Emily is Five!!

Emily is FIVE!!!

Emily is growing up way too fast!

Emily loves to be sarcastic, just like her Daddy. She loves to joke and make people laugh.

Emily also has a little attitude. She likes to boss her brother around, but also likes to make them cry at times. I'm really hoping the making them cry is a phase she's going through and will end soon!

Emily is loving "doing school" and learning. We've been working on reading and math mostly. She amazes me often with how much she already knows! She loves to write words...and stories... and is constantly trying to figure out what things say. She knows about 50 sight words and has lots more that she can figure out what she wants to. We've also been playing games on the computer and she's getting pretty good at figuring out how to use the computer and the mouse!!

Emily enjoys working on cars with mommy... and aimlessly wondering around Bumpa's barn and asking what everything is, what things are for, and how things work!

I think Emily is very excited that spring is almost here. She seems to really enjoy being outside. She likes to ride her bike and is excited to figure out her scooter that she got for Christmas. She also likes just being outside.

Emily's favorite toys are all of her little princess dolls. She loves to pretend with them and make them interact with each other and other toys. She also loves to color, draw, and write.

Most days, Emily does not take a nap, but she still does rest quietly for a few hours in the afternoon. She typically is a good sleeper at night and doesn't wake up when Peyton does. Most nights she goes to bed around 7:00pm and gets up when her "clock wakes up" at 8:00am.

Emily loves going to church and learning about the Bible. She asks lots of questions and we've had some pretty good conversations about salvation with her! She also loves to tell other people about the Bible and Jesus' love!

Kyle is FIVE!!

Kyle is FIVE!!!!

Kyle is my big mommy's boy!

Kyle loves to make people smile and loves to give mommy cuddles! He's also pretty good at have loud obnoxious meltdowns for crazy stuff.

Kyle seems to enjoy being around other kids and interacting with people, but tends to thrive when he has quiet time by himself. He loves to work on projects alone... or with a little help from mommy and daddy. He's discovered that if he goes into his room and closes the door, he normally can get 20 minutes or so of alone time before one of his brothers find him.

Kyle doesn't seem to enjoy some parts of school as much as his sister, but is constantly asking to "do school." He loves to work on "bear books" and other school activity books. It amazes me how much he gets done (and does right!) with very little help! When it comes to working on reading and writing, he doesn't seem to have much interest... but when rattles off words like its no big deal that he's reading. He loves to play on the computer too... but still struggles with using the mouse!

Kyle loves to do things with his hands. He loves to work on puzzles and build things. He wants to know how things work and how they are all put together. I think he's going to be the kid that tears things apart just so he can see if he can put them back together.

Kyle amazes me when it comes to his knowledge about cars. He can point out different parts and explain what they do. He got a model engine for his birthday that we've been putting together and it's crazy how much he knows! (He knows more about cars than Daddy for sure!!!)

Kyle also loves to play with dinosaurs, cars, and Paw Patrol stuff. He has a great imagination!

Kyle enjoys sleeping... and would probably sleep a lot more if he didn't share a room with Colby. When Colby lets him take a nap, Kyle will easily sleep for three hours in the afternoon and he's typically the first kid climbing in bed at night. He comes running into our room every morning at 8:00am when his "clock wakes up."

We discovered in January that Kyle has a penicillin allergy. Thankfully his reaction was only hives, but the doctor said if he gets it again that his reaction will probably come on faster and be worse. Hopefully we can just keep him away from it and won't have to worry about it!

Kyle broke part of his jaw a few weeks ago. He ran into Daddy's hip and chipped part of his jaw that helps hold teeth in place. Only one tooth was loose. Luckily, the tooth had no damage. It's currently bonded to the teeth on either side of it to hold it into place while his jaw heals. We go back to the dentist in a few days to get the bonding taken off.

Peyton is One!!!

Somehow a year(and two days) has passed since Peyton was born!

Peyton is into everything and anything. His preferred method of transportation is walking and he is really interested in playing with toys.. specially the ones his siblings are playing with!

Peyton's favorite toys are ones that move and make noise. If the noise is music that he can dance to, he will play with it for long periods of time. He also seems to really like cars. He drives them around making vroom noises.

