A Birthday and Other Milestones

Nick is six years old! We celebrated his birthday quietly at home, with a yummy chocolate pudding cake and a pinata. He was pretty amazed to see that his clothes still fit him, now that he is six and all, but he's pretty sure that the water in the swimming pool we frequently visit doesn't come up as high as it used to.

Please excuse Jacob's outfit. He'd spilled something on several outfits that day and ended up having to wear things that didn't match.

This is how Jonathan passed the time while we opened gifts.

Nick is really growing up into a young man. He started reading lessons this January, and now he's reading really well. He's enjoying Amelia Bedelia and Little Bear books from the library, and he can even read more difficult books when it's something he really wants to read. He and Jacob just started taking piano lessons, and I think he's going to do very well. He's also a loving big brother to both Jonathan and Micah. He gets me if he thinks they really need me, but when he can, he tries to make them happy and help them himself.

Speaking of Jonathan, he just started crawling and pulling himself into a standing position. For the first few days he only crawled a few feet when he saw a toy he wanted, but now he's started exploring everything he's been curious about for all this time.

This is him looking out the window while his brothers played in the backyard.

And this is him enjoying some quiet time under the table in the foyer.

It's back-to-school week around here, but we've been doing school all summer, so it's business-as-usual in our household. I just teach them the next thing they need to learn, regardless of their age or grade designation, but when people ask what grade they're in, we tell them that Jacob is starting second grade and Nick is starting first grade, since that's where they'd be based on the public school calendar. This week they'll be learning about British history, studying the geography of the Great Lakes area as we read "Paddle-to-the-Sea", learning from Aesop's fables, finishing up Charlotte's Web, studying King Solomon's reign and learning from the Proverbs in the Bible, charting the high temperature every day, and beginning a year-long study of astronomy. Jacob is working on some basic grammar, like punctuation at the end of sentences and capitalizing the first word and proper nouns. He's working on place value and beginning multiplication in math class. Nick is doing addition and subtraction for math. He's still working on proper letter formation for writing, but he's making a lot of progress.