Loving Autumn

I love autumn, I love almost everything about it. It just is different from summer and even though we still have hot weather during autumn, September is the second hottest month here, it feels different. It smells different even though I can't explain quite why. It looks different, the sunlight is different, the trees are changing a little, and the shadow angles are different. I love it. I love the burnt oranges and crimsons and all those autumny colors. I love adding pumpkin spice to our pancake and waffle mixes. They just taste so much warmer, know what I mean?? I love that the sun goes to bed earlier, it really helps us get our kids into bed more on time when the neighbor kids aren't out until 9 pm. I love autumn.

What's new?? Our baby boy is now one. He even took his first real steps on his first birthday and is now, a month later, walking more and more, but still crawls a lot. That is okay with me. The less falling down the better. He has mastered the stairs and is a whiz at sliding right down, so much so that he comes down STANDING UP on the top half!! Heart attack for sure and he won't go on his stomach until the third step on the bottom section when he can no longer reach the bars from the top section. That little boy is a climber and knows what a bike is for. He loves to climb on the smaller bikes and wait for us to push him. He is still a momma's boy, but I think it's fine, for now. Except for our neighbor, who has three boys, he let her hold him today for 20 minutes and wasn't super eager to leave her when I went to take him in the house. He likes her. At church it is a no-go for the young women who want to hold him, sorry girls. Oh, I've had to have a few hold him at times so that I could do something, I think he traumatized the girls, sorry. He is a beautiful boy, oh my. Just wait. He looks a lot like Cassidy and yet is looking more and more like Joe, but Cassidy doesn't look anything like Joe. Today he was wearing overalls and no shirt, can you say hillbilly?? But the cutest hillbilly ever!! His nickname is, my nickname for him anyway is, Stonewall Sean. He gets this determined look on his face with no emotion and just goes about his business. So fun.

Julia is such a cutie. Oh I love picking her up and receiving her awesome hugs. She still loves to walk around on her toes around the house, she is going to have some strong calf muscles. She loves to repeat whatever her sisters say and do whatever they do. Yet she is very much her own person. When she is by herself she is content to play quietly and when the girls are around she is such the adoring little sister. Oh and she loves Seany. It is fun to see them interact with each other. He loves her. Julia will even talk to him in that high pitched voice that we so often use with babies. Her nickname is jelly bean, and boo.

We started Joy School again three weeks ago. It is just Cassidy and Molly and another little boy who lives around the corner from us. Hoping for more kids next January. Julia joins us when we do it at our house. She surely doesn't understand a lot of the concepts but she is learning a lot of other things, and she loves doing it. I love how she talks about "Joy School".

Molly surprised us the other day by counting all the way to 14(or was is 17??). We haven't actively been working on it but we do a lot of counting when it fits with whatever we are doing and she obviously picked up on it. Julia did that too now that I think of it. Cassidy is figuring out the groups of tens. We just have to supply the next tens, ie thirty, forty... It is so fun to watch as they catch on to those kinds of things. We have been doing more "home economics" lately and the girls are slowly learning different skills and its great, so helpful. At times I feel like I am in a losing battle, it is me against four kids plus my own messed. Being so young I can't expect as much help from them as they are able to 'destroy' things. But we are working on it. I am working on making them responsible and making myself maintain my cool. I think I did well today, other days, not so well.

Joe had knee surgery last week and it's been a long 10 days, for everyone. He wishes that it would be healed already, sorry honey. He fractured his kneecap a few years ago and finally it interrupted his fun enough to do something about it. The surgery went well but there is only so much that the doctor can do for a fractured patella.  We are hoping for getting him back to 95% normalcy.