Peyton's preferred food is mommy milk! He's finally starting to get the hang of puffs and pancakes... but for the most part, it its not baby food or mommy milk, he's not all that interested. He normally eats at meal times with the rest of the family and nurses whenever he wants (most days 6 or 7 times a day).

We are still working on sleeping. Peyton normally nurses to sleep around 7pm and then is up sometime between 11pm and Midnight to nurse again. And most times he also nurses around 3am, and then again between 7am and 8am, then he's up for the day. Lately he's been taking a short nap in the morning around 10, and then takes a long nap in the afternoon while the big kids are resting.

Peyton has learned when we go places, we all put on our shoes. We left a shoe at Grandma's house over Christmas and he was not a fan of not wearing shoes for a few days. He gets very excited to put his shoes on like everyone else!

Peyton likes to look outside. He loves that he's tall enough to look out most of the windows in our house and I often find him playing with blinds or curtains so that he can see outside.

Peyton still doesn't say much, but he does squeal.... mad squeals, happy squeals sad squeals, excited squeals. Sometimes it's cute...

On Peyton's birthday, he had ice cream (coconut ice cream because he's allergic to dairy!).  He seemed enjoy a couple bites of it!

We had a small birthday part today... was supposed to be bigger, but the big three kids have strep, so more than half of our guests ended up not coming. Peyton enjoyed opening his presents, but really didn't care too much about his cupcake!

21 Months Old! (Plus a few days!)

On Tuesday, Colby turned 21 months old! I thought about it on Monday.... but never got around to starting a post. And then Brent's work schedule is weird this week due to a missions trip, so I was then thrown off and completely forgot about it... But, late is better than never!

I'm not sure which is a crazier thought... the fact that Colby is going to be two in three short months... or that his baby brother is going to be born, hopefully just before he turns two, and his life is going to change!

The past month, Colby has seemed to left all that baby stuff behind and is 100% toddler... going on three years old! He tries to do everything and anything Kyle and Emily do, and most of the time he is successful!

All of a sudden, Colby is talking non-stop! He has too many new words to list and has become very vocal about what he wants and when he wants it. Some of the words/phrases we hear often are "no," "me," "please," "thank you," "socks," "more," "Kyky," "Emmy," "moon," "milk," "yellow," "butt" (as in diaper), "boob,"... animal names and noises, anything Kyle says... He's also started to say "Love you" in the past week or so, and it's normally accompanied by a hug and a kiss!

Colby's favorite color by far is yellow. I'm not sure if it's because its one of the few colors he recognizes and can say, or if he actually loves the color. But if there is an option for something yellow, Colby wants it. He gets very excited about anything yellow and has to make sure that he points it out. He also has started to whine if his diaper isn't yellow... which is tough because we only have so many yellow diapers... He also has started to pick out and say orange and blue.

When I've been doing school with Kyle and Emily, Colby normally participates too. The past few weeks, he's started to pick out and recognize letters. Normally, when we do a letter, we had a worksheet with several pictures on it of objects that start with the letter we are working on, plus a few other objects. He used to color everything on the page, but with the last few letters, he can only colored the objects that start with that letter. He also picks out letter off the play mat in the toy room and can tell me what most of the are!

Since we've moved, Colby has been helping pick out his jammies and his clothes! He loves to pick out yellow shirts and anything with Elmo on it. It's kind of fun to watch him pick out his clothes... and sometimes frustrating when he wants to wear something that's too warm or not warm enough for the day.

Along with being more vocal, Colby has been enjoying singing. Kyle and Emily sing often, and he has started to join in. He sometimes makes them mad because he normally doesn't have the right words or tune, but he seems to enjoy himself!

Colby and the stairs are scary! He wants to walk like a big boy up and down the stairs. He normally does okay if he's holding a hand, but often, he doesn't want to hold a hand because Kyle and Emily aren't. More times than not, we just end up carrying him to make sure he doesn't fall.

Colby is enjoying his big boy bed. You can read about that here, if you haven't already! :) The big boy bed means naps pretty much aren't happening any more, but we are still trying for rest time most days! Hopefully soon he'll actually stay in bed and rest during rest time at least... I really miss my rest time!

