Asher shoving a fresh-from-the-ground Tic Tac that I thought I had taken away. I think he decided to go for it again when he saw me trying to take his picture and knew I couldn't get to him quick enough to take it away again. 20 month olds are way smarter than I give them credit for....
Eli has increased his pool bravery 100 fold. He's always been nervous around the water and swimming lessons this spring at the indoor pool only made it worse. Once his teacher tried to get him to put has face in the water and blow bubbles, it was all over. He wouldn't go back to lessons again. So I was really surprised when he, all on his own, started going down the tube slide in the kiddie pool. He must go down that slide over 100 times each time we've gone swimming this summer. He always wants me to watch him and give him the "thumbs up" when comes out the bottom of the slide into the pool. He still grins from ear to ear, most likely the result of the satisfaction of having overcome a huge fear of his.
Eli is so proud of himself for conquering the tube slide at the pool!
While at an ice cream shop, Grandpa Fotheringham was trying to explain to the boys what a "brain freeze" is. Eli, who was still obviously pondering over the concept, later said, "I want a free brain." Don't we all....
When I was driving Oakley to school yesterday, we passed a grandma out in her yard doing some work and she had a scarf tied around her head. Oakley said, "Have you noticed that when grandmas work outside they like to have a little something tied around their head?" What six-year-old talks like that?!?!?! Only our Oakley....
Montessori Learning Center runs year-round. So Oakley graduated from Deerfield Elementary Kindergarten on Friday, May 30th and started Montessori on Monday, June 2nd. Although resistant to the idea of going to summer school in the beginning, Oakley is resistant to any change actually, he runs right in every morning. There is the occasional grumbling, but I have no doubt this is the best situation for him and I am amazed at all that he is learning and he’s finally being challenged after a year of coasting along in kindergarten. Montessori teaches cursive before print, so Oakley has been working really hard on his penmanship. I can’t believe the improvement in just a couple of weeks! Writing has always been a huge challenge for Oakley- most fine-motor things are for him. But with all of the one-on-one he’s getting, the improvements are amazing.
Their system of teaching reading and writing is so completely different from anything that I ever learned, I’m learning right along with Oakley. Scott and I love reading on the back of the flash cards and learning all these things about the English language that we never knew. We’re starting to read the Chronicles of Narnia together. I don’t know that I’ve ever read ‘the Magician Nephew” before and am loving it as much as Oakley. Reading is my one-on-one activity I try to do each day with the boys. For Eli and Asher, I read to them individually before they take their nap. With Oakley, I read to him at night before he goes to bed.
I thought that I was going to be so relieved when Oakley was in school and occupied all day. I was exhausted and guilt-ridden that I wasn’t doing enough with him during the day, so I thought it would be a huge relief when school was keeping his brain engaged for most of the day. Now that Oakley is in school from 9:00 – 3:30 every day what I’ve discovered is the huge change it is. I feel like I have hardly any time with him now. We went from one extreme to the other. I, surprisingly, really miss having Oakley home more. I promise you no one is more shocked than I. I thought this was the situation I have been dreaming of for years. The house with the golden windows really isn’t all that I thought it would be. Lesson learned! I will not wish Eli and Asher in school any sooner than they’re going to be. It will come soon enough….
Now I spend time thinking how Oakley is under the influence of ‘the world’ more hours of the day than he is with me and I wonder, “What should I have taught him that I haven’t already?” “Is he going to choose good friends?” “Is he standing up for what he knows is right?” In motherhood there are no “re-do’s” so I’m trying to take confidence in my attempts to teach my children to make good choices and choose the right. If I’m this concerned about my six-year-old, I can only imagine how many sleepless nights are in my future as Oakley actually starts driving a car, dating, etc. sigh… there is no bigger incentive for weekly Family Home Evening and daily family scripture reading that having your oldest child start attending school all day…..
Our Oakley is one bright child. And I’m not saying this just because I’m his Mom; we have the numbers to back it up. During his kindergarten year we came to the conclusion that Oakley needed something more than public school had to offer. I think that public education works for 80% of kids. As Oakley’s mother, I felt very strongly that I needed to do all within my power to help Oakley foster this gift he has been given. Since Oakley started preschool at 2 ½, his teachers kept telling me how intelligent he was, I just smiled and nodded my head – figuring they said this to all mothers. Also, because Oakley is our first child, we figured all kids did what he did. I thought all 18 month olds had the books their mothers read to them memorized. I thought all babies would sit and willingly be read to for over an hour from the time they were a few months old. I didn’t have anything else to compare it to, so I thought it was the norm. As all mothers do, I taught him his letters and the sounds they make starting when he was about two. I figured that’s as far as I needed to go because I didn’t want to be one of those neurotic mothers who was teaching their three year old Greek. I knew he needed to know his letters, colors, numbers, etc. before kindergarten and that’s as far as I wanted to go because I didn’t want him bored in kindergarten. Then at age three he started asking me, “Does this say…..” on words he’d see on the cereal box, in his books, on signs, etc. and HE’D BE RIGHT. Yes, Oakley totally taught himself to read at three years old. I can take absolutely no credit, no one iota – he figured it out himself. When I went to October Parent-Teacher Conference and his teacher told me he had already tested out of all the reading materials for kindergarten, I was a bit concerned. So what was he doing in kindergarten then? There didn’t seem to be any attempt to get him more material. That’s when I knew it was time to start looking into private schools.
