Do Francis children just not like kindergarten??

Mia has recently expressed that she does not like school.  She has been requesting that I home school her next year or at least that she go to a different school.  When we ask her what the problem is she says that whenever she needs help no one has time to help her.  It isn't a social thing because she seems to be getting along great with all the kids she's loved all year.  I think part of it is that her teacher sucks and maybe part of it is just that public school sucks.  We are looking into all our options at this point.  There is a chance we could get a scholarship to this awesome montessori, but we would have to move to send her there.  There is also another school further away that we would have to move for, but it's not first on our list.  Another option is just to try switching her to another teacher's class to see if things improve.  Shelby says that a bad experience in kindergarten caused him to be jaded against school from the start and to have a 5 year old who doesn't want to go to school is horrible.  She's not miserable or suffering or anything, but she definitely is not thriving like we thought she would and I think it has a lot to do with the environment.  I scheduled a meeting with her teacher for tomorrow afternoon right after school to see if she has any recommendations for me to help Mia enjoy the school part of school more.  If nothing comes of that I may ask if she can be moved to another class to see if that makes a difference.  Otherwise, I guess we'll start looking more into private schools and possibly even home schooling I guess.  

The Joy of Sitting

  Lennon has been practicing and is improving his ability to sit back down from a standing position.  For a while now he has been standing and cruising around the place, but he always got frustrated and cried when he was ready to sit back down because he just didn't know how to stop standing.  It's so fun watching the wheels turn in his little head as he moves all his little muscles and maneuvers his way back down to the floor.  He is really enjoying the new freedom he has achieved.  Another good thing is that now if he wakes up in the middle of the night, I know that he can get back down and I don't have to go in and lay him back down anymore.  I'm looking forward to getting a full night's sleep again soon!  

First glimpse of friendship

Yesterday morning Mia and Lennon actually kind of played together for a minute.  She was playing with this little toy xylaphone (sp?)  and he would crawl across the room to get it and she would pick it up and move across the room.  Then he would laugh and crawl to wherever she had moved and so on.  They played like this while she moved back and forth across the room maybe 5 or 6 times.  It was really cute and Lennon was just laughing and really enjoying the game.  

Then today I took both kids to the science museum after church while Shelby napped because he was starting to feel sick.  Yes, again!!!  Anyway, we had a really good time.  Lennon actually explored some things on his own while Mia was doing her usual thing.  We sat all three together and explored different rocks and stones, examined sea shells and star fish and looked in a bee's view mirror that made it look like there were nine of each of us.  Lennon especially liked the mirror.  After Lennon and I pretty much followed Mia around for a while, she came with us into the under 12 months room and we played in there for quite some time.  Lennon really enjoyed himself and Mia crawled around on the floor with him showing him different new things to handle and yes, chew on.  I can't even imagine all the germs that were on them, but sometimes you just gotta chalk it up to building the immune system.  It was lots of fun, but after 3 hours Lennon had finally had enough and we headed home.  Unfortunately Shelby wasn't feeling any better and it actually looks like he is coming down with something pretty nasty.  I don't know what's going on around here, but if we don't all stop getting sick I'm going to start thinking it's something in the house.  

Attempt to recapture the past two weeks

Chapter One...

Okay, so let's back up to Monday, March 10.  Hillary and Jackson are coming for an awesome 10 day visit!  We are all soo excited to have them here.  However the trip starts off a little bumpy.  Hillary is running a little late for the plane, but manages to barely make it on.  Her luggage is not so lucky.  So she and Jackson arrive on time and then we have to make a second trip to the airport a few hours later to get her stuff.  The luggage is running a little late and she gets in the car with her stuff with ten minutes to spare before Mia gets out of school.  We make a mad dash out of the airport to Mia's school where Mia is ecstatic to see Hillary and Jackson.In the car Lennon is freaked out by the shrieks of joy Jackson is emitting and at the house he is suddenly drawn to anything Jackson has in his hands.  Is this a glimpse of things to come?  Mia loves giving Jackson a bottle on the couch and they catch up on their cuddles.   We then have about a one hour turn around before heading back out the door to ice skating lessons.  Mia was really excited to show Hillary all that she had learned.  Although Hillary was not to keen on the freezing temperature at which the rink is kept.  Still, she was a trooper and watched the whole lesson.  I got super dizzy while there and almost couldn't drive us home.  When we got home we made Mia dinner ordered wings for ourselves and put all the kids to bed.   Ahhhh...finally we took a breath and relaxed.  If only we had known what laid in store for us we might have taken more than one.  