Colby is down to just nursing at bedtime! When we moved, we kind of just stopped nursing at rest time (which might have something to do with the no nap). He still asks for "boob" at bed time and cries hysterically if he thinks I'm not going to feed him... so for now, we will let it continue. I am eating pretty much back to normal though (not that it really includes a whole lot of gluten is our pretty much gluten free house), and it hasn't really been seeming to cause him any tummy or poop issues.  

As we've backed off breastfeeding more and more, it does seem like Colby is getting more and more sensitive to gluten. Normally when he gets gluten in his system, he has a belly ache about six hours later and nasty black poop. This past weekend we were with family... and there was gluten. I'm guessing someone touched his hand after they ate gluten and he got a little bit in his system. I could tell his belly hurt a little bit (luckily he didn't have his all our screaming fit he normally does), but lots of nasty black poopy diapers let us know he got some gluten in his system.

As you can see from the pictures, he has a mouth full of teeth. He has six on top and four on bottom. His two that he broke seem fine. The dentist said they may turn brown or black and fall out, but they still aren't showing any signs of that yet!

Over all, he still is the happy, smiley Colby he has always been, just with a new strong willed stubborn streak! He just seems to think that he's a big boy now and should be able to do everything his big brother and sister can do! We love our stinkerpotamus like crazy and are very grateful God has allowed us to be his mommy and daddy!

Three and a Half!!!

My tiny little babies are turning into big little kids! It's hard to believe they are already three and a half!

Emily has started to be a little mommy. She loves to take care of her babies. She feeds them, changes their diapers, changes their clothes, and makes then take naps. She also likes to tell her brothers what to do! Emily LOVES her brothers. She loves telling people she has three brothers and referrers to them often as "my boys." We ask her often "Who is in charge?" She normally says "Mommy and Daddy" but recently has started to give a smart alack answer of "Emily!" and always says it with a little smirk on her face.

Emily still loves pink and purple, princesses, skirts and dresses, and other girly things. But she also likes to "play" sports and play cars with her boys.

Kyle is a wild and crazy little boy... or as much as we will let him be wild and crazy! He loves to run around in circles, sing loud obnoxious songs, and wrestle with anyone who he thinks might enjoy getting pushed over and squished!

Kyle still loves blue and brown, cars, trains, and firetrucks. His toys of choice are cars and puzzles.

In the beginning of the summer, Grandma and Grandpa Franks got the kiddos bikes. It took them a little while to get the hang of riding them, but they finally got it figured out. We took a break (a two month break!) when Kyle broke his arm, but they have been riding them again the past couple weeks. It seemed like it took them a time or two to get the hang of it again, but for the most part, they do pretty well on them. They still need help getting going sometimes and going up hills in they don't start with enough momentum.

Kyle and Emily are being coming familiar with their surroundings and how to get places. They know the general way to church, the library, Meijer, Grandma and Grandpa Eubank's house, Grandma and Grandpa's Franks' house, the Zoo, and the children's museum. If we go a different way somewhere, they know and say who ever is driving is being silly!

Emily and Kyle still love going to church. They enjoy their class and doing "projects" and learning about the Bible. They normally can tell us a general idea of what they learned about in their class. They also love reading the Bible as a family at night. Most nights it doesn't seem like they are paying attention, but they have a good idea of what most of the Bible stories that are in their children's  are about. It amazes me often listening to how much they actually remember from what we read and talk about. Not only do they remember the stories, they also know/use some of the application!

Kyle and Emily enjoy singing songs. In we are in the car for more than a few minutes and they don't have something electronic (their LeapPads or a movie) to entertain them, they usually start singing. It's kind of cute, but kind of annoying when they start arguing about whose song is whose. Apparently, they own rights on certain songs! Favorites include Jesus Loves Me, Twinkle Twinkle, Old MacDonald, Let it Go, Life is a Highway...

