Everyday Life

I find that I’m struggling to keep this blog going, and it’s really not from lack of interest on my part.  It more from lack of interesting!

We’ve been back in the States for over a year now, and we’ve had lots of exciting and mundane changes as a result.  But I think that the toughest adjustment for me is that we are no longer living this varied and exciting and interesting life that did when we were overseas.

Don’t get me wrong…I would not trade my life or how we live it for anything.  To me, it’s still quite varied and exciting and interesting.  But it is definitely not the stuff that good blogging is made of anymore! 

A trip to the grocery store here is quite like one that you would make where you live.  A sporting event here would look just like the one that your kid participated in last weekend.  School may look different for you because ours takes place at home, but it’s still American school.  And vacations?  A trip to the Wisconsin Dells or even to Washington DC just doesn’t quite stack up to Italy or Provence.

So, please forgive me if my posts are fewer and farther between!  I know that I don’t care to read daily minutia about babies’ schedules, Mom’s Taxi Service, and such, so I’m trying to avoid that on my blog.  If that means fewer posts, so be it!

That being said, here’s a taste of everyday life here from this past week…in case you want to know!

Saturday brought our second round of soccer games; Elijah’s team tied again, and Charlotte’s won.  Both were pleased with the results!  That afternoon, the kids had a board-breaking seminar for tae kwon do, which they both greatly enjoyed.  In between sporting events, Jeff took the kids to see Despicable Me, which they’ve wanted to watch since they saw an early preview for it months ago.  I stayed home with Jeremy, as, the last time we tried to take him to a movie, we didn’t get to see much!  On Sunday afternoon, Jeff stayed home with him while I took the older two to see Nanny McPhee Returns.  So the kids got their movie fix, and Jeff and I actually got to watch one all the way through!

This Friday brings a new chapter in homeschooling…a return to a co-op!  Last Friday, we had a beach party on a lake in nearby Pekin to kick off the 2010 Tri-County Co-Op.  Charlotte and Elijah swam and played and got reacquainted with some kids they knew from the co-op we were in the last time we lived in this area.  I sat in the shade with Jeremy and visited with some other moms.  My essay writing class will have 19 kids in it!  I’m hoping that teaching high schoolers comes back to me, as I haven’t done that in a while.

I’ve worked school this year to a true four-day schedule, as co-op will meet for three out of four Fridays a month in the fall.  So far, it’s gone well.  Elijah, in particular, has risen to the occasion and hasn’t put up much complaint about the slightly-increased workload.  It helps that we’re studying American History Part 2 and reading some fabulous books!  Now, if only math could be made a bit more interesting for him…

This weekend, we have no soccer and no plans.  Sounds good!

And that’s life at Chez Wilkes this week.  Hope that all is well at your place!

Let the Games Begin

Charlotte and Elijah had their first soccer games this past Saturday.  We got lucky this week; they were playing at the same, at the same location.  The fields were end to end, so Jeff and I were able to switch out which kid we were watching and hop up or down to the other game, if one of the kids was out for the quarter.

Saturday was actually a decent day for soccer, too.  We’ve had the same heat here that the rest of the country has had, so 10:15 games could have been brutal.  As is was, it was still pretty humid, but the skies were overcast, making the weather almost pleasant!

I was amazed watching Charlotte’s team play.  She is in the 4th/5th grade league, and her team was dribbling, making passes that actually went to teammates, and generally playing some really decent soccer.  Her team won its game, and Charlotte contributed one goal.  She was pretty excited to score in the opener.  She hasn’t played soccer since before we moved to France, and she usually waits until the end of the season before she’s confident and aggressive enough to attempt a goal.  Not so this year! 

Elijah is in the 2nd/3rd grade league again, and he is one of the biggest kids on his team.  While there’s not a whole lot of organization to the kids at this level, Elijah was hustling pretty well and got to play goalie the first quarter, which he loved.  Jeff said he made several pretty good saves.  His team tied its game, which was good.  Elijah is hoping to score sometime this season.  Given his size, he probably has a pretty good chance if he continues to hustle!

Here are a few pictures of the kids in action.

 

Jeremy is also gearing up to go, go, go.  This past week has been an avalanche of milestones, most of which I am not ready for!  He found his toes a few weeks back, although he has yet to put them in his mouth.  This is probably pretty smart!