Chapter 2

Monday night Jackson doesn't sleep well, but we assume that he is just adjusting to a new environment and he'll do better in the coming nights.  All day though he is just not himself.  The next two days nothing too eventful happens, but Jackson still seems a little off.  Again, we assume he'll adjust.  On Thursday Hillary and I take the babies to a free photo shoot for this company called HappyGreenBee.  It's an organic cotton clothing company that wants some free models basically.  It was in Cambridge and they dressed the babies up in their cute stuff and shot some pics.  Lennon did great  and smiled a lot, but he was so intent on crawling around that it was hard to catch him in the right spot for a photo.  When Jackson's turn rolled around he just sat there looking kind of sad.  This normally all smiled kid looked like his cat had just been hit by a truck.  We still stupidly assumed he was just tired or something.  Friday morning after another night of no sleep for Hillary or Jackson he starts barfing.  In the time that it took for me to take Shelby to the train and get back he had puked like 6 times.  We knew something was wrong.  Poor Jackson felt awful, but once he was in bed we started our much anticipated "sleepover" with Mia.  After dinner Hillary,Shelby,  Mia and I painted our nails- well, Shelby backed out of that part-,watched a movie and had big thick milkshakes!  Yum!  AFter teh movie mia fell asleep on the floor in front of the tv.  She must have been super tired cause she never does that.  This was the beginning of a beautiful weekend.  In the next three days all three kids and Hillary had a nasty stomach bug which left all kinds of stains on our carpet.  Thank goodness we rent, right!   The bright side to this day full of puke was that Shelby and I went to the Salvation Army and got some awesome stuff.  A beautiful dress for Mia for just $7 and some really cute black dress shoes for her for just $5.  Just when I thought Shelby and I were going to escape this thing he called from work Monday morning and said he just wasn't feeling right.  He ended up coming home early from work and sleeping almost 14 straight hours and feeling much better by the next morning.  Tuesday we were all feeling fine and Hillary and I went out with my girlfriends.  The next morning we all had a new kind of sickness.  More like the flu.  Nice!  Both babies were miserable and Hillary and I felt like we had been in a car accident.  Mia also was home from school because she had a fever of 102 the night before so I couldn't send her, although she seemed fine all day and had lots of energy and a regular appetite.  

By this time Hillary and Jackson's trip was nearing it's end.  They were supposed to leave on Friday and that was just a day away.  Where had all the time gone?  Oh yeah, in the toilet, on the floor, the couch...oh wait, that wasn't time, that was barf.  Anyway, luckily the airline changed their flights to Monday night and didn't charge a dime saying that anytime you change due to sickness there is no charge.  A good thing to keep in mind!  Yea!  We thought, three extra days and surely we'll all be well and feeling great by friday and the weekend will be awesome!

The Final Chapter

It was Good Friday and we had a second appointment at The Picture People to get Easter pics of the cousins since last weeks was a disaster due to the oncoming sickness.  By the end of the more than an hour of picture taking we realized that Jackson's ear had been hurting so bad that he had caused it to bleed from pulling at it so much!  That poor little guy just could not catch a break.  He had already cut two teeth in the time he had been here and it was looking like he might get another before the trips end.  So it looked like it was just not in the cards for us to get a cute picture of these three kids on this visit.  Oh well.  Jackson screamed in the car the whole way home.  I dropped Hill, Jax and Mia off at home and told Mia to take a nap cause she was acting kind of whiny.  I was going to go up to Shelby's office to see him give a presentation on his most recent project at school.  Well that was a total bust cause Lennon whined the whole way through the presentation.  Every time I walked in the room he would fuss and as soon as I walked out into the stairwell he would instantly quiet down.  I was really excited to hear about what he had spent so much time on and see the reactions of his coworkers and even one of the partners was there.  I was pretty bummed and I left to run by the store and go home.  As I was leaving the store Hillary called and said Mia just woke up from her nap screaming in agony.  Now she had an ear infection which made us wonder if Maybe the two babies had ear infections too.  Hill got Mia in a hot bath and she calmed down and I rushed home.  At home we treated all three kids with silver and ear oil, gave them tylenol and put them to bed as soon as possible.  I also called my doc and had him call in a prescription for some numbing ear drops that seemed to really help.  

