Elsie, 14 months- Katya, kindergarten

Elsie is quite the adventurer. When you put her down at a park, she just goes! She is also super brave in the water. She crawls all over the water features at our local parks with no fear. In the bath, she is blowing bubbles as well as her older siblings. My dad would say it is because she started "swimming" so young; i.e., at her birth in the water:-) Ha!

Elsie is getting better on her feet. Just today she started walking while holding my hands and the lion push toy. She looks pretty awkward doing it but she was willing to practice. She still LOVES climbing stairs and into chairs. She is getting the hang of going down the stairs backwards. Her signing is starting to really connect. She learned "dog" the other night and was so proud. She does "more" very well and starting to use signs a bit more.  But she also has a very effective, "Uhhhhh!" sound she makes when she wants something.  It's only slightly annoying when this mom is trying to do 10 things at once:-)  "No" is still her best word and she uses it in context. She will look at the dog's food bowl and say, "no." :-) So cute! She loves flipping though books and pointing to things on the page. 

Miss Katya is doing very well thus far in school.  She has had four mornings in a row without tears!  Even though she has a hard time saying goodbye to me, she is always excited in the mornings and super happy when I pick her up.  She has one more day of noon dismissal and then it will be full days.  I hoping she can work herself up to being dropped off from the car at the steps were a teacher watches the kids come in; for now, I walk her to her classroom.  I am really loving walking to and from school with the weather still being nice.  We have only missed one morning (running behind) and one afternoon.  It is about a half mile to school so it is a nice 2 miles of walking that I can get in.  

So far I am very excited to be at Holy Cross.  I think it really is a blessing in disguise that we "have" to send our girls to private school (thank you Portland Public Schools for being so crappy?  What?).  Everyone is SO nice and it is not a snobby school at all.  There are so many little reasons that I (so far) like it better than Holy Redeemer; I hope I feel the same way at the end of the year!  I love that religious education will be a part of their academic lives, and I really love the emphasis our school places on service.  Community service is a big part of Holy Cross and the students have lots of service projects through out the years.  I admire the respect that Catholics have for other human beings SO much.  I am biased, I know, but I think it outshines many other religious sects in it's sincerity.  I have never been taught how to attack another religion's beliefs in the 33 years I have been a member of the Church (and yes, I have had my faith attacked by others).

The sleep adjustments for the school year have gone fairly well.  Our Pediatrician recommended a melatonin supplement for Miss Katya who has had difficulties falling asleep for years now.  It is kind of creepy how well it is working.  With that, the vigour of school, and early mornings we have inched her bedtime back from 7pm, to 6:45, and now 6:30.  Unfortunately, Reagan has gotten messed up with getting up at 6:30am and she started having trouble falling asleep at her normal time of 6pm (she is use to 13hrs a night).  So we have had to move her bedtime up to 5:30, which so far is working great.  It is so crazy how true it is that sleep begets sleep.  Getting her down by 6pm was hard enough, but now it is really challenging.  I will have to feed the kids dinner at 4:30 to get her down on time.  But totally worth it.  I think sleep is as important to good health as a healthy diet and enough excises. 

Sorry for such a long post!  Love to all, Brenda