What was your favorite thing you did this summer? "Camping with our friends."
What can Mommy do to be a good teacher this year? "Be really kind to your kids. Which would be me and Tommy."


Our "schoolroom", which is also our dining room. It's perfect for school because of the long table and tons of wall space for maps and white boards.

I didn't plan on doing real work today. I thought we'd do all the fun "First Day of School" stuff, look at all the new books, go over the new schedule, and then they'd want to go outside to play. But they begged to start work. Being the nice mom I am, I let them do as much handwriting work as they wanted. Which turned out to be twenty minutes' worth. I'm soaking it up because I know the novelty will wear off soon enough!

Our tentative schedule. Each 'lesson' takes 10-15 minutes, so the whole school day should take no longer than 90 minutes (not including the break). I'll probably tweak this as time goes on and we work on our groove.

For those interested in curriculum details: 

This year (and probably for the next few years) I'll be focusing on the 3 Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. I used these three books to get most of my ideas for how to structure my schooling and what information to focus on:

The Three Rs by Ruth Beechick

A Charlotte Mason Education by Catherine Levison

Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola

For Tommy I'm using Rod & Staff Penmanship, Math-U-See, and readers from the library for reading practice. In addition, he will be doing narration from Aesop's fables, scripture and poetry memorization, and we'll do read-aloud about science and history once a week. Realistically, it will probably be a lot more often then that, since science seems to be Tommy's favorite subject and since history is my favorite subject. Narration is one of those things that normally wouldn't be done every day, but it only takes a few minutes and speaking is an area that Tommy really needs practice. Ben will be tagging along with Math-U-See and in addition will be using the Explode the Code primer for reading/writing. Both kids will also learn about well-known classical music and artwork.

This post is mostly for my own benefit so I can remember how I did things and either laugh at myself in months and years to come, or remind myself of things that worked well for us. But I hope it gives others some good ideas as well. :)

Swim Lessons

The boys had their last swim lesson of the summer this week. At the beginning of their lessons six weeks ago, they were both completely helpless in the water: couldn't swim, couldn't float, and didn't even like to be in the water. Ben actually yelled at his instructor for the entirety of his first four lessons (not a proud mommy moment). He complained about not wanting to go to swim lessons for the first few weeks, while Tommy couldn't wait for lessons.

At the end of twelve lessons, they are now very comfortable in the water. Ben stopped yelling at his instructor somewhere around the fifth lesson. Now they can jump in the deep end, float on their backs, and swim to the edge of the pool. Ben is pretty good at backstroke and Tommy is working on his freestyle stroke. I am so proud of them!