The next day the kids all seemed to feel a little better.  We went to an Easter Egg hunt at The Brill's house with a few families from our Bible study.  It was super fun.  Suzanne made an awesome brunch with waffles, egg casseroles, fresh fruit, bacon, delicious muffins and juice.  The egg hunt was awesome!  There were like 250 hidden plastic eggs!  The kids had an awesome time and the babies played on the floor in the living room.  Later we had another ice skating lesson with Mia and it did not go well.  The new session is in a different rink and it was colder and she was upset to find out that her best friend from school was skating at a higher level than she was.  That night Mia had another fever of around 101 and went to bed early.  Easter morning Mia felt much better.  The Easter Bunny had visited our house and brought the kids lots of cool stuff including a Tinkerbell watch, new pinwheels, a dark chocolate bunny, a toy phone for Lennon, a stuffed bunny for Jackson and a new outfit.  Mia wasn't too into the hunting for egg thing.  I guess it's not as much fun when you are by yourself.  She did have a lot of fun coloring the eggs earlier in the week though.  Church was great.  Jessica, Ella and Diva came and Jessica's sister came with us as well.  Sunday night we went to bed early.  Well, all except Shelby who stayed up late working on a project.  It turned out it was lucky Hillary did extend her stay because around 3:30 AM Shelby sliced his hand open with a utility knife and I had to take him to the ER for what we thought would be stitches, but ended up being fixed with dermabond.  The attending doc was either drunk or just awoken, but he still got the job done I guess.  Shelby also had to have a tetanus booster and got a couple of tylenol, woohoo!  The good news was there was no major damage done, it was his left hand, and it was less than one hour from the time we left for the ER and the time we crawled into bed with the whole episode behind us.  Monday came so much faster than we ever imagined and we had to take Hillary and Jackson to the airport and say goodbye to them.  It was sad, but it had been such a whirlwind that it didn't sink in that they were gone until I got home and put the kids to bed.  I came out and realized I was all alone.  Shelby was at school and the house was quiet.  You would think I would have appreciated the nice quiet house, but I totally wished Hill was here with me to keep me company while I folded laundry or to do the dished she had done so often while here.  

Amazingly, we still had an awesome time together while they were here.  We laughed soo much.  About new things and old things.  Having a sister is pretty cool.  I think Lennon is super lucky to have a sister like Mia.  And I am pretty lucky to have a sister like Hillary.  

WILL THE SICKNESS NEVER END???!!??!? or..Mr. Magorium's vomit? Emporium??

It's day 12 and there is still sickness in the house.  There has been stomach virus, flu like symptoms, ear infections, new teeth in the babies, and more.  Tonight Mia had a fever, for the second time.  It was 101.3 and she generally felt crappy.  I am definitely taking both my kids in to see Dr. Coffey monday morning cause this is never ending.  I feel like I am living in an insane asylum right now.  There has been someone sick, crying, vomiting, having diarrhea, clinging to me clinging to Hillary, not sleeping, or just generally acting fussy every day for the last two weeks.  Happy Easter!  We did manage to have a really nice "sleepover" with Mia, Hillary, Shelby and me.  We rented Mr. Magoruim's Wonder Emporium and had cookies and cream milkshakes and nachos and painted our toenails.  All the left toes red and all the right toes green.  Shelby said he would paint one toenail just for Mia, but somehow managed to avoid having to do so.  Mia had an awesome time and then she slept in bed with me and Shelby.  The next day was full of barf.  Good times...  