As I began asking friends who had their children in private and charter schools about their children’s experiences, I still felt so unsure about what to do. I don’t know how I would have ever made a final decision had it not been for the incredibly strong confirmation Scott and I both received after touring the Montessori Learning Center. The director was amazing and that’s what impressed us most in the beginning. As we learned more about the curriculum and how the classroom was set up and all the detail, we just felt better and better about it. We toured other schools, talked to more parents, and neither of us ever felt once that there was a better place that our Oakley could be. As soon as the doubts about how we could afford the tuition, all of the driving involved, what about having friends in the neighborhood – neither of us could deny the powerful impression we had that this was the best place for Oakley.
Camping- it’s one of those things we do because the kids love it so much! I like camping, too, I just don’t like being the Mom who is in charge of getting all of the equipment packed; the meals figured out, food bought, and prepared as much in advance as possible to make things easier while out in the wild; and the unpacking, endless laundry, and having dirt-filled boogers for days after getting home. My parents planned a week-long trip to
Asher checks out the fish Oakley caught
The thing I most appreciated about this trip was the time I was actually able to spend interacting with my kids. I didn’t get frustrated when Eli, for the 587th time that day says, “Look at me, Mom!” or when Asher wants to go on a walk or Oakley wants to play a game or the kids want to go to the play area to be pushed on the swing compared to while at home and trying in vain to get something accomplished, these requests sometimes, unfortunately, get annoying. At Palisade, because the pressures of home life are removed, I can just enjoy my children instead of trying to move down the to-do list that is always endless.
I tried my hand at fishing, with no luck. Oakley was the only one able to actually catch the tiny fish swimming in the Lake.
Our two mighty fishermen
I am trying to incorporate more “forgetting of the to-do list and enjoying my children while they’re still young and want to spend time with me” now that we’re at home. But I think it will continue to be a balance that I struggle with forever…
Eli - The Digger of Sand
Asher gets a free ride from Dad
Grandma always has lots of crafts to do
Oakley shows off his Rock Pet he made with Grandma
Asher entertained himself for the majority of the time throwing rocks in the Lake
We were so proud of Oakley when he learned to "Man his own Kayak"
The ducks were always glad to see us show up with some bread to share
And the real reason for it all ...
Asher's face says it all - there just comes a point where we all know it's TIME TO GO HOME and sleep in our beds and get in a shower you don't have to wear flip-flops in.
Eli entertained himself on the way home by trying on his teddy bears clothes. The red tank top fits his bear much better!What would possess someone to take three children, ages 6, 4, and 1, load them into the car, and actually take them inside an actual place of business? DESPERATION! On Monday (
We repeated the process of handing the pharmacy employee our prescription and coupon. She smiled kindly with this look of “You poor, poor woman – having to take all three of those boys to the store” and told us it should just be about ten minutes. Music to my ears! I figured I could keep them entertained for that long. Who was I kidding?!?! The next ten minutes included shouting matches between Oakley and Eli over whose turn it was to have their blood pressure checked at the pharmacy's machine; all 30 walking canes being taken down and strewn all over the pharmacy, being used as swords for duals with both the willing and unwilling participant; each humidifier taken off the shelf and checked out for it’s amazing features; and multiple drug remedies tested for their aerodynamic abilities.
I’m sure as quickly as was humanly possible, the prescription was ready and the technician rang us up, handed us our bad, and said, “Have a nice night,” with this look in her eyes like “Yea right, like that will happen with your wild Indians.” Because I don’t usually shop at Shop Ko and knew I would place the gift card in my wallet and forget about it for years, I decided we’d pick up a few flats of flowers and be on our way. We needed the flowers and there was a register outside in the garden area to pay for purchases. Again, in my faulty thinking, I thought, “at least we’ll be outside, what more damage could be done?” I was about to find out. Eli helped me pick out the colors of flowers he liked while Asher immediately picked out the mud puddles he liked. Oakley wanted to “play store” and was pushing trying to climb behind the register. I started looking around for the clerk as a gray-haired couple found great entertainment watching how quickly Asher was covered in mud, Eli was running around adding all kinds of flowers to the cart as I kept telling him “We don’t need any more flowers” and he kept saying, “But I love this one, too!”, and Oakley kept insisting he could be the clerk and I could pay him for the flowers. I finally found the teenage boy who was working in the
I am not giving in to peer pressure. Even though all of my friends have a blog and have tried to convince me I need to start one, that is not the reason for the creation of the Beeson Bunch BlogSpot. After all, why would I add something else to my already endless “to-do” list? Actually, at this season of my life, my to-do list basically consists of keeping three wild monkeys/boys alive and happy. That pretty much consumes 98% of my day. The other 2% I try to spend cleaning our home, maintaining family finances, and trying to preserve some contact with the outside world of friends and extended family. No, the reason for the invention of the Beeson Bunch BlogSpot is that I heard blogs can be printed and bound into a book. This is especially important to me since I am an absolute failure when it comes to keeping any kind of journal or personal history of mine or my family’s life. My hope is that the darling things my children say that are forgotten a few days later will be recorded on this blog. Or the crazy things that seem to happen on a very regular basis with three young boys in the home will also be made note of. At the time, these crazy life experiences can seem frustrating and overwhelming. But I know that at some future time they will be seen as humorous and will bring about a chuckle as I’m old and gray.
This is my desire and motivation for starting this blog. I can’t imagine others will find it that interesting or exciting, but all are welcome to view it who would like to. For me, it is more of an opportunity to make record of the outrageous, fantastic, bizarre, comical, charming, endearing, tiring, once-in-a-lifetime, strenuous, and meaning-of-life events that occur daily at the Beeson Household.
