I ran into Denise, a neighborhood friend who has 7 kids, one of which babysits our kids, at Publix this morning. She is one of those women who, as a newer mom, you want to follow around with a notepad to figure out everything she does so you can replicate it in hopes that your children will turn out as awesome as hers. I like her because she is very sweet and laid back but is also very honest about the struggles of parenting. I told her about how I was taken aback I was by my own emotions during Elek's kindergarten orientation last week. About how, as we sat at the cafeteria tables and I held my five year old's small hand in mine and the short "a day in the life of a kindergartner" movie started up, I struggled to hold back tears as I wondered how in the heck we were already here? We talked about how neither of us consider ourselves to be particularly emotional parents, but how sometimes, all of the sudden the reality of how quickly our kids are growing up and growing nearer independence creeps up on us and hits us hard. I told her how much I was enjoying this time in my life and how I would love to always have a 22 month old toddling around my house if I could. She said that she was always the same way. That she loved mothering her kids when they were little and would have loved to always have a baby on her hip if she could have too. Now that her oldest is a freshmen in college and her youngest is in 2nd grade, she says that she unfortunately has more bad days than good. That as hard as she tries she can't help but take her teenagers' not so kind words to heart and that their selfishness drives her nuts. As most experienced parents do, she parted with the advice to enjoy this time in my life because it goes so fast. She didn't know that I have heard this advice enough times to heed it. Sure there are times when I feel like I need my space from the constant demands of parenting but for the most part I do just wish that I could freeze this time in my life and stay here forever. I've got 3, gorgeous, smart, loving children and a husband who I feel so grateful to have snagged. Since I can't make time stand still, though, I will just have to come here as often as possible to document the day-to-day Lamoureux life so that one day I can look back and remember just how sweet it is.
The nitty gritty details of a (typical) week in the life of the lamoureux family:
Monday
8:15- 9:15am- wake up to the sounds of either beata or elek playing with augie in his room across the house, scramble to get all 3 kids dressed and fed, put snacks in back packs, and load all kids up to drive elek and b to school. walk each of them to their classrooms. augie likes to lead the way just to make sure that we know that he knows his way around.
9:15-10:15 - either leave augie with andrew and go work out at the beach access/go for a jog or come home and start cleaning or go grocery shopping. wake andrew up at some point within this time frame. he usually heads into work around 10 or 10:15.
10:15-11 - grocery shopping, cleaning, taking augie out to ride his strider bike in the street
11-12 - lap time at the library
12- pick up kids from school
12-2 - feed kids and andrew lunch, clean kitchen/house, elek gets to play his 30 minutes of war craft if he has earned it at school with good behavior
2-4 augie naps, clean house, prep dinner and hang with kids
4-5:15 -take kids to elek's soccer practice
5:15-6:45 - let kids play at flutie park with friends or go home and get dinner ready while kids play indoors or in the backyard
6:45 - 8:30 - andrew gets home, eat dinner, do dishes, if i didn't get to workout in the morning i will go for a short workout sometime after andrew gets home and before it gets dark, bath or shower kids, andrew brushes elek and b's teeth and we tag team augie's because he screams and squirms the whole time, play around in the living room as a family, andrew gives kids work to do
8:30- 9:15 - andrew reads harry potter to elek and b while i read and sing to augie in the rocking chair. then if the kids are still awake we switch rooms. andrew scratches augie's back and talks to him while he is in his crib and i go into elek and b's room and sing jesus loves me and "a wonderful woman lived in a shoe/she had so many children she knew exactly what to do/she held them she rocked them and tucked them in bed/i love you i love you is what she said" to each of them twice, one for each hand
9:15- 12:30 or 1- chill with andrew on the couch watching tv or talking. lately he has gone into work from about 10:30 to 1am.
12:30 or 1- go to sleep
Tuesday
- B stays home from school
- Usually meet up with friends (Amy, Jess, Lisa, Helen) and their kids at Ryckman park for lunch from 12:15- 2:15 or so
Wednesday
-Elek has soccer practice at 5
Thursday
- Our low-key day. No commitments other than school
Friday
- Kids are at lunch bunch till 3. Elek has a 5pm soccer game
Saturday/Sunday
- Beach, hang out with friends/neighbors, talk about all of the things we should be doing around the house but do more enjoyable things instead
One night each week we usually go out to dinner with the Hershmans for "taco tuesday." And typically in the evenings we do end up going to Orlando park to get some more fresh air.
