Exciting Week in Our House

I'll have to back up to last Sunday.  I went to my Ladies' Bible study that evening and when I got home, Jay met me at the door and reported that Jacob broke something and it couldn't be fixed, so I should not even ask.  I took a deep breath and planned to NOT get angry or weird about it.  Jacob breaks stuff on a regular basis, so I need to just maintain an even keel and move on.  About 20 seconds later the culprit came running into the kitchen to tell me this good news:

I was really happy to see it.  This baby tooth never got loose, and the adult tooth started growing in behind it about a month ago.  We have a dentist appointment next week because we were planning to have the baby tooth extracted.  The boy saved us a few dollars on this one!  But can you believe it...he broke it out while blowing up a balloon!  Bumped his own mouth with his fist and knocked the tooth right out.  He didn't even know he did it.

Valentine's Day was on Monday.  As always, we gave the kids some candy in the morning.  Jacob had a party at school and came home ready to dig in.  The girls didn't have their party until Friday classes.  I didn't have them sign all the cards this year (yes, I've gotten a little lax in my old age, and didn't want to deal with supervising the process), so I just typed up some cards, had Merrilee cut them out, and had Katie Mei tape them on the candy.  Deed was done in 15 minutes.  Yay!

In academic news, Katie Mei has been working very hard on her pre-reading skills, and she is finally able to listen to, spell, and pronounce blend sounds.  This is a big step towards reading, and the way I teach phonics in our house.  I was so proud of her for finally getting it, and was excited that by buying this new "toy" she found a way to make a game of it.  She put together some letters as I said the words, and then she decided she would be the teacher and I had to spell the sounds for her.  Little did she know she was the one gettin' the learnin'.

 

And on to a more emotional subject....  Katie Mei is just growing up too darned fast!  As if learning to read isn't enough, the child decided this week that she was going to try roller skating.  So we dug into our old stash of toys and found Merrilee's old skates.  Brought back some fun memories! (this is Merrilee back in 2007 right after she turned 4.  KM will be 4 next month.)

We strapped them on her and let her go.  She loved it, and shuffled all over the driveway for two days.  Good thing the weather has been nice, because I'm still nervous about leaving her outside to play with just her siblings.  Poor child hasn't been able to do much of anything in the driveway without her helmet!

Now here's the really painful part: she asked to ride Merrilee's old princess bike (the two-wheeler) because she's been riding the tricycle and I told her I thought she was getting too old for a tricycle.  It really is babyish for her, and Merrilee got her two-wheeler with training wheels when she was 3.  Jacob got his a couple years later.  I very clearly remember the day I took this video and cried walking all the way down the road behind them.

Couldn't believe they were growing up so fast.  Loved seeing them go, but envisioned the day they would really "go".  As impatient and frustrated as I get sometimes, I have to admit I love, absolutely love, being a mom to these kids.  Seeing them mature and move onto to older kids' activities both swells and breaks my heart all at the same time.


So here's what I was subject to today.

Sigh.  I took her to Toy's R Us to pick out and buy her own very first new bike today.  Takes my breath away.  How on earth did she grow up so fast?!  I can't take it.  It does not get easier with more children.  If anything, it gets harder because each child that grows up means I'm one more child closer to having them all grown up and moved out.  Ouch.  But I do have to say, she's spent the rest of the afternoon saying "I love you, Mom! And I love my new bike!"  She's a very happy little girl today.