Our church of choice during the shelter at home orders is St Michael's in Whittier. We tried a couple of different services and I think that's where we've finally landed. Of course, if you'd asked me this question each of the last three Sundays, you would have gotten a different answer each week. So we'll see.
Matthias loves to read books. When the big girls were still at school, he and I read most days for 30-60 minutes at a time, often multiple times per day. He would ask me to read one book and then when I sat down on the couch would run to grab more, yelling, "I'll be right back! I'm getting more books." Then he'd return, laden with as many books as he could carry saying, "I have lotsanough." Now that we're holding school in our dining room, my reading time with Matthias has suffered. :(
Another thing that has suffered is my viola playing. I had a good practice thing going, but now I just don't fit it in anymore. Some of that is because I have to spend time helping/nagging the girls. Some of it is because Theodore has finally come into his own with naps and is taking two solid naps each day -- in my room. Yay naps, but my viola is inaccessible during that time.
I have tried several times to move Theodore into Matthias's room, but something has always happened to make him end up back in the oratory. Most recently, Matthias has been complaining that Theo wakes him up. That's not strictly true. Theodore does not wake Matthias up if the latter is already sleeping, but he DOES keep him from falling asleep. The stoic distress of the two year old is quite apparent, so we decided to keep Theodore in our room until he goes to sleep better at night. Despite this, Matthias still gets slightly panicked if I bring Theo in the bedroom at bedtime, even if it's just for a new diaper.
We've been playing a lot of games over here. The big girls learned to play Mastermind and really enjoy it. They've also pulled out Forbidden Island a couple of times. I taught Olivia to play Bananagrams with marginal success. She likes it enough to play again, but she definitely struggles with seeing options and with being flexible enough to rearrange. Kaitlyn's game of choice right now is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which is a simple game that ends when you build a butterfly out of puzzle pieces. Sometimes she plays the game and sometimes she just builds all the puzzles. Matthias has been enjoying Sequence for Kids, so those pieces are often scattered all over the floor. Other games that see a lot of use include Hullabaloo and Spot It.
Theodore continues to improve his purposeful movement. His current frustration is that he goes backwards quite well, which is not at all what he's trying to accomplish. He still hasn't mastered crawling, but he rolls and scoots and tries to capture bits of whatever he can find on the floor. Luckily for us, his pincer grip hasn't developed yet, so we have a little bit of time to up our keep-things-off-the-floor game. The older kids and I had a meeting during one of his naps to discuss how if it is on the floor, Theodore WILL eat it. I'm not sure if the take away was everything I wanted it to be, but I did get to watch all four of them simultaneously rocking on hands and knees to demonstrate how Theo tries to crawl, so there's that.
Theo is our worst teether. When his bottom two teeth were coming in his sleep suffered and I ended up having to use Tylenol to help him calm down enough to go back to sleep in the middle of the night. Now his top teeth are coming in and he's been waking up screaming again. Friday night was Tylenol again in the middle of the night and about an hour of walking and singing while he whimpered on my shoulder before I was able to nurse him and put him down. On Saturday morning his teeth were through, though, so maybe we're in the clear until the next set comes.
Matthias is over sistered and under napped. The poor guy just starts the day cranky and needs time alone to recover. If I catch him early then I can convince him to take some time alone in his room with his train tracks and he comes out in a much better mood. He could still use a daily nap, but he often doesn't fall asleep, so his regular nap has fallen by the wayside. He gets one once or twice a week when I can't handle the whining anymore.
Theodore's hair was in his eyes all the time, so I finally trimmed his bangs. 7 month olds are not known for their ability to sit still (or even sit, necessarily, especially when they don't get to practice much because they're much safer from older siblings if they're prone) which made it a bit of an adventure. That combined with my lack of confidence for little boy haircuts in general led me to decide to just quickly snip his bangs. Now he has a baby bowl cut and Bryan thinks he looks like a little girl from the 60s. :/
Pictures:
"Flying" a kite by running and using a short string:
Mom and Theo:
Olivia sewing:
Bananagrams:
Art time:
Gretchen reading:
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