Elijah

Next up is my big boy Elijah.

He had a great summer. As you have seen by the previous posts, he was very busy this summer with swimming, summer camp and family activities. Then August rolled around and we decided we were going to homeschool him for this school year. We fixed up the second bedroom (which was suppose to be a craft room) into a school room. It turned out well, if I do say so myself.

 Elijah's desk and Caleb's "desk". Shelves with Caleb's busy toys.

Reading nook, blackboard and school books. (Also more Caleb busy toys)

After we got the room ready, it was time to start school a few days later.

At first it was rough, but now that we are in the groove of things it's getting easier. We are doing a mix of things this year. Horizons for Math, Reading, Spelling and Health, Abeka for Social Studies and Science, God made music 1 for music, Handwriting Without Tears for handwriting and How to Teach Art for art. We are chugging along with our good days and our bad days, but in the end he will have learned everything that he needs to.

Although the school year just started we have taken quite a few field trips. We went to the Science Center, Downtown Baltimore, Port Discovery and Washington DC. They were all a lot of fun. We hope to go to more in the coming months. We are tentatively planning a trip to New Jersey and New York City in March. Elijah has been asking to go to New York City for a couple months now. If we go up to the aquarium in New Jersey during homeschool week, we will be an hour and a half away from Manhattan (without traffic). We plan on making it a long weekend, but will have to see how our money situation pans out.

Along with regular subjects to study, we also needed to include a Physical Education of some sort for him. So he is doing skating again and we wanted him to do something else, also, since everyone was concerned about his social interaction with other children. We asked him what he wanted to do and he decided he wanted to play soccer.

Joe found this great organization, Christian Youth Athletics, so we signed him up. It's Biblically based, so they pray before and after games. The other things like giving it your all and being a team are also presented based on the Bible. His coach is really nice and encourages him all the time. We really like the organization and hope that Elijah will be able to continue playing with them in coming years.

That's it, in a nutshell. God has a wonderful way of sorting things out to make things possible that you never thought would be. It's kind of awesome when you think about it.

Caleb Update

First up is my Caleb-baby.

He has been doing speech therapy and special ed sessions for 5 months, now. He has started doing the sounds for "m" and "d" and he even said daddy when we were grocery shopping a month or so ago. We are currently working on animal sounds and sounds like choo choo and vroom when playing with different things.

He is doing well with his special ed sessions also. I had been working on "pointing" with him for weeks and I heard today he finally pointed to something when his teacher was there. Also, last month, I gave him a piece of chalk and a slate blackboard.

He "drew a picture"!

Then, a couple days ago he drew his first picture on paper, with a pencil. 

He was delayed with holding writing objects and drawing with them, so it was good to see these accomplishments.

Other than that, he has been a healthy and happy little boy. He loves the Ipod and the Nook to play his toddler apps (just like Elijah used to). He also loves playing with balls, tossing them back and forth. He likes to play with the hula hoop too, but it's a little advanced for him. So he just likes sitting in the center of it and making it go around in a circle... very slowly.

One of his other favorite activities - watching the microwave count down

The other day he started doing a little bob, up and down dance, to music. He was so cute. I'm going to have to get it on video. He usually doesn't express himself in movement of his own invention. When he does "dance" it is imitating whatever we are doing. I loved every minute of it.

That is about it. He is growing up so fast. I feel like I don't want to blink because I'm going to miss it.

Life Never Slows Down

I simply can not believe it's almost November. I kept wanting to update the blog when I had a lull in life, but it simply didn't happen. I don't see it happening any time soon, so here I am to update in the middle of "life".

Tons of things have been happening in the Raymond household since the last time that I updated. In general life has been pretty good to us. We have finally gotten into a routine during the weekdays and on the weekends pretty much anything goes. I was going to update in one big post, but instead I am going to update with a series of small posts about each of us and see if that gets me back into my blogging groove again.

On the Metro going to DC for the day.

For now, I will say everyone is doing well. We are prepping for Halloween right now and bought the boys' costumes the other day. We are also planning on picking up some pumpkins this weekend... Not sure from where though. There are a lot of festivals and events going on this Saturday, around our area. We just have to decide which one we are hitting up.

But for now, there's lots of updating to do, so I guess I better get cracking.