We started to do preschool last week. They've been really bugging about school, so we decided to do homeschool for preschool. We are working on letters, numbers, shapes, sorting, patterns, and animals. They already recognize most capital letters, so we are working on lower case recognition, letter sounds, and writing letters. For number, they can both consistently count to ten (and sometimes beyond), but don't recognize any numbers. So we are working on using numbers to actually count things (not just recite in order) and number recognition. They can recognize all their basic shapes, We are using shapes to work on coloring skills and drawing shapes. We are also using shapes to learn about patterns. For sorting, we are working on matching and grouping similar things. For animals, we are just talking about their favorite animals, where they live, what they eat, and other simple things. So far they are loving school (we've only done three days). Emily has done really well with everything. Kyle gets frustrated (he's still figuring out how to hold a crayon again after breaking his right arm) and doesn't want to do much beyond color when it comes to our "worksheets." Hopefully it will continue to go well and they will keep being excited about "formal learning!"

One of Emily and Kyle's favorite adventures is to the zoo! They love having maps and reference their maps often to make sure we are seeing all the animals. They both love to watch the animals and make noises at them. Kyle's favorites seem to be any type of hop-a-roo (such as a kangaroo) and monkeys. Emily's favorites seem to be the reptiles and fish; she also loves horses, but those aren't are the zoo.

Potty training, most days they are accident free! They are pretty good about telling us when they need to go and have started sometimes just going by themselves. They both still want help wiping when they poop, but can handle peeing all by them selves. We do take Kyle to the bathroom before we go to bed at night, otherwise we are almost guaranteed he'll wet the bed.

Kyle and Emily are starting to become more opinionated about what food they eat. At our house, their option is to eat what mommy makes or not eat, so normally they just suck it up and eat it even if it's something they "don't like." Kyle does not like peppers and onions (he's tried them several times), so normally I try to leave those off his plate and the same with peppers for Emily... but she LOVES onions! Neither of them like mashed potatoes either, but will eat potatoes pretty much any other way. Emily's favorite food is most defiantly mac'n'cheese, but also really likes strawberries and green veggie s. Kyle's favorite food is hot dogs, but also really likes french fries and cheese. They both LOVE their "cow milk" and probably drink more than they should.

Naps rarely happen around here anymore. We still try to do rest time every afternoon, but most days it turns into WAR! Most days, they both still really do need to take a nap, but they really don't want to. If they lay still and are quiet for long enough, they normally fall asleep and will sleep for a couple hours. If they actually rest and don't fall asleep, they do okay attitude wise for the afternoon. But if they won't even rest, our afternoons are filled with one meltdown after another and two tired kiddos ready for bed by 5pm. Right now, if they are actually quiet for at least a half an hour, I take them their LeapPads in to play with.

Schedule wise, not much as changed. Their clock "wakes up" at 8am and lets them know it's time to get up. Most days they are quiet until their clock wakes up. We eat breakfast shortly after they get out of bed. In the mornings, we do adventures, school, or just hang out. We normally eat lunch between 11:00 and 12:00, and then do rest time after lunch. After I give up on them actually resting, they get up and play until dinner time around 5:30. After dinner, we pick up toys, takes baths, read the Bible, pray, and go to bed. Normally they are in bed between 7:00 and 7:30.

Both kiddos love books. They love to "read" them and love to have people read to them. Most of their favorites are their Cat in the Hat books. They both love going to the library and picking out books to take home and read. They've been really excited when we do school to read their library books.

I asked questions again... there are lots of answers still the same from six months ago... Click here if you want to see...

	Emily	Kyle
What is your name?	Emily Eubank	Kyle
How old are you?	Six	Three
What is your favorite color?	Pink and Purple	Blue and Brown
What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast?	Balls	O's
What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch?	Noodles	Cookies
What is your favorite thing to eat for dinner?	Hamburgers	French Fries
What is your favorite snack to eat?	Fruit Snacks	Fruit Snacks
What is your favorite fruit?	Strawberries	Oranges
What is your favorite vegetable?	Carrots	Nothing
What is your favorite thing to drink?	Juice	Milk
What is your favorite animal?	Horses, Snacks, Giraffes	Kangaroo and Crockadile
What is your favorite toy to play with?	Princess Kitty	Queen Mater Toys
What is your favorite book to read?	Buzz and Woody	Queen Mater Book
Where do you like to go?	Bounce House	Home
What is your favorite song?	Let It Go	Life a Highway
Who is your best friend?	Mommy	Mommy and Grandpa
What is your favorite thing to watch on tv?	Frozen	Mater Change
What do you want to be when you grow up?	A Mommy	Tractor Driver
What is your favorite thing to do outside?	Ribe my bike	Ride bikes
What is your favorite thing to wear?	Costume	Bathing Suit and Coat
Who is your favorite person?	Grandma	Mommy

Three Years Old!

