Tough decisions.

I'm starting to find that as kids get older, the tougher the decisions get. I'm so thankful that God already knows their lives from start to finish and has a plan much bigger than me. But, I at least feel a duty to make wise, well thought out, and prayerful decisions about the things in their lives.

Micah turns 4 next month, and the need to make a decision about school is staring us right in the face. There are so many choices - public school, private school, montissory education, classical education, co-ops, home schooling, unschooling, etc. It makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Meanwhile, Micah is so super eager to learn things. And Katie is a little sponge right now, too. To take advantage of this fertile time, I've tried to start being delibrate in our plans each day. Here are some of the things we're trying (key word being trying)...

• Each morning we go for a walk. I try to plan something for the walk such as counting how many houses their are in our neighborhood or naming all the animals/insects we can find. The other morning, we got into a discussion about leaves falling from the tree. Micah wanted to know why they turned brown once they fell off. I explained how the leaf needs the tree for food and life.
• We're trying a book series called "The Code" by Nancy Hall. She has a book for preschoolers called "Get Ready for the Code" that helps learn letter sounds and how to write them.
• Target has these incredible $1 bargin bins that have flash cards and books for learning numbers and letters. I even found a Spiderman number book the other day. Micah thinks it's the coolest thing ever.

This education thing is a whole new world for me. So, I'm open to any suggestions for those of you who have been through this already! And I'm sure there will be plenty of posts in the coming years that reflect my many failures and few successes in the realm of education.

If you'd like to see one of our other learning adventures, check out Chris' You Tube video. This happened in our front yard on Friday:

Back to "normal".

A couple weeks ago, Katie was crawling up onto my lap on the couch and accidentally pushed my laptop crashing onto the floor. I tried to recusitate it, but it breathed it's last. It was a tough couple weeks, but after some diligent e-bay-ing, I'm back in business! :)

Micah and Katie have both had some pretty big milestones these past few weeks. Micah took his training wheels off two weeks ago. Go Micah! It was a rainy afternoon and we were on our way inside when Chris came walking out and non-challantly said, "Hey, Micah.. Wanna take your training wheels off?". He immediately said "No way, daddy!" Chris gently prodded him "What, are you a scardey cat??" And that's all it took. He immediately decided he had something to prove. Now, I'm not so sure that's the best way to get your kids to do something, so I'm certainly not condoning that approach. But, once Micah decided he wanted to do it, he was certainly determined. Within minutes, he was riding all by himself with little or no help. And for the past two weeks, he has been riding circles around the girls and I as we go for our morning walk.

And Katie has certainly made us proud these past few weeks. Having gone through this with two kids now, I think I'm beginning to realize that potty training is as much of a training for the kids as it is for the parents. I was personally a little scared of potty training a girl. Boys are easy; they can pretty much go anywhere. But, girls can't exactly do that and with my personal aversion to public restrooms, the thought of needing Katie to sit on one of those seats was beyond me. My other issue is that I'm always hesitant to draw that line in the sand and say "we are done with diapers". I try to dilly dally with not wearing diapers at home, but then putting them on if we go out, or putting them on when they go to bed. And it just doesn't work. It's too confusing for them. Once we quit trying to change the rules on Katie and we solved my aversion to public restrooms by bringing a toilet chair in the van, she easily took the reins and finished up the training. And now we're going on 4 weeks now with no diapers. She has been so proud of herself - she is officially a big girl! :)

In between bike riding and going potty, I've been busy doing some web design work. One for the infamous Rae Davies (http://www.thebirthcompany.com) and one for Med-Equip Solutions (this one will be online at http://www.med-equipsolutions.com next week).