In the past month or so Augie's vocabulary has exploded and in the past week or so he has started talking in 2 word phrases! Last night actually he pointed to the door and said, "mama door open." He can say "augie" and calls beata "B." He still struggles with Elek's name, calling him "Eh." It takes very few exposures to a word for him to pick it up now. This boy is semantic bootstrapping like crazy and it is so much fun to watch. Whereas in my last post I mentioned that he said "yeth" to everything you asked, his comprehension is now much better and he will be sure to tell you "no" if that is the answer your question warrants. He won Andrew's heart when he started saying "work work" while Elek was playing Warcraft one day. He is pretty good on the stider bike now. Not quite running on it but getting there. The best part is that no matter how many times he falls down he always gets right back up and tries again, almost always without even the slightest whimper. He is extremely tough. The other day he face planted in the mulch while swinging on his belly on the swing in the backyard. He cried pretty hard and had scratches all over his chin but the second that I kissed his boo boos he stopped crying, said "down" and wiggled his way out of my arms so that he could run right back to the swings and do it again. He will do anything his brother and sister do and is constantly watching them to make sure that he doesn't miss anything. Sometimes we like to mess with him by having B and Elek do silly things like wave their hands in the air to see how long it will take him to notice and start doing the same gesture. Usually it is not more than a couple moments before our little monkey is doing what he sees and the older kids crack up laughing! Augie can also be pretty aggressive. When he gets mad about not getting something he wants his first instinct is to run up and hit the person he believes is to blame. He also tends to greet Elek and Beata after school with a slap of some sort. He also likes pushing peoples' buttons. He knows that he will get a big reaction out of Elek if he turns off Warcraft in the middle of the game....so he does it...quite frequently and lands himself in time out. He is the same way with his friend Hayden, following him around even though he knows Hayden likes his space and grabbing at his snacks because he knows it will piss him off. If I had to guess I would say that Augie will grow up to be very social, a class clown, and super athletic....time will tell if these predictions are correct and it will be fun to find out!
Beata continues to be Beata :) Stubborn, lovable, and intelligent, all wrapped up into one adorable little brown eyed package. Her reading skills are seriously insane. She can pick up just about any printed material and power through it. Her teacher told me that she had only ever met one other 4 year old who could read. Not gonna lie, that made me feel proud. And the crazy part is that she was reading pretty darn well even at 3 and a half. B loves to pick out her clothes and brings me into her closet every night to have me take down what she wants to wear the next day. Usually she is so excited about it that she ends up wearing it to bed too. Unfortunately we have discovered that a drawback to a small class size is that there are fewer kids to relate to. On the night before they were supposed to go back to school after spring break B told me that Catherine and Izzy (the only two other girls in her class) never wanted to play with her and that they always said "go play with Thad and Ian (2 of the now 4 boys in her class)." When I asked her teacher about it the next day she said that they do sometimes leave her out that she thinks it is because, intellectually/maturity-wise, Beata is pretty far beyond them. Luckily on the playground she does seem to play well with kids in other classes and she gets along well with friends like Reagan, Emily, Kole, Aidan, and Rowan outside of school.
Elek continues to be my sweet, apple-cheeked, smart ass. He went through a period where he was being jerky toward Kole when they would play chess and was acting "too cool for school" in his classroom but has really improved his behavior since I made his screen time contingent on good reports from his teacher and kind behavior with friends. For a while he was also acting somewhat like a punk with his baby brother but in the past few weeks he has gotten much better with him, taking pride in watching out for his safety. His chess game is better than ever and he placed 1st in the k-1 under 500 group at the last tournament! We can't wait till next year when he can join the chess team at school because we know he is going to love learning alongside other kids. His obsession with warcraft is quite strong and he so looks forward to playing each day when he gets home from school. I try to limit is play time to 30 minutes each day but this is not easy to do when his dad loves playing with him too:) I think that he is really enjoying soccer a lot more this season, mostly because his coaches this time around are awesome. He has two practices and one game per week and it is easy to see that he and kole have improved a ton just since last season. As Elek told me today (because Andrew told him), B is good at reading really fast and passing over words that she doesn't know and Elek reads more slowly but always sounds out words that he is not familiar with.
Alright, not sure if it shows in my writing but I am fading. It is 12:10AM and I am running on empty! Will have to write another time about how my mom came with Liam and Sy for spring break this year and our plans to visit Grace in California in a month and a half.
Briefly though, we just wrapped up a great weekend last night. Friday night we went to Elek's soccer game and then met up with the Hershmans, Watsons, Harrels, and Moseleys at Ryckman for dinner in the park. Saturday we took it easy around the house and then went to Chris and Christena's house for a BBQ dinner and pool time. On Sunday I worked out, Andrew went in to work, and then we cooked out on the beach with the Callahans...hotdogs, watermelon, smores and all! Did I mention that I would love to freeze this time in my life? ;)