I think I mentioned last time that he’s figured out how roll from his back to his stomach.  Well, now, he’s figured out that he can roll across and off a blanket to get somewhere else, which, on hardwood floors, is not always advisable.

In addition to rolling, Jeremy has just about mastered scooting, and I even caught him getting one knee up underneath himself.  Argh!  This baby CAN’T be ready to crawl!

Jeremy also rolled over onto his stomach during a nap for the first time yesterday and was snoozing away on his tummy when I checked on him.  This means that I can’t put him in his Woombie anymore because he needs his arms free to roll back over!  However, he is still a very jumpy baby, and, without his arms secured, he doesn’t fall asleep well.  What this means is that I have to swaddle him with a blanket in such a way that he can break out.

This whole rolling over thing became a bit of a problem at 4:00 a.m., when he rolled onto his tummy, scooted to the end of his crib, and then banged his head every time he tried to lower it to the mattress!  Talk about a mad baby!  He never did go back to sleep very well because, every time I put him him down, he rolled to his stomach and popped up on his arms.  This is very cute…but not so much at 4:00 in the morning!

Oh, well.  He’ll figure it out eventually.  All of these things are supposed to be happening, but I’m still amazed at how much babies progress in five short months!  Jeremy is such a happy little baby, a real joy.

 

I hope you had a good weekend!  Talk to you soon.

Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho

It’s back to school we go.

I decided this year that it would just simply be easier to start school when the neighborhood kids did, so, yesterday, August 17, we cranked back up.  I can’t say that the kids were especially thrilled, but they did understand that we had to start sometime! 

Needless to say, home schooling with an infant poses some new challenges.  My normal morning school routine was to listen to the Bible memory work, which is set to music, and, for this year, the patriotic songs that we’re supposed to learn, and to read to the kids while they ate breakfast.  Well, with Jeremy, his breakfast time is the same as the older two’s, and he can’t feed himself!  And he didn’t take too kindly to my taking breaks in shoveling his cereal in so I could fool with the CD player.  So, this morning, I showed Charlotte and Elijah how to work the CD player, and now they’re responsible for playing the stuff themselves. 

As far as the reading, I never got to it over breakfast yesterday, so I tried after lunch.  Jeremy was up and having a hard time understanding why he was no longer the center of attention during his awake time.  So, he screeched every time I opened my mouth to read.  He wasn’t really unhappy, at least not at first; he just wanted to be up with me, which isn’t practical with a very distractible eight-year-old.  We never did get that reading done yesterday. 

We also ended up doing school until 2:30, when we had to leave for another activity.  At this point, Elijah still had not finished his reading assignment, so he had to pack it in the car with him.  In the past, we have always finished by lunch time, so this late of a finish was nearly intolerable for the kids!

There’s nothing like being behind after the first day of school.  And that is nearly intolerable for me!

Last night, we did some major talking to the kids about working hard while the sun shines (or rather, while the baby sleeps), and I did some minor tweaking on our daily routine.  We spread the reading throughout the morning while Jeremy napped and got caught up.  I found a good system of alternating the kids’ independent work with their supervised work, and we somehow managed to get everything done before lunch, with the exception of one chapter that Elijah had to read on his own.

Not bad for the second day of school!  We’ll see how long this continues.  I’m sure we’ll be fine until Jeremy decides to stop sleeping in the morning; then, we’ll be back to square one.

Oh, well.  I need something to keep my life exciting.

In a couple more weeks, we will start participating in the Tri-County Co-Op, a home school cooperative that meets on Fridays and offers enrichment courses for the younger kids and meatier courses for the older ones.  Charlotte will be taking history, drama, P.E., and writing.  Elijah will be taking life skills, history, music, and P.E.  Jeremy will be parked in a well-tended nursery, and I will be teaching a high school essay-writing class.

We’re all pretty excited.  The kids were dying for something like this last year when I was so sick that I could hardly get up to have school, let alone get prepared and out the door for a co-op.  But we visited this one last March, and the kids begged to join this year.  When the powers that be in the co-op realized that I had once taught high school English, they bent over backwards to make teaching a class for the co-op possible.

So, I’m jumping back on a horse that I haven’t ridden in 10 years, but I’ve found it’s all coming back to me as I prepare.  Right now, I have 19 ninth, tenth, and eleventh graders to whom I will try to teach essay writing skills.  I loved doing this when I taught in Tennessee, so we’ll see how it goes.

