I still work from home Wednesday mornings so I don’t miss Natalie’s deaf ed therapy sessions. One of the upsides is getting to see all of the kids in the morning if I don’t have any early meetings.
This morning I ventured out to chat with the boys while they were finishing up breakfast and I surprised this guy. Don’t ask me why he was Mr. Sock Hands this morning, it wasn’t even the least bit cold. Maybe he is trying to imagine what it is like to be a lobster? A penguin? Who knows!
We had a little bit of time to kill that evening and three antsy kids. So instead of throwing electronics at them, I decided to pull out some art supplies and let them go crazy. They were super excited about getting to paint!
Especially this girl and her abstract design! I guess we haven’t done much painting with her lately. (In my defense, everything seemed overwhelming the past few months and even dealing with paint was too much…) But given how much she is enjoying it, we’ll have to try and pull it out more!
Thomas art is so neat these days. Natalie reached over and smeared some blue on his side. He just decided to incorporate her oops into his design.
(Which was much better than the expected freak out!)
Henry decided to make a giant one-eyed monster. Natalie also tried to help him and he had to incorporate her help. I guess they were playing nicely with the crazy painter since she was so excited about painting with them!
We finally killed enough time to the event of the evening. The usual International Festival their school holds was clearly impossible this year, so they pivoted to an International Car Parade. The PTA planned the route to hit as many of the neighborhoods as possible, but we had to walk down to the end of the block to see it.
But the kids decided it was worth the effort - they cheered for all of the 60+ cars! We got extra cheering time since the light kept cutting the parade every time it changed. It really is a terrible light for getting out of the neighborhood…
But the best part of the week was when Nonni arrived! I know we’ve seen her a few times recently, but we are clearly making up for sooooo much lost time. She also looks pretty happy to be hanging out with us again. ;)
I actually needed help because Neema needed a day off and I couldn’t easily miss that day at work. Nonni to the rescue!
Halloween was quickly approaching and I hadn’t even thought about decorations. But Henry and Thomas found the stash of Halloween stuff I put away last year - including these Halloween foam houses that I bought on clearance in November last year. So they pulled them out to put together this weekend.
I swear I have amnesia with these things and how much I hate putting them together. Thomas managed to get most of it on his own, but still needed some parental intervention. Also, they absolutely love these things, so that’s probably why I keep forgetting and buying them again…
The planned Ear Community picnics were all switched to virtual this year, which was a bummer since there was going to be a Houston one! I wasn’t as excited about the virtual one, but decided to call in and be supportive. It was actually pretty good and even had one of Natalie’s ENTs as a presenter. It was really neat to hear some of the stories about how some of the families with older kids didn’t know anyone else with microtia growing up and how easy it is for us to connect these days. :)
She’s doing soooo well on the balance bike that Matt wanted to let her have a try on a pedal bike. So we lowered the seat on Henry’s as much as we could and let her try it out. She wasn’t quite as excited about the concept as we were, but it was still pretty big for her.
Guess we’ll just need to see what pedal bikes we can find in her size and try again!