Our big boy Griffin is off to his last year of preschool at NPCA! He is in the pre-K Monkey class this year and will go to school four days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday from 9:30-1. He has been pretty excited with just a bit of apprehension saying he’s going to miss being with me. It’s been so much fun being home and seeing him all day long, I will miss him too! Along with the new year I’m trying new things: preparing in advance! We’re setting out his outfits the night before and making his lunch the night before also in an attempt to make the mornings smoother around here! He chose his buckeye shirt and gray jeans for his first day which was a beautiful fall morning. He is happy to have Miss Laura as his teacher in the Monkey class.
Reid is just so cute and happy almost all the time. I miss the day-long snuggles and seeing his smile and even comforting his cries. But I’m also super comforted knowing he is home being well cared for by Debbie and that I get frequent photos throughout the day of the fun he’s having. We’re working on his schedule still – he is a great eater and eats pretty consistently on a schedule during the day. Naps are a little less predictable as he tends to wake up after a half hour with a burp or for whatever reason. Sometimes he’ll go back to sleep, other times he won’t unless he’s being snuggled. I’m pretty sure Griffin was similar and at some point we’ll reach a good schedule.  This week his nighttime sleeps have been awesome. He goes down around 9-10 pm (last feeding about 8:30-9 ish) and hasn’t been waking to feed again until 6:30-7 am! Sometimes when he’s rustling around I’ll give him his pacifier. He’s also been sleeping in only sleepers and not being swaddled and he seems to do really well like that also. His hair is really coming in and he is really in to tracking people and movement. If you catch his eye he is usually quick to offer a big and bright smile.  Our trip through the car wash :).  On Friday, Kevin brought Griffin and Reid to the annual Millcreek Open House. I met them in the parking lot and when Griffin got out of the car he was holding a monkey with the tag still on it. I was a bit confused as it didn’t look familiar to me. As it turns out, his teacher gave him “Banana Peel”, the class mascot, for the weekend! Each child will get to take her home once throughout the school year. While you have Banana Peel you take her on adventures and care for her for the weekend and then document what your weekend was like in a journal she comes home with. I was so excited for him that he was given Banana Peel on the very first week of class! Kevin mentioned perhaps it is alphabetical though I recall the teacher explaining situations when they may decide who to give the mascot to for the weekend such when a child has been doing really well, been showing a lot of progress, having a tough time that week, etc. In any case, Griffin really enjoying having Banana Peel home for the weekend.  Saturday morning Kevin was working on cleaning out the garage so I headed out with the boys for a nice walk. Griffin rode his new bike (we ended up putting training wheels on a smaller bike we bought for him so he can more easily get on and off) and Reid rode in the basket. He isn’t going to fit in that too much longer! You can see how he is really grasping things really well lately. He’s even put the paci in his mouth a couple of times after he’s taken (or pushed/pulled) it out of his mouth.  This year we decided we would need a third car so that Debbie will have the van to take Griffin to school (having Reid and Sam also in the car). Being in school four days a week it is a lot of miles driving back and forth to Dublin twice a day. Our game-plan on what we were looking for went back and forth for a car for me to drive to and from work to a car for Kevin. In the end we decided it made more sense to replace Kevin’s aging Jeep in the long run. Kevin spent countless hours researching cars and we ended up getting a Volvo XC90 sport utility that has two rows of seats in the rear. It’s super pretty and snazzy. The technology that cars have these days is amazing – from steering assist to all the touch screen features. It’s kinda fun! We’ve been experimenting with car seat arrangements and haven’t settled on a perfect one yet but we will get there. Debbie has the van during the days and I drive the Jeep to work and back. I’ve always like driving the Jeep as it is pretty zippy!  So far so good!  We are also excited to be replacing our family room furniture. When we remodeled three years ago we had in mind to replace our furniture and it’s just taken some time to get there. So we bit the bullet and took advantage of the end of the Crate and Barrel Upholstery sale and ordered a new sectional and chair for our family room. The chair will be here in a few weeks and the couch a few months (!). It’s considered a “custom” order since we needed a narrower width of the section coming off the wall since our room is a bit narrow. The couch is a gray microfiber and we went with a brown leather chair that swivels around. Brutus’ crate will need to be relocated as the chair will go down where his crate is. At least that is our initial thinking. Kevin purchased a gray and white rug for the room several months ago even before Reid was born. So we are looking forward to it all coming together.  This guy continues to give me laughs. He is so big yet such a teddy bear, an overbearing one sometimes. I get home from work and he jumps into the air such that his nose is close to my face. Then when he’s beat tired he looks like this. We do need to look into a training collar to get his barking under control. He often feels threatened or on alert when the kids play next door in Cooper and Cole’s driveway and he will consistently bark at them with his hair standing up on his back. We need to do something to train him that they are just fine doing their thing! And thankfully when Brian’s tree came down in the strong winds the other afternoon it landed perfectly in his driveway and didn’t hit his house (or ours!).