Meal Plan and More

It is a very cold and blustery day in our neck of the woods! A good day to stay indoors, clean up the blog, and update pictures! Going to try so very hard to post daily this year. My reward to myself will be one of those Blog2Print books I have always wanted but never gotten.

I was supposed to start back to work today after having last week off to spend time with my family. Turns out my vacation got extended by one day! Yay me!! It is also Matt's last day of vacation. Back to reality tomorrow for sure! Matt ended up having to take Shelby to Promptcare. She has had a cold and horrible cough for over a week now. I decided that it was time to get it checked out much to my husband's dismay. Good thing I had him take her. They returned home with a diagnosis of Bronchitis and a Zpack in hand. Hopefully that should kick this cough to the curb!

While they were doing that I took some time to get some Tot School stuff for this week printed out along with daily report sheets for the two little ones I watch. Jadon took some time to play with quite possible his favorite Christmas present....his Playdoh Ice Cream Shop that little Ms. Ella (little girl I watch) got him.

He has played with it for HOURS since he got it!

Look how happy he is!

Thought I would share our meal plan for this week. Of course I am already thinking of changing it a little. Forgot that I told my oldest son last week that I would make him his favorite meal, Shepherd's Pie, for dinner one of these nights. I have all the ingredients so I might just switch out one of these meals for that. Here is the game plan for now:

Monday:
Grandma's Spaghetti and Meatballs

Tuesday:
Crock Pot French Dip Sandwiches-I will most likely be using a venison roast
Brussel Sprouts (my favorite)

Wednesday:
Bacon and Tomato Pasta

Thursday:
Turkey Pot Pie (using frozen turkey leftover from Christmas)

Friday:
Eat out and grocery night

Happy Monday!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year Everyone!! Going to start the new year off right with some blogging! Kinda let the blog drop for awhile but I am ready to get back in gear now!

Today was a pretty low key day at our house. We went to my parents house last night to celebrate the new year with them, my brother's family, and my sister and her husband. It was fun. Jadon stayed up the whole time!! He loves playing with his cousin Owen. They ran, ran, ran all night long!! I figured he would fall asleep on the way home but he jabbered the whole way and even wanted to do his usual bedtime routine. I was dead on my feet. Not sure where that kid gets the energy!!

Today Jadon let us sleep in. He woke us up around 9:30 which was a pleasant surprise since he never sleeps in!

The rest of the day was pretty low key. Watching movies...Rio and Kung Fu Panda 2 again! Good thing they are both good movies!! Did some cleaning and reorganizing in preparation for the work week. The house got a little sloppy while we were in low key vacation mode last week.

Jadon having some snuggle time with Daddy today.

Jadon of course made some time to play with two of his favorite Christmas presents....his new Melissa and Doug train table from Santa and an IKEA art easel from his Aunt Dani.

Of course we had Hoppin' John (black eyed peas, ham, and rice) for dinner. Fingers crossed it was a lucky batch!!  We use Matt's Grandma Bea's recipe that we found in her own handwriting.  How cool is that??!!

After dinner made a run with the hubby to the grocery store so we can eat for the week now just blogging and relaxing!

Farming and Friends

Here are some pics are what we were up to last week. We did do some tot school activities but the weather was so nice (summer returned for one last hurray)that we fell back into summer mode and spent a lot of time outside.

Jadon still loves building with his giant blocks. His structures are getting a little more complicated now. I like seeing the progress his creations have made.  He used to just line up the blocks or stack them straight up like a tower.  Now he tries to build houses.

I was told to get a picture of his lovey who was hanging out in his new house. 

Beading pipe cleaners was one of our tot school activities last week  He was really into it and it was a great two handed activity!!

Jadon got to farm with Uncle Gary again.  This time he was combining beans.  Jadon seems to enjoy riding in the combine.  I have noticed that he has been getting his toy tractors and combine out a lot since helping Uncle Gary farm.

I snapped some great pics of Jadon and his buddy John playing outside.  They are such good pals. 

Hugs!

This close up is my favorite!

Back to School and Tot School

First day back to school.  Shelby-Junior. Jacob-8th grade

Summer is over and the big kids are back to school.  That means it is also time for Mommy and Jadon (and friends) to go back to tot school.  Jadon is definitely in need of some more structure lately.  We have had some very frustrating weeks lately with Jadon.  He has been wild, throwing fits about sharing, and has bit his friends.  Not good behavior at all and Mommy has had days where I just want to cry.  All I could think is what is happening...this is not my sweet little boy?

So I sat back and looked at our days and what I could change to make Jadon's day more peaceful.  I remember that Supernanny always says that "bad behavior" is usually because of something the parents are or are not doing.  Well, we had not gotten out of our summer routine of just going with the flow and I also had two little ones start back when school started.  I think Jadon was needing some one on one time with Mom and some more structured activities to keep his mind busy.  Time for Tot School mom!!  Duh!!

So we are now almost three weeks into tot school and there have been some improvements.  Still have struggles with sharing, a couple time outs a day, and unfortunately after two weeks of not biting, he bit his friend yesterday.  They were fighting over a toy and Jadon just leaned over and bit his hand.  I HATE biting.  It is the worst!  I hope we can fix this issue FAST!!!  Jadon will be starting speech soon.  His speech evaluation showed that he has a 40% delay in speech.  He knows what things are but he can not verbalize it.  When he was asked to point to something he did it without hesitation.  When asked to say or name an object nothing so something is going on there.  He is a smarty pants though.  In his developmental evaluation he scored at 39 months cognitively (8 months ahead).  I am hoping that speech will help some of these behavior issues that are showing up.  I think (hope) if he had the words to tell his friend what he wanted yesterday perhaps he would not have had to resort to using his teeth.   Now that he is biting I can no longer leave him alone in a room with anyone for even a few seconds.  I take him with me to the bathroom and everywhere.  Makes for a stressful day.

For now I am just trying to teach him sharing, keep him busy with more structured activities, and playing lot of "games" with him.  He loves when we play games. We started tot school with a letter A theme.  Played matching games and used these tot school printables for about two weeks.  This week we are doing a Farm theme to go along with harvest time.  Jadon is hoping to catch a ride on a combine with Uncle Gary very soon.  We will probably do the letter B next.  Here are some pictures of what we have been up to......

Working on pre-writing skills.

Building tall, tall towers.

Practicing cutting with scissors and also a great Righty activity!

Jadon loves playdoh time!

This is an Elmo matching game we are working on learning how to play.  He does not quite have the patience to take turns but he is learning.

Working with stacking cups.

Pouring and scooping with the stacking cups in our Autumn sensory bin.

I found some plastic relish trays at garage sales for a quarter.  I was so excited because they had been on my tot school wish list for awhile.  They are great for sorting objects and learning colors.  We used mini porcupine balls with the trays yesterday.

We have decided we need to shop at Kroger more often.  They have these little carts for kids and it was great therapy for Righty.  The cart go pretty heavy and he was using both hands to push it around all by himself.  He loved it!!

And I wanted to show you my favorite garage sale find from this last weekend.  I have been looking at jogging strollers for awhile.  Our umbrella stroller just can't handle our country roads and the wagon is so loud we can't carry on a conversation.  I looked at new jogging strollers and they were $150 and up!  Ugh!  But Saturday I found this one in great shape for $20!!!  Hooray!!