First 2 Weeks Of Kindergarten

We're two weeks in! Eli is enjoying it but I can tell he is wiped out by the end of each day because he starts to get pretty moody come bed time. He's been a trooper riding his bike to school every morning and I've been a trooper too running 2.6 miles every morning to get him there. For the most part we are rocking our morning routine. I wouldn't say I love it. I'd much prefer to sleep until 8/9, play with my babies all morning, get them dressed whenever and go about our day our way  but alas, we must grow up. Despite it not being my most favorite part about life I am pretty proud of how the mornings are going. Everyone is up and moving at a proper time. We've yet to run late. Lunches are mostly pre-made and everyone has everything they need to get Eli to school.

What do we need to get Eli to school? Oh, you'd think we were hiking Mount Everest. The girls both need a bowl of cheerios to eat on the way, each need ice water, Pell needs her book bag with her "lunch box" and a book in it. Eli needs his energy balls so we can stop half way and snack. He needs a drink for the ride, a drink for school, his lunch box, book bag, helmet and many bike accessories. It's quite a circus. I am sure the neighbors are entertained seeing us trotting down the road at 7:45 in the morning. 

Eli is meeting a few new friends. He says he enjoys his days but he has to do a lot of work. He's usually excited to tell me one or two fun things about the day before wanting to run to his room and play. At drop of in the morning he is pretty adorable. The music teacher helps with the car line and Eli always says "Hi Mr. Benson" in the sweetest little baby voice ever. There's rarely moments when I see pieces of "little" left in him but something about the way he says that is so cute. Before Eli goes into school we park his bike, he eats another energy ball, drinks some water & then I say a little prayer for him. Today he didn't think I was going to pray and he asked "What about my prayer?" so that made me happy but I wasn't going to forget it. After our quick prayer he gives Taylor & Pell both a kiss on the head and pat before running off to go in the school. 

Every time I see him go in the school I wish he didn't have to go in. Life seems to short for me to send him off for 7 hours a day but I hear I'll grow to love it so I guess I'll just wait for that time to come. The girls & I have been having a good time while Elis at school. I've made it a point to leave my phone away from me so I can focus on playing with them undistracted. They are so cute and we do have a good time. 

We're still working out the afternoon schedule. It interferes with nap time pretty annoyingly so Mark may make some tweaks with the work schedule and try to get done in time to pick Eli up. Overall, things are going well with this new schedule!

