Week 5: Creating, Constructing, Cavities, and Cones of Snow

Dear Kiddos, 

This week was a fairly simple week filled with Chinese lessons, drawing lessons, martial arts, legos and too many snow cones. 

We decided to sign up for Arree Chung's creative art classes for the month of July. The first week has been illustrating. He does a good job helping kids practice seeing the shapes that are in the objects that they want to draw. 

This week the kids are making collages, and so far, they are having lots of fun doing it. 

We rearranged everyone's room last week and so I decided to tackle the organization of the legos that we have. First we are going to separate all the pieces by color and then within each color, we will separate into 4 categories: plates, bricks, slanty pieces, and miscellaneous. 

We've been sorting a little each day and we are finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. 

Since we gave Nathan's birthday present early, we decided to give you, Hannah your birthday present early as well so that you could spend time playing with it this summer. We got you a 12+ year old lego set and we prohibited Nathan from helping you out with it because he usually ends up just building it. But now, you are almost 6, you are definitely capable of building the set yourself. After a week of working on it 2 hours a day, you finally finished the set. Now the challenge is to keep that set complete. I'm hoping that including you guys in the sorting process will motivate you to not mix up the sets. 

Hailey, you also did some building. After watching an episode of Daniel tiger, where they made a spaceship out of a cardboard box, you wanted to make one too. So, we got together some materials and built a spaceship. 

You spent about 45 minutes decorating it. 

On Monday, we all went in to get our teeth cleaned. I was very impressed with the dental office's protocols to keep everyone safe. I knew I had a loose filling that needed to be fixed, and then they found 2 cavities in Hannah's 6 year molars. They said that the tooth came out with the filling already there. On Thursday, you and I went back to get the cavities filled/fixed. I was so proud at how brave and still you were during the whole procedure. The dentist assessed that your cavity wasn't too deep, so he didn't numb you before drilling and filling. At one point, for a brief moment, I saw you squeeze your eyes tight and hug your stuffie tightly. You were in pain and my heart just dropped. But luckily it ended quickly and I saw you relax. Afterwards, I asked you how much it hurt, you said, 99 to 100. Again, so proud. Hopefully this experience will encourage you to continue to take your time when brushing. 

We also created meals for Hope Austin's food bank. Packing 5 meals made me realize how much packaging is used for processed foods! 

We normally go out for ice cream after shots, so I decided that instead of ice cream for fillings, we would do home made snow cones. We made enough syrup to last for days, so we ended up having snow cones for afternoon snack for 4 days in a row. 

4th of July was probably the most uneventful one ever. We went out to cheer on the neighborhood parade of 8 decorated cars, which lasted less than a minute. The next day, we went on a bike ride in the morning and took a picture with the balloon display that was still up by the pool. 

Hailey, you've been kind of grumpy sometimes, especially when we tell you "no." Just yesterday, as you were throwing a temper tantrum and you didn't like the choices that we gave you, you asked to go to time out. This threw me for a loop, but I carried you to my room, set you on the bed and then let you have some time to yourself. A few minutes later, you called for hugs and you were ready to compromise. Does this mean the terrible 2's are over? 

Nathan, you've been sleeping with Hailey in her big bed for about a week now. I think both of you like keeping each other company, and I like it because I've not had to wake up in the middle of the night for a week now! I've had the most restful sleep this week than I've had the past 3 years! 

Well, COVID numbers look abysmal right now. School will start in a little over a month. There are so many unknowns right now still. I'm trying my best to make things as normal for you guys as possible, but I know that 2020 will just be a weird year. Hopefully 2021 will bring about some more normalcy. 

Until next week, 

Love, 

Mommy