And, in baby news, Jeremy rolled over from his back to his stomach on Monday.  He spent most of the day practicing every time I put him on the floor and, that evening, managed to get all the way over by himself.  He immediately popped up onto his arms and looked us, bemused, as we all clapped for him.  It’s only a matter of time before he’s rolling his way across the floor.  He’s already figured out how to scoot off his blanket, so I’m not really looking forward to this increased mobility.

Ah, well, It had to happen!

Have a good one!

Reasons to Celebrate

As summer wraps up, I thought I’d share with you a couple of things that we’ve celebrated lately!

First and foremost, we are celebrating Elijah’s decision to put on Christ in baptism! A few weeks back, at the end of VBS, he shared with us that he thought he was ready to become a Christian. We studied and prayed with him and realized that he understood what he wanted to do and was, indeed, ready to make this choice in spite of his young age.

I spoke to our church about using the baptistery for a private baptism because Elijah was a bit freaked out at the idea of making a video testimony and having 600 strangers stare at him, which would be the norm for a Sunday morning baptism. (Alas, we have no swimming pool here, as we did for Charlotte’s baptism in France two years ago!) Our friend and Richwoods’ discipleship pastor Marty Hunt agreed to be involved and help set it up for us.

As it turns out, Marty’s family also witnessed Elijah’s baptism, at Elijah’s request. Jeff baptized Elijah, as he did with Charlotte, and it was indeed a wonderful Wednesday afternoon. Elijah told Jeff afterwards, “I feel good!” Jeff had to chuckle because he said something similar after his own baptism 19 years ago.

Here is the video I took on Jeff’s phone. The audio is not great when Jeff is speaking, but take a look!

After Elijah’s baptism, we went to watch a Peoria Chiefs baseball game. The Chiefs are a minor league feeder team for the Chicago Cubs, and their games are always entertaining. Of course, when we arrived, the thermometer was reading 94 degrees, with the heat index still over 100. The game started at 7:00 p.m., and it never dropped below 84 degrees! This heat is unreal. We hadn’t been there 10 minutes when I stripped the baby down to his diaper, something I had always privately told myself I would never do out in public! But his hair was curling from the humidity, and he had beads of sweat on his back…poor baby! But for all that, he never fussed until 9:00, when he got hungry.

It was Wacky Weiner Wednesday, which meant unlimited free hot dogs and peanuts. They weren’t very good, but we still had a great time! It was a nice way to celebrate Elijah’s special day.

Last Sunday, we drove to Michigan to visit our new niece and cousin for the very first time. We stayed until Tuesday morning. Little Elynne was just over two weeks old and is a precious, precious baby. It is so hard to believe that our baby was that tiny just a few months ago…he looked like a giant next to her! Charlotte was completely enchanted with her new girl cousin, the next best thing to having a baby sister!

Here are the cousins.

And here are my brother and I with our new babies. Elynne was getting a bit unhappy at this point!

It was so much fun to meet Elynne and to spend a bit of time with my brother and sister-in-law. Zech and Alyse have the new iPhones, as does my brother Thad in New Jersey, so we were able to video phone him on Monday evening and let him see the babies for the first time. The weekend ended up being a bit hectic, so we didn’t get any pictures of Alyse or my parents with the babies. Maybe next time.

And last night, Jeff and I lay outside on our driveway, watching the skies for the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. Usually when we do this, we see absolutely nothing. But last night was clear and cloudless, and we actually saw seven or eight streaks before we went into bed. I think that we also scared a woman who was out jogging. But, hey, I figure that, if you are going to job at 10:30 at night, you’re probably going to get a few good scares before you’re done!

Good times!

Wrapping up Summer

Charlotte had another eventful week.  She spent three days at Little Galilee Christian Camp and then ran her final 5K race for her tae kwon do leadership project.  Whew!

Of course, Charlotte absolutely loved camp, as I figured she would.  She can’t wait to go back for a whole week next year.  Little Galilee is a lovely place, complete with air-conditioned, en suite cabins (no roasting or going outside to find the bath house here!), a lake with paddleboats, a  pool with slide, a gorgeous activity center, a rock-climbing wall, and a campfire pit.  Charlotte excitedly showed me around when I picked her up on Friday afternoon.