What's happening right now?  Well, Lennon just woke up and cried for about half an hour.  I went in to him and comforted him as much as I could, but he still cried until just about five minutes ago.  Just before all this sickness he had started sleeping like a dream.  Twelve hours straight through the night without a peep.  The last four or five nights there has been at least one if not two or three awakenings and at least one middle of the night feeding.  What happened???  He may just be teething, or he may have an ear infection in which case I need to go into him and comfort him when he cries.  On the other hand, if the habit is just forming then I am really screwing up by going in every time he cries out.  I am pretty obviously delirious from all this sickness and non sleeping that has occurred lately, and need to go to bed.  Just wanted to update the blog since I hadn't been on in a while.  Mia is very excited about the Easter Bunny visiting tonight and looking forward to Ella, Diva and Jessica visiting church with us tomorrow morning -  that is assuming that we go if she isn't too sick to be in with the other children at church.  As Mia would say, Ay yi yi ( no clue on the spelling of that btw.)  Who knows where this plague has come from.  My only hope is that it disappears as quickly as it came upon us all.  

A few notes about Mia

These stories may be more interesting to me and Shelby than anyone else, but I wanted to record them on here so that I don't forget them.  Here goes...

We were watching a movie last night and the  main female character had really short hair.  In one of the first scenes she was sitting on a bus and it was pretty much just her in the shot.  Mia said "Is her hair short or am I crazy?"  I don't know why we all found it so funny, but Hillary, Shelby and I all cracked up.  

Earlier in this same day Mia was standing on a chair and I reminded her that we had discussed not standing on chairs and said something like, "let's please remember what chairs are supposed to be used for."  A few minutes later I was taking pictures of Jackson who had fallen asleep on Shelby's shoulder and I got up on the coffee table to get a better angle.  When I did Mia said to me - and not even in a snotty voice, just very matter of factly, "Mommy, let's remember what tables are used for!  For eating on."  It was hilarious!

Mia was talking to Gaga on the phone.  She was calling to check up on Jackson who had a stomach bug.  Mia told her that she and Lennon were starting to seem like maybe there were getting the same thing and had gotten it from Jackson and Gaga said jokingly, " well you should just wrap that all up and send it back to Jackson."  Mia replied "No, I'd rather be sick than Jackson."  Sooo sweet!  

I know there was some other story I wanted to add on here, but I can't remember it now.  This is why I should just hop on here the moment she says stuff like this and just record it, cause otherwise I often forget the cute and hilarious things she says.  Oh well, if/when I remember what it was I will just post it then.  

Cruisin' around town

Lennon is certainly not wasting any time getting moving.  He is already cruising around the furniture.  He went all the way around the changing table and turned the corner and was hanging on to a DVD tower when I had to stop him cause I was afraid he might pull it over on himself.  We are seriously going to start babyproofing stuff now.  We're going to have to attach everything to the wall and put all the little stuff waaaaay out of his reach.  I can't believe he is already pulling up and moving around!  The bad part is that now every time I lay him down in his crib he wants to practice standing up.  So naptime has been a little difficult, but it's coming along.  He took two great naps in his crib today and was in a pretty good mood all day which worked out well because we went to this thing at a store called Cambridge Naturals today where they were doing a free photo shoot.  There is an organic cotton clothing company called HappyGreenBee out of California - of course - and they are just basically trying to get free models I guess, but they did a free photo shoot of kids ages 0-3 in their line of clothes and then they will send us a 5x7 in the mail and also it will be downloadable on their website as soon as they get it all uploaded.  Lennon looked so cute and had his classic tongue poking out of mouth look.  Poor little Jackson though didn't have as good of a day.  We had to wake him up from a nap to make it on time for our appointment so he was not his usual smiley self.  It is sooo fun having Hillary and Jackson here!  The boys are so cute together.  Anything Jackson has is instantly more interesting to Lennon.  He will crawl across the room to get a piece of puzzle that he previously discarded if Jackson finds it interesting.  Luckily, Jackson is so easy going that Lennon can grab stuff out of his hands and he doesn't even notice.  He just moves on to the next thing that will inevitably be stolen by the older and yet smaller cousin.  

Mia is LOVING having both little babies around.  She is just so awesome.  They pull her hair and scratch her and she just laughs and gives them hugs and kisses.  Tomorrow we are going up to the mall to take some pictures of all the cousins together in their Easter clothes.  I'll post them as soon as I can.  

I just cannot believe Lennon is moving so fast.  Mia didn't crawl until she was 8 months old and then didn't walk until almost her first birthday.  This is craziness!  Although his Granmommy did apparently walk at like 7 months or something like that, so I guess if he's following in her footsteps then we can just expect good things from now on!  Kids are so fun!