Somehow the crazies are three! 

 Emily is a crazy little girlie! And she's a girly girl in the fact that she loves pink, purple, princesses, dress, tights, and pretties in her hair. She's also very athletic and can make baskets, throw and catch balls, and has lots of coordination and agility. She's very caring and normally wants to make sure her brothers are okay and is normally looking out for them. She's a whole lot less shy than she used to be, but is still hesitant towards strangers most of the time.

Kyle is crazy, loud, and sometimes obnoxious. Kyle likes brown, blue, green, cars, firetrucks, and being loud! Kyle is very good at doing puzzles and problem solving; if it didn't require him to sit semi still, he would most likely sit and do puzzles all day long. Kyle's favorite phrase is "maybe Saturday" when he doesn't want to do something (or doesn't want to do it right now). Kyle loves having a little brother to wrestle with, but sometimes forgets that sisters don't always like to wrestle as much as brother do!

It's amazing how much Kyle and Emily's vocabularies have expanded in the past few months. They are always learning new words and phrases. Sometimes we just have to stop and laugh at the crazy things they say. They both tend to talk non-stop and sometimes I'm pretty sure they are the only ones that understand what they are saying. (They apparently can understand everything Colby says too!)

Emily and Kyle love going to church. The past year they have been in the two year old class and have enjoyed having a little bit of structure, doing lessons and crafts, and having a teacher. They also love playing at church with grandparents and a few of our teens' parents on Sunday nights during youth group. Tomorrow they will move up to the three and four year old class during regular church!

Kyle and Emily love to watch and help in the kitchen. They love to dump ingredients into the bowl and watch the Kitchen Aid mix stuff up. For whatever reason, they also enjoy watching stuff bake in the oven if we turn the light on for them to see.

Kyle and Emily probably have more screen time than they should, but they love Disney Junior shows and the PBS that we let them watch. Their favorites are George, Chuggington, Sofia the First, Doc McStuffins, Handy Manny, and Henry Hugglemonster. They also love to play their games and puzzles on the iPad. They are also a fan of movies and love Cars and all three Toy Story movies.

Emily and Kyle recognize all of the upper case letter and are starting to understand that each letter has a lower case one too. They sometimes can say the ABC's by themselves, but most the time, if they aren't singing along with someone or something, they tend to skip a few letters.

They both can consistently count to ten by themselves, but sometimes can get as high as twenty. They are also starting to understand that numbers are for counting things and not just a sequence to rattle off. We've started to talk a little bit about addition and subtraction. Kyle seems like he sometimes understands.

Our schedule is pretty much the same. Their clock turns on in the morning at 8am, and they normally are awake waiting for it to turn on. Shortly after they wake up, we eat breakfast and then play or do adventures or whatever until lunch time. We normally eat lunch between 11:30 and 12:30, depending on the day. After lunch is rest time for Kyle and Emily. Some days they take naps and some days they just lay in bed and rest with a book. Normally between 3:00 and 3:30 they are done with rest time. Dinner is around 5:30. After dinner, we normally play for a little bit, pick up toys, do baths, read the Bible, and they are normally in bed around 7:00.

Potty training wise, we rarely have accidents any more! Emily and Kyle are both really good about going to the bathroom when they need to. They sometimes go by them selves and sometimes ask for help. We have recently transitioned to underwear at nap time and training pants (instead of diapers) at night time and have been waking up dry for the more part!

I'm going to do the questions again like I did at two and a half. Hopefully I'll get a chance to ask the kiddos them tomorrow!