I have many fond memories of Camp Indogan in Angola, Indiana, and I was hoping that Charlotte would find the same thing at Little Galilee.  I think that she did!  Her friend, Anna Stewart, also attended, so I think that helped her feel at home.  The Bartonville Christian Church staffed the camp, and Charlotte found a few favorite counselors.  Ah, the joys of church camp!

 

Even better, Anna was baptized on Friday evening by her dad, along with three other young people, which made for a joyous end to camp.  It was a good three days for Charlotte!

Then, on Saturday morning, we rolled out bright and early so Charlotte and Jeff could participate in the Run for Life, a 5K at Bradley Park in Peoria.  The course boasted “only two hills,” which I think must be someone’s idea of a joke.  The hills made up 1/3 of the race and were brutal! 

  

Nevertheless, Charlotte posted a time of 27:34 and placed second in her age group.  We found this pretty amazing because the lowest group for this race was 13 and below, which means she competing against middle school cross country runners.  Once again, we told Charlotte not to get her hopes up because the times really drop for 11 to 14-year-olds, but, once again, we were proven wrong.

 

As far as the rest of the family, Elijah spent Charlotte’s time at camp pining after his sister, although they did nothing but fight after she got home!  Jeremy continues to do well with eating cereal.  He got his second round of vaccinations on Wednesday and had his four-month check-up on Thursday.  The doctor told us to go ahead and start introducing fruits and vegetables.  Jeremy has also decided that sticking out his tongue is great fun!

 

We are headed to Michigan to see little Elynne Hoyt and her parents after church today.  Jeff is taking a couple days off work, and we’ll be spending some time with my family.  The kids both started soccer practice last week; Charlotte practices at 5:45 at the elementary school fields, and Elijah practices at 6:00 at the church fields.  Both are on Tuesday night.  In theory, this works; in reality, Charlotte’s coach will probably run the practices over, so pick up could be interesting.  Anyway, we’re planning to be back in time for practice on Tuesday.

And I suppose we’ll be starting school here in the next couple of weeks.  I’m thinking August 16, but we may push it back to the 23rd.  We shall see!

Hope your weekend was great!

Where’d My Tiny Baby Go?

A baby’s first year of life is full of many, many firsts, most of which are interesting only to the parents, grandparents, and possibly older siblings.  Actually, ALL of the firsts are probably interesting only to those most closely related, but some do make better photo opportunities than others.  For instance, the first time a baby eats solid foods can be pretty darn funny, even if it’s not your baby!

As I mentioned earlier, we’ve been holding off on cereal until Jeremy hit four months, on the recommendation of our pediatrician.  This had been working very well, as the formula was satisfying Jeremy, and he was consistently sleeping through the night. 

However, a couple of days ago, Jeremy started waking up at 6:00 a.m. ravenously hungry.  He would eat a bunch and then be hungry again in three hours.  (He’d been eating every four hours for at least a month.)  He picked up a fifth feeding and was still hungry.  So, we decided yesterday that he was close enough to four months old and commenced with the cereal.

With Charlotte and Elijah, the first cereal feeding was an exercise in shoving in the formula with a spoon while Baby Wilkes shoved it back out with his or her tongue.  This must be because we did not wait until four months with either of them!  From nearly the first spoonful, Jeremy scarfed down the cereal almost as easily as he does his formula!

This is not to say he didn’t make a mess or spit at us a time or two.  But, for the most part, Jeremy very quickly took the cereal, so I guess it’s a new permanent part of his diet.

Sigh.  It doesn’t take long for a tiny baby to turn into a big four-month old!

Here’s Jeremy at his very first cereal feeding.

“Mmmm, I’m so hungry I could eat this bib!”

 

“You mean, you want to put that in my mouth?”

“OK, but I’m not so sure about this!”

“It’s kinda messy, but I guess it tastes OK.”

“How much more?”

Jeremy says, “That’s it!  I’m done!”

And here’s one more funny picture…Jeremy has recently discovered his thumb, and this is what he looks like when he sucks on it.  He actually tries to hide it from us, as if we might try to take it away!  Too funny.

Well, that’s all the baby stuff for today.  The kids got home on Friday, full of great adventure stories from their time with Grandmama and Granddaddy.  This week will be hectic as we try to get most of our activities done early in the week before Charlotte goes to church camp for the first time.  Jeremy has his second round of vaccinations on Wednesday and his four-month checkup on Thursday.  And, one week from today, we hope to drive over to Michigan to meet our new niece.

Off to the races!