In the bleak midwinter

The biggest news around here is that James no longer takes naps. On January 27 approximately 12:52 pm James climbed out of his crib, walked down the stairs to hand me a Lego car he built for me and then said he was going back to bed. He did not go back to bed. Well maybe he climbed back in but he must have climbed back out because I heard him quietly playing in his room for the next hour until he got bored then came downstairs and acted like my universe wasn't completely destroyed.

We switched the kids rooms around that night. James and Erica switched places so now the boys share a room. Erica is now sleeping in the crib we converted to a toddler bed. It's tiny but it's all her own so she doesn't care one bit. Henry still shares a room but James is much tidier than Erica (James puts his dirty clothes in the basket) so he's happy. 

Here's Erica's room now. It's always been the baby room and will have the rocking chair in there until I find another place for it.

A side-by-side comparison of how it usually looks versus how it looks clean.

This is the boys' room.

It took me a week to realize I can go places in the afternoon.

James wakes up super early like Henry does. Which means James is bear from 2pm on and I have to be watchful that he doesn't fall asleep somewhere in the house or while we're driving. If I can keep him awake, he crashes at 7pm so that makes bedtime simpler.

He's my little bud and I will miss this age so much.

On Fridays I help in Erica's class for an hour. On our way out of the building James and I saw Henry in the hall. We loudly whispered his name but he didn't near us so I took a picture instead so I could show him later that I saw him.

Cold, muddy, or snowy days means we get out the table tunnel.

They play together nicely for the most part but there is some head bonking once in a while.

In an effort to simplify my life, I no longer pay my kids each week for their jobs or have different rewards that they can choose from. They are very good at doing their jobs because they know that can't do anything they want to do until they do. Instead, at the end of the month we go out to do something fun as a family. For January we went to an ice cream shop called Eli's in Payson that sells Aggie and BYU ice cream. It was perfect!

On Thursday Sarah was recognized at the school's student of the month ceremony.

We braved the snowy roads to get to the school at 8:15, ate doughnuts and juice and listened to all the teachers in the school brag about their student of the month.

 Her teacher talked about how hard Sarah works and how she always does her best work. James ran up in the middle to give her a hug.

 The smart girl that she is, she saw the typo on her certificate. Can you?

This is what it looked like that afternoon. Ironically, the schools weren't closed like they were on Monday and we had way more snow.

Today was the 5th grade wax museum. Sarah was Ruth Wakefield, the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie and a true American hero, if you ask me. She said she got really tired holding this pose for most of the day.

Erica's birthday was also this week but I'll save that for a separate post.