Do I Undertand My Children?

So...this week I've been having fun telling Greg at night the neat experiences of learning about my kids' personalities.

LauraJo has just been showing us all lately that she can yell louder than the rest of us. This is typical in my kids, so we've been laughing at how she's finally standing her ground and gets her brothers to jump. Now we get to teach them the proper times to give in and when they don't need to! I'm amazed at how many letters she can already recognize and all the songs she loves to sing.....nice and loud in the car!

Orson is hilarious! In the book Little Britches young Ralph learns, “If you want to be a good horseman the first thing you'll have to learn will be how a horse thinks, and next to think the same way yourself.” Well, I'm still learning how my little horse thinks. During preschool we all (my sisters and I) chuckle to ourselves every time Orson gets a worksheet. He starts all excited and then without warning will viciously either tear it up or wrinkle it up and throw it behind him. Why? We never know. I just try to get a hug in to him before he runs off frustrated. He loves to cut, color, and glue! He's a leader of LauraJo and a follower of his older siblings with a touch of himself.

Lincoln is going to be a heart surgeon. Let me explain. Tell me what you think. His ultimate goal in life is to create a life-like Robot. Talking and breathing. When creating a Robot out of cardboard a couple of weeks ago it was all done EXCEPT for the heart. He searched all through my closet of junk (art supplies!) and found a small wooden heart which he then colored red and