February 6-21

When I last posted David's homeschool work he was just finishing his "All Aboard" book from our "Sing, Spell, Read, Write" Curriculum. The above pictures are samples of his work from the next book "On Track." In "All Aboard" he learned all his letters, how to write them and what sound they make. Now he can identify what letter a word starts with by sounding it out. He recently learned his short vowel sounds and has been putting sounds together. A lot of this is taught by song. A few days ago he started reading! I guess I didn't get a picture of "Picture Dictionary" which is a new work page from his new book that he does every few days. He traces a word, reads it and then draws a picture. We are so proud of him and excited and he is too! We are continuing to really enjoy this curriculum!

 In Math David has been working on addition as you can see in the above examples. I can't believe he is doing vertical addition! He has also been working on Skip Counting by 2's to 20 (below).

I also wanted to include this Valentines Day picture which was a colour by number picture. He also made 15 Valentine Cards for his classmates at the Resource Centre (sadly I did not think to get a picture of them before he went to school). He was really into Valentines this year and cut out his own hearts and coloured a lot of Valentine pictures. He has been doing a lot of crafts which I sometimes forget are part of school too. I will try to get some pictures of recent projects and make a separate post just for that. Term 2 is coming to an end but I am very happy with David's progress so far this year. I can't believe that soon we will be beginning his last Term of Kindergarten!

12.5 week Ultrasound Pictures

Yesterday we had our Ultrasound. It was great to see our little Baby Bean a bit further developed. Our last sneak peak was during our 8th week so a lot has changed since then. Baby was very bouncy! I don't think any of our other baby's were as active during our ultrasounds as this one. It's not twins... definitely only one baby but I think he (or she) has twice the energy. Come August we are really going to have our hands full! We have a follow up blood test to go with our previous blood test and ultrasound results but so far things are looking good.
I also had a doctors appointment today and got to hear Baby's heart beating for the first time. I am doing a lot better though I am still quite nausious. My Thyroid is low (also happened during first trimester with Samara) but this may be the cause of the extra nausea I have been experiencing this time around. Hopefully things will level out soon and we will have a smooth second trimester. Also I'm just waiting to hear back about my 19 week ultrasound which we will be booking shortly for end of March.

4 years

On February 7th Jonathan made a special batch of ice cream and we put together an ice cream cake to celebrate Noah's birthday and the time we had him here with us. David knew the next day was Noah's birthday because we had told him why we were making the cake. That night David took our "I can Only Imagine" book from Noah's shelf and brought it to bed with him. He asked me to sing the song for him. (Sue sang this song for us at Noah's funeral and a dear friend gave us a book with the words to the song when Noah passed away). David said that he remembered Noah. "I remember sitting on the couch with Noah and having our picture taken.... but I don't remember everything." I told him it was okay not to remember everything... he was only 20 months old when Noah died.
Yesterday morning at 3:30am I woke up, realized it was February 8th and began to cry knowing my sweet Noah would be turning 4. I cuddled up with Jonathan and shared my tears a bit and then went back to sleep. After we got up for the day when the kids were having breakfast we looked through Noah's pictures together on the computer.
Jonathan and I were able to have a few more moments to ourselves in the morning while Grandpa watched the kids. It was nice to have some quiet time just the two of us. After watching the kids Rob then went home to prepare a family dinner and we gathered together to celebrate Noah's Birthday. (Thank you Grandpa Rob for taking this on last minute!)
After dinner when it was time to get the kids home to bed David started having a bit of a melt down. We thought it was just too much TV 11 too much dessert and it was passed bedtime. The melt down continued on our drive home. Jonathan put him in his bed and talked to him for quite a while. I went in to say goodnight and the real reason he was upset came out... he wanted Noah to be here with us. He even expressed his anger at God that Noah wasn't here. It is hard for all of us to understand but as David gets older and continues processing his brother's death he begins to grieve on new levels (we were told this often happens when small children lose someone they love). David wanted to go through Noah's pictures so I told him we could do that in the morning.
This morning we watched the "Sweet Sweet Baby" picture slide show that our NILMDTS photographer Jane put together for us. That's one slide show I will never get through without tears. The one line that got me most... at least today is... "Sweet Sweet Baby...can you save me?.. save me from a night without you... Sweet Sweet Baby, can you save me? The way that I am born to save you."
When we learned that Noah had Trisomy 13 and that he would not likely survive many people said that God chose me to be his mother (and I believe He did chose us to be Noah's parents just as He chose us to be David, Angeline, Samara, and this next Baby's parents)... and in a way we did "save him"... though the choice wasn't as easy or as black and white as it may have seemed. Though Noah is no longer here... though we haven't been "saved from a night without him" he did save us in many ways through the lessons we learned. I wish I could be saved from all the nights without my Baby Boy... and all the many nights still to come. In the nearly 4 years since Noah died we have "learned" how to go on through the difficult times, through the birthdays and anniversaries and holidays. Some things may seem easier but I've really noticed this year that one thing in particular gets harder. There are now 4 years that separate us from our time together... and next year there will be 5.

Walking

Samara took her first steps before she turned 1... during the Grey Cup! She is nearly 14 months and she is now walking as her primary mode of transportation, though she does still shuffle and crawl. With her brother and sister running around she has been nervous about getting knocked over. I'm looking forward to her becoming more independent and learning to walk with shoes on outside so that we can play in the back yard more easily. It's definitely too wet to be crawling around out there. Also with another baby on the way I want to be careful not to carry her around too much. This video doesn't really do it justice but she doesn't like to perform so we have been having some difficulty capturing it.

January

 January we started back into school after a two week Christmas break. We struggled getting back to our routine ate first but I really wasn't feeling well which didn't help. Here are some pictures of David's work to summerize what he accomplished this month. Even though we started off a bit slow we ended up covering a lot. The first 3 pictures are examples from SSRW. We do an excersize like this for each letter of the alphabet. Numbering the order of events was new. I've notised a big improvement in David when it asks to find things in the picture that start with a certain letter. We also covered rhyming words.

For each letter we also look through a magazine to find a picture that starts with that particular letter. David can do this on his own for the most part (with the exception of some difficult letters that I have trouble finding a picture for).

David has developed more patience for colouring. When we started this was his least favourite task and he would often rush it and only use one colour so I have noticed an improvement in this as well.

The above math pictures are review. The below example is of unit 14 which we just completed. The purpose of until 14 was to make sure 0-20 was well known. I found it funny to cover this now since in the past we have already been talking about hundreds. As February begins we are moving into until 15.

Besides an increased interest in colouring and drawing David has been eager to complete the alphabet. We will be completing Z today! Also we have been doing a lot of spelling words... David has been writing the month, day of the week, our address and phone number as well as his last name. He sells many words from memory and we are working on others. He continues to express enthusiasm for other languages and I should really be spending more time working on french with him. I think this will be a main focus this summer when we have a break from our regular school routine and hopefully I can incorporate it better next year... adding some actual french curriculum.