Christmas 2017

I wanted to write about our holiday season before Christmas came and gone and now we are well into January and I just decided I better throw a little out there before it all slips away and next Christmas came without any recording of our first Christmas with the 3 kids. I’ll start with Taylor since there’s the least to say. Taylor just started sitting in a high chair, her jumper, and eating little bits of baby food. I lugged her chunky booty to all of the festivites and she loved it. She is such an easy baby (though still not a great sleeper but she’s taken a turn for the better at 7.5 months) and she is all smiles being out and about. She wore her cute little Christmas outfits with her sister and enjoyed all the sights. I took the 3 of them to magnolia gardens festivites by myself and I felt so lucky to be able to do so. We own a retail store and I still got off many Saturdays during the festive time to spend with my sweet babies. Anyways, Taylor fell asleep in the carrier and Pell & Eli enjoyed the festivness even though it was 30 degrees and wet. We froze but rushed home, changed to warm clothes and cuddled up with hot chocolate, a movie, and some snacks. I’ll remmeber this day forever I think because it was such a nice time. It’ll just be one of the moments I look back on when the years have gone by too fast. We also did many other fun things. Saw the lights, went to many festivals, made lots of crafts, a gingerbread house. We did a countdown chain and had our chocolate countdown from Nana. We saw santa a few times, watched lots of christmas movies, and read plenty of Christmas stories. Every time christmas passes I wonder if I did enough to give the kids good memories to look back on. When I type it out it certainly seems like it but the month or so we celebrate seems to go so fast. Pell didn’t say a whole lot of words this christmas but she learned “snowman” and “santa” pretty well by the end of it. She liked Santa. She wasn’t about decorating cookies or gingerbread houses. The concept of decorating food and not eating it was a little out of her relm of understanding. She made crafts with us and did a good job and she participated in all festivites. She liked it all but wasn’t overly excited. Maybe festivals and all were a bit overwhelming or maybe she was just like “yeah, this is what it should be”. Who knows. She is super cute though. We rode around the block Christmas Eve night and she LOVED it. Just laughed and laughed with her cousins and Eli while she fell all ove the place in the back of the car. We didn’t make them buckle up and I sat back there with them. Eli loved every bit of festive things we did. He was always looking forward to frestivities and asking to do them. Every night he would talk about how excited he was for Christmas to come. He still wasn’t old enough to narrow down a great gift list for us but he knew he was getting gifts and he had a LONG list of things he continued to add to throughout the season. He knew who Santa was and he could get a little nervous and shy whenever we would go to meet santa. It was pretty cute. I know he lost a little sleep thinking about Christmas. He had a Christmas preformance at school and he did very good. We gave his class our seed characters with a feeder and he was so proud of his gift to his classmates. Christmas morning Eli was the first to get up and we walked passed Cj & Daniels gifts, straight to his and just stood there for a second shaking his hands with a huge smile on his face. He had to run upstairs to tell Cj to come down and the kids were all smiles looking at there gifts. Eli was THRILLED with his battle bots which is his current obbsession. The one struggle we had this year is that this was Elis first real memorable Christmas. He hardly remembered last year and couldn’t quite remember how it all went. The week of Christmas was so busy with our work schedule, family, and parties that he lost some of his manners. He kept wanting more gifts or being vocal about ones he didnt like (which changed quickly after a little talk) but the wanting more didn’t really stop and so I’m hoping we can work on this throughout the year. Overall, it was an amazing Christmas. We broke all kinds of records at the store this holiday season and still managed to create so many awesome family memories! It was nice to have family in town, especially all of Elis cousins. It just makes my heart to happy to see all the kids together and that Eli, Pell, & Taylor get to have cousins they know and love. It will be difficult to top this Christmas next year but I know we can do it. Eli will be that much more aware and so will Pell. Taylor will also be so cute and much more fun as well! Can’t wait!!! Danielle 

Eli Starts Kindergarten

Eli starts kindergarten. Our first summer is over. Both of these things are breaking my heart. I’ve been ignoring the fact that this day has been coming and drowning my sorrow in travels and fun filled days with my sweet babies all summer long. We’ve truly done it all this summer. Traveled many places, seen many new things, hit up all our favorite things, played with friends, played with family, got new toys, laughed, fought, but mostly stayed busy. I can probably count on my hands the days we just stayed home and did nothing and half of those were because we got hand, foot, mouth. I love taking our children to see new things but now that the day before kindergarten is just about over I can help but feel like I was just trying to squeeze in as much as I could before we enter this whole new world. I am sure it won’t seem as life changing or intense as I feel like it will be but right now I think of how much he will change. Next summer he won’t be the same child he is now. And every summer from here on out he’ll be different than the year before. I keep seeing a post around facebook about how you only get 18 summers. Only 18 summers and 5 of his are already gone. My heart can’t handle it but I know that’s life. I just pray that he finds good friends and has good teachers. I pray he’s surrounded by love and is happy. I pray that God shows me how to guide him through all the things he’ll be faced with from now until he graduates and even beyond that.

It seems so silly. I hope I look back and think this is silly. I just can’t help but feel like this is just another step towards loosing my baby. Kindergarten might go wonderfully but what about 1st grade? What about 2nd? What about 6th or 10th??? So honestly, this will probably be our easiest school year yet but that’s what hurts. It’s one step further from me that he takes and one step closer to the real world.

Eli’s determined to ride his bike to school every day so we will start that tomorrow. We had to get new training wheels for him today because we aren’t quite ready for without and the cheep ones he had before kept falling off. I have his lunch all packed and ready to go, and his school supplies has already been dropped off. Hopefully I can re-cap the day tomorrow. I hope I’ve gotten most of my tears out today so I can hold it together at drop-off tomorrow.