Sleep sitter?

Haha, poor Dequan. He went to sleep a little while ago but he keeps half waking up and when I check on him he's sitting up sleeping. I have never seen that before. :)

Here's a cute picture of Dequan from three days ago:

Javari and Dequan wore matching clothes at Javari's preschool Thanksgiving party:

Hihihi

Brothers

Yesterday was Thanksgiving and hubby went all out and bought a turkey and a ham. I was just gonna buy a few slices of turkey so I thought that was pretty ambitious, haha. I helped cook it though and we made a couple of easy sides. Hubby put some jams topped with marshmallows in the oven. He's the only one in our family who eats that. I can't even bring myself to try it. I put more effort into cooking the Christmas meal. For me it's very important that I uphold Swedish Christmas traditions and I buy all the typical Swedish Christmas food that I can find here. It's all about the food! Ok, family too. Last year I got the tree out like a day or two before Christmas Day. Dequan was born in November so that's my excuse! I promise I'll do better this year, although I hate putting the plastic tree together. It has too many pieces! Not to mention we have a 1-year-old now that will take all the decorations off so we can only decorate the top. That will be awfully pretty.

I did it again

Yep, I raised another crazy one.

Bonjour, Hola, Hej, Hello

The title represents all the languages that Hakeem and Javari were speaking/learning today. They had French class with a couple of other families, and when we came home we continued with Spanish videos and games, and Swedish songs and rhymes. After that the boys wanted to make up their own songs and draw pictures to them (like I did on my Swedish song cards, except I didn't make the songs up). Then they played with their Little People toys, which they haven't played with in a long time. I spent the whole day with the kids, only spent maybe an hour on the computer this morning and didn't get back on until after the kids went to bed. I can't remember the last time I spent this much time with the older ones. It was fun to learn something together. I need to focus on math with them someday too. I showed Hakeem how to do single digit multiplication last week and he got it right away. He hasn't had multiplication at school yet and he's in second grade so I was pretty amazed. I gave him several problems and he figured them out so fast. Way impressive! We used this website to generate lots of problems: http://mathfactcafe.com/ You can specify a range of numbers to include as well as how many problems you want on one page. You can print the page too but we didn't do that.

Yesterday we did a service project with the playgroup. We filled three shoe boxes with toys, hygiene items, candy, books and more for Operation Christmas Child. Tomorrow the kids and I will take the boxes to a nearby church for further distribution to various countries. I hope we can do more service projects like this one since it helps kids to get a sense of community and helping others.

The weather is pretty pissy so we'll be staying indoors a lot now. Perfect excuse to be learning something. I try to make learning fun with music, games, coloring, reading, movement, playing, imagination, etc. Formal learning is for school, at home you can make it informal and just plain fun. It is very important for Javari who is 4 that it is fun. If he has to sit still for a long time and do a lot of writing or answering questions he gets bored quick and just whines. It's also important to avoid testing at this age and to not test the kids at home. I like the Montessori teaching and how they avoid testing and too much instruction. They let the kids figure out a lot of things on their own. I would love to take a Montessori class to learn more, and I wonder if I could find some of the materials they use somewhere? It would be nice to have a couple of things at home.

Sorry, no pictures today but next time for sure. It's time for me to get some sleep. Hopefully the kids are worn out after everything today and wake up late tomorrow. I actually got 9 hours of sleep last night! It was much needed. Bonne nuit, Buenas noches, Godnatt, Good night.

Dequan's Birthday Party

I think I mentioned that Dequan's first birthday was last week. We celebrated it with a little party two days ago. We had planned to do it at the park but it was too windy so last minute we decided to do it at our house. It got a little crazy trying to tidy up before the guests came (I got some help from the first guests), and then it was pretty crowded in our little house with 6 adults and 16 kids! And the clean-up afterwards is always fun...play doh on the kids' bed, water on the floor, candy wrappers all over the kids' room, toys everywhere, leftover cake, dishes, etc. Well, at least nothing broke haha.

I took Dequan for his one year check-up yesterday. He didn't gain much since the last check-up, he weighs 23 lbs putting him in the 65th percentile. He got two shots, didn't like that of course. Today I took him to get his blood drawn as we're still trying to figure out what he's allergic to. His allergy levels were really high a few months ago and the doctor said yesterday that it's possible Dequan is allergic to many things, like pollen, milk, etc. I guess we'll see what the tests reveal soon so I try not to worry about it. Think positive thoughts for him.

Cute comment of the day from Javari: "This morning the baby loved me a lot!" Awww.... :)

And here are pics...

Dequan chilling on the floor the morning of the party.

Posing on the table.

Pizza time!

He took a little nap in the middle of his party.

Playing "red light, green light."

"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Dequan...."

See the cake? Home made by me, Swedish style of course.

"This is suspicious."

Checking out the new toys.

Crazy kids. :)

Hakeem wanted to cuddle.

Hubby.

At the Dr's office yesterday.

"He he, I might get in trouble for playing with the Dr's chair."

"This is fun!"

Sorry about the million pictures, it's hard to choose only a few. :)

Los pollitos

Believe it or not but I have a Spanish kids song stuck in my head. Los pollitos dicen pio pio pio....no stop! We have been talking about doing Spanish classes (and other languages) for the kids in the playgroup so tonight I found our Spanish activity book called "First Spanish" (from Scholastic). In it I had a couple of papers with Spanish and French songs that Hakeem got from a Spanish activity we went to when he was real little. I just love the Los Pollitos (little chicks) song. I sung it to Dequan a couple of times tonight and then it got stuck and it's replaying in my head over, and over, and over. Well just the first line because it's all I remember by heart, even worse! Here's the video. Watch the video and maybe it will get stuck in your head too, hehehe.



This one is totally cute too:



I'm sure you can tell which song this is:



Speaking of Spanish songs. The boys love La Bamba with Alvin and the Chipmunks. It's quite catchy, and screechy (like nails on the blackboard)! There's no way to avoid Spanish when you live here so you might as well just learn it. Hakeem has a few classmates who speak Spanish and he has Spanish class once a week (starting in first grade). And here is the song, cover your ears!

The Halloween weekend

This is late but here are a few pictures from the Halloween weekend.

Halloween party with the playgroup.

Activities included apple bobbing, pumpkin painting, a spooky craft, and more.

Mummy wrap.

Trick or treating at Home Depot.