OH also, with daylight savings time we are now putting Lennon to bed at 7 instead of 6 so now Shelby gets to see him at the end of the day when he gets home from work for a while.  He is loving it.  He was starting to get sad that he never got to see Lennon cause he was always in bed when he got home.  7 is so much better than 6.  6 was just soo early but he kind of put himself on that schedule early on.  Oh yeah, and Shelby just got an awesome mid semester review in his studio class.  Pasted below!

MID SEMESTER GRADES (PHASE ONE)

SHELBY FANCIS

EFFORT

HIGH PASS

PASS

LOW PASS

FAIL

CONTENT

HIGH PASS

PASS

LOW PASS

FAIL

This mid-semester grade is to inform you of your status after Phase One. If you continue to work and produce at

the same level in Phase Two, this will also be your final grade. Keep in mind that the Boathouse Project is

weighed more heavily and is a longer project than the Transformation Project, so you have the opportunity to

improve your grade substantially in Phase Two.

Shelby,

You have been very creative and rigorous throughout Phase One. You have so many ideas, and

are clearly willing to put in the time necessary to investigate and test them. Your drawing skills are also exceptional. These are great qualities to have as an architect. Your ability to “step out of the box” and be genuinely creative with your ideas and your presentation makes your work dynamic and exciting. You were successful at understanding the concepts put forth in the Translation Project and presented an innovative language through which to filter (test, understand) architecture. Our main criticism is that you tend to get ahead of yourself and lost in the vastness of information you generate. You rigorously measure and calculate and produce, but it is almost too fast for verbal explanation to catch up. This is not a problem, but just something to learn to harness. As you dive into the next project, make sure you remain cognoscente of being able to explain your work. You have all the tools necessary to be successful in Phase Two and are clearly passionate about architecture. We look forward to seeing what you can do for the Boathouse Project. We are here if you have any questions or issues and encourage you to come to us if you with any concerns you may have.

Chauncey Herman

Matt Morong 

Lennon Crawls on his hands and knees

For the first time ever, Lennon went from dragging himself across the ground with just his arms (sort of a modified army crawl, up on his hands, but not fully on his knees yet) to a full blown crawl up on his hands and knees. Coincidentally, Shelby had the camera rolling. Here's the clip...

Waving hello and goodbye

This morning Lennon waved to Shelby and did so a few more times and we thought maybe it was a fluke, but then at church he waved to several more people!  It's so exciting watching him learn new things.  I can't wait for his next new thing.  This age is soo fun!  

Mia only has one more soccer game until the spring season starts up in April and only two more ice skating lessons unless we sign her up for the next session.  She is starting to really do well at both and is also excited about trying new things when soccer is over at the end of the spring.  She wants to stay in ice skating if it's offered year round and she also wants to go back to gymnastics and try ballet again.  We love her sooo much!  I am constantly amazed that I am allowed to be her mother.  

Lentronadon

Lennon is changing so much.  Every day he has a new sound he's making or a new thing he can do.  He is pulling up on anything he can grab onto - especially if that something is ME!  He mostly likes to be held still, but he is doing so much crawling and so much standing up holding onto stuff.  It's crazy.  He's so big.  I had a doctor's appointment last week and I weighed with him and without him and according to that he is 22 pounds!!  Mia wasn't 22 pounds until she was like two and a half or maybe even more.  I'll have to check her baby book.  He's not a big fan of his saucer or baby einstein movies, as I had hoped, but I think we'll keep him anyway.  He's so cute and he eats everything in sight!  He can put away a whole banana faster than you could imagine.  He can't wait to spend some time with Jackson starting in just one more day!!!  And then Grandmommy is coming for a  quick visit in a little more than a month from now!  Yea!!!!  

Death of a Sea Monkey

Mia got a sea monkey habitat for Christmas and we just got around to fixing it all up now.  They started off kind of poorly and lasted only a few days before they were all dead.  Mia took the news pretty hard as you can see from the pictures.  She was really really sad, but luckily she has a Papa who loves her dearly and is sending her more sea monkeys - complete with sea monkey food and love potion to make them mate more apparently, and all kinds of sea monkey goodies.  She recovered quickly and is looking forward to another experiment.  Hopefully the next one goes a little bit better cause seeing her that sad is really really sad!  

Video Clip of Mia Rocking Out