The cutest thing is how into real food he is, he loves literally anything we give him to eat!!! Mostly mush at this point with a few pickles, but we have him a turkey sweet potato pouch and he was all about it. Cross your fingers we don't have another picky eater. He always tries to grab the spoon so he can feed himself, another great sign! He's learning not to shove it too far in haha.
Eating real food has contributed to better sleep at night, another benefit! He usually gives me a 5 or 6 hour stretch. He gets that sleeping gene from Spencer!
And he recently found his favorite toy - a baby exersaucer bouncer at laura's house. He bounced and bounced and loved that thing so I'm going to get him his own.
Elsie my big girl is such a great helper with the baby. She's already waaay too smart, and now her schooling is adding some book smarts to her common sense smarts. She's getting real proficient at formulating an argument if she desires something. And her memory is spot on, she has a visual memory like me. And hanging out with some 4 year olds at school has increased her interest in learning to read and write like the big kids, another great thing about the Montessori approach!
Spencer and I are definitely sold on the Montessori schools, as opposed to the traditional classroom where the kids are made to be robots and rule followers. Montessori is more open to what is best for the child and a child learns by playing and from other students as much as the teachers. And we have seen first hand the positive impact of having mixed ages in the classroom. Elsie is trying to emulate the big kids, but her teachers tell us she really enjoys helping the younger kids (2 year olds). Her teachers told us that as soon as she learns a lesson from the teachers and masters it, she wants to teach the younger kids how to do it. And she likes to help the little kids learn to go potty.
Madison has a publicly funded birth through high school Montessori academy that elsie was accepted to - Isthmus Montessori academy, so we will be switch to that next fall. Little bit larger of a school (about 150 kids), better school-parent communication, more parent involvement and hopefully a place elsie will be happy at for a while! Toad Hill has been really really great, but little things have really annoyed Spencer and I. For example, their website is really out of date and the calendar is never up to date, so it comes as a "surprise" when there will be a "Teacher Enrichment Day" (aka Elsie home from school). And even though it is a pandemic now, it has been sad to have had NO virtual meetings or ways to meet other families. Supposedly during normal times there would have been Fall, Winter, Spring Festivals, a fundraiser, some other things, and I don't see why they couldn't have switched to virtual events for this year. As it stands Spencer and I have met only like 1 or 2 other families in the school :(
The 4k program that Elsie will join is only publicly funded for half days, so we will cover the rest of the day (~$750 a month for the record). So more expensive than the school she is currently at, but once she's a kindergartener it will be through public funds, which will be nice for our finances!
It's been so great to get outside with the kids and enjoy our pond, and lots of neighborhood parks and playgrounds. My time at uw madison is winding down, i just want to finish a couple of papers and train some younger members then move on with my life. I hope to return to bench work when my kids are older but for now I look forward to new entrepreneurial adventures! Check out Betty-Makes.com
Spencer is killing it with his business, really been able to grow it with me helping more at home. And the house we live in is almost completely renovated, just a couple of bathrooms. Considering we bought it for 269k and it's now worth around 330k, not bad for a couple of months of hard work! We call this house the Leo house cuz we are already looking to buy another fixer upper and we will rent this one out. Eventually give this house to Leo and other house to Elsie as income properties when they are older and interested in passive income. The next "bee in Spencer's bonnet" is finding a BRRRR fixer-upper, or finding a vacation rental house.
Here's some pictures of the last month, look at those cuties :) A new tradition I've been doing with the kids is picking a new place to have a picnic each weekend. Spencer is busy every weekend with clients so Elsie, Leo and I have checked out a Dream Playground, a beach, and the zoo last weekend.
Got the bounce house out for the first time, grass is much greener now a couple of weeks later! And we installed the garden bed pretty close to there.
Spencer likes to carry Leo that way, and they visited me in the bedroom (aka my office). Leo likes to give me these side-smiles and really cute little grins.
Leo LOVES to swing, and big sister loves to gently push him!
I thought this was hilarious - someone is pretty judgy about our lawn. CALL ASAP!
Another cute Leo smile! And I'm obsessed with those pajama outfits, he has like 10 at this point. They are thin and not too tight, and have holes for the feet (aka no footies).
Smudgy baby sleeping face. Elsie made that artwork and it hangs in his bed.
Elsie and I made and Oreo cake = delicious!
Leo LOVES eating, mostly baby pouches at this point.
This happens pretty often around here :)
Elsie exploring the Dream Park in Sun Prairie.
She climbed this all by herself at the Pond Acewood Playground.
Big girl loves to swing HIGH!
Leo can't quite sit up but he loves to swing anyhow!
Elsie picks out pretty much all of her outfits these days :) I especially loved this one, and the best part was she showed me before she had put her shoes on, so she had to run and put them on. When she came back this is the picture I took of her in her favorite Frozen light up sandals that are too small and her feet hang off the front!
Silly face time
Bob Marley dance parties get everyone in a great mood ;)
Leo is gaining on her! <3 <3 <3
My mom and I's APQS Longarm machine was delivered and I assembled it! Woohoo! Now to learn how to use it and get some customers!
Elizabeth Hartman dinosaur design, kit that my mom bought me and I got assembled.
Picnic time :)
This is a hilarious story. This bird was sitting in the nest in our front yard tree being harassed by a squirrel, so I posted to reddit, "Look at this beauty, can anyone tell me what type of bird and why she's being harassed by a squirrel?" The first person that responded said, "That's a hawk, they like to land in squirrel nests and eat their babies".
Visit to Butterfly Lane to help Laura, Nathan, Lena, and Olivia move in to their new house!
That's a good one!
Grandma making him laugh, everyone always comments how smilely and friendly he is to everyone, which is totally true until he gets hungry :)
These two had a blast together!
Baby Olivia (5 weeks)
Baby Leo (my mini monster the size of an 18 month old <3) 6 months
I found the exact bouncer that Laura had, so I had no choice but to get it for him :)
Dad getting some baby laughs
Bath time, pretty soon he'll be sitting up and playing in this thing
