Young Party of Four

And just like that... Will has officially finished his first year of school. This year he attended the same school that Kenzie attended for 3-year-olds and VPK. He was enrolled in the 2-year-old class. He started school a year earlier than Kenzie but at almost the same age. His birthday is in October so he misses the cut off for the year and consequently ends up being one of the oldest kids in his class. This year he may have even been the oldest. As a boy, we don't mind that necessarily and we think it was definitely beneficial for him this year. (Side note: Kenzie is typically one of the youngest so it is the opposite with her and we definitely see the "typical" girls being younger and boys being older argument playing out.) Will's end of the year picture sort of cracked me up. He looks so very sure of himself. This is such a change from the beginning of the year when he wasn't sure of what school would be like and although he knew he wanted to go, he was ...

It's official, in 2 days Will turns 3-and-a-half!!  Will is one of the most hilarious, silly, smart, and loving little guys I know. I can't believe this kid is closer to 4 now than he is 3. He is growing so fast. At 3-and-a-half, Will... Is getting so big! He has definitely hit some growth spurts lately. He is now 40.5 inches tall (85th percentile) and 33.6 pounds (51st percentile). He has also inherited the long legs gene as of right now. A lot of his height is in his legs. Wears mostly 4t shorts as boys shorts are long but his waist has to be smaller or adjustable. He is also wearing some kids' size 4-5 at this point, but the waists are huge on him usually. He wears 4t to 5t pants depending on the style and brand. His shirts are all 4t, 5t, or 4-5 in kids at this point. He wears a 10 in shoes mostly with a bit of growing room. Has been super healthy overall (except for an easy bout of the flu... he got it far less severe than the rest of us) despite ...

The kids have officially been in school for a little over a month (minus a week due to Hurricane Irma and her wrath... but that is another post for another time) and they are doing great! Will is blossoming in school. The more he goes, the happier I am with our decision to put him in a "year" earlier than Kenzie. Technically he is almost the same age she was when she started but because of how his birthday falls (especially compared to her), he is in a younger class. He is the oldest in the class, I think, but he is having a blast. I remember on his second day when I made it to his school a little early and planned to sit in the parking lot waiting for time to pick him up. His class was on the playground and he was running "with" his friends (they were mostly parallel playing but every now and then would interact some and it was adorable). He went down the big slide a bunch of times and waited in line to go down the smaller slide after some of his classmates. W...

This year we returned to Sunny Days Swim School and Ms. Shunda for the kids' swimming lessons. We are so glad we did. We seriously love Ms. Shunda. She is amazing. For anyone that hasn't heard about the kids' lessons before, she teaches Red Cross Certified lessons. It isn't the ISR type of lesson like a lot of children do. Instead, it teaches the kids how to swim and get themselves out of a pool if they fall in (like ISR) but also teaches the basics of beginning swimming such as the freestyle stroke, backstroke, and things like that to build up to more advanced skills later. I think ISR is great for most kids, but it didn't seem like the best fit for our kiddos. They both seem to do so well with the more "traditional" lessons but we required that they be one-on-one in the pool and still focused initially on survival skills. Being that both kids are still in the "preschool aquatics" section though so it is more about survival skills with the la...

Bear with me... this post is not only about Kenzie's final day at school but all the crazy things (they are just crazy to me because I can't believe that little 7 lbs 6 oz baby is about to be in kindergarten) leading up to it that are preparing her for being a kindergartener so it is a bit long. Aaaaannnnndddd... That's it. We have reached the end of an era for Kenzie. At least the end of a stage of sorts. We have officially left behind the preschool stage and are getting ready to embark on the "school age" section of her life. These last few weeks have been... emotional. About three weeks ago we took our happy selves over to the elementary school and attended the kindergarten orientation for our baby girl. Who isn't actually much of a "baby" anymore despite my protests. We were able to take a tour of the school and see some of the kindergarten classrooms, the specials classrooms, cafeteria, clinic, and media center. The kids were all given t...