Routine

We are settling into our new routine! I'm a scheduler and a planner so for me it is nice to have a routine again.

As most of you know, Miles is a September baby which means we have/had some preschool related issues to decide on. Do we start him in preschool when he is almost 3 and continue him in preschool until he starts kindergarten, which for him will be when he is almost 6 OR do we wait another year and start him in preschool when he is almost 4 and give him the typical two years of preschool that most kids get? 

Miles has a lot of energy and gets bored rather quickly at home. After we moved here I started looking for things that we could do to fill some of our time. So far I haven't been able to find as many opportunities for toddlers here as there are in Utah. Also I'm unaware of a playgroup for transracial adoptive families which we really enjoyed being a part of in Utah. With time I'm sure we'll find similar things here in Kansas. So, this brought me to the idea of maybe just going ahead and starting him in preschool. I wasn't entirely sure this would even be an option since he doesn't turn 3 until 9/14 so I started calling around. I found a preschool offered through the Presbyterian church that is licensed for 2 1/2-year-olds and they still had openings for their morning 3-year-old classroom. Yippee! The only stipulation was that they have to be well on their way to being potty trained. I found this program exactly two weeks before school started and began working very hard with Miles on potty training. After about a week or so I emailed the teacher to tell her where we stood (Miles was doing really well) and she suggested we give it a try and if it turned out to be too much for Miles or them, we could reconsider. He had an accident each day the first week (he goes twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays), but didn't have an accident yesterday. I'm crossing my fingers that he continues to do well at school because you can tell he is loving it and learning so much even though it has only been three days so far. When I drop him off he says, "Bye Mom!" and runs off to play. That doesn't happen anywhere else (like at church for example). Yesterday they made volcanoes and he talked about that the rest of the day!

This first picture cracks me up! I told him to sit on the steps so mom could take a picture of him on his first day of school. He HATES to have his picture taken so he wasn't very happy about it. At this point I also don't think he knew what "school" meant exactly.

I then told him if he would cooperate and let me take a picture of him that he could then go and play with toys and other kids. That seemed to do the trick. He started jumping up and down in excitement.

An attempt to get a picture of him in front of his preschool's sign, but by this point he was so ready to go inside and play. We went to their open house a couple of weeks prior and he remembered exactly where we were and all of the fun toys waiting for him inside!

Along with the potty training, we've had some "pooping issues" with Miles. He refuses to poop in the toilet unless there is a big prize in store for him. He is a pretty regular guy so after about four or five days of him not pooping I start to get nervous and give in and put him in a diaper. Here he is with an insane amount of poo in his diaper! Not sure how we are going to overcome this issue!

Dave is enjoying his new job. Miles and I got to see his school and his classroom last Friday. It was so weird being in such a big school. We are used to visiting Dad at Independence which is a much smaller school. There was an event going on so there were lots of people there including parents and middle school students and their parents. It was weird to walk around and not have almost every kid say "hi" to him. He definitely isn't well-known yet! Dave has offered to help at the home football games and also some of the volleyball games. I think he is excited to be able to be involved in sports again. Independence doesn't really offer sports. Maybe as time goes on Dave will have the option of coaching as well. We are going to our first Kapaun football game this Friday and couldn't be more excited! Go Crusaders!

On the weekends we've been busy doing little projects around mom's house. There is a lot to do here, but I enjoy home improvement projects. Not quite sure Dave feels the same way. Ha!

I forgot to take before pictures, but lets just say there were two layers of that plastic weed guard stuff and two layers of pebble rocks. It wasn't an easy task to clean that all out. Here Miles is helping Dave put gas in the rototiller so we can plant some bushes that we got for 75% off at Lowe's!

I think it looks great!

Now we just need to do the other side!

In addition to cleaning up the front flower beds, mom also requested that we add kick-plates to the front doors. It is amazing what a kick-plate can do for a front door!

I forgot to get a before picture until after Dave had already installed one kick-plate

Dave hard at work

Miles wanted to pose for a picture for once in his life

Don't mind Miles in his underwear! We've found while potty training that it is much easier to just let him run around in underwear all day instead of him trying to get shorts and underwear off in time to go potty on the toilet. He wears pants when we go out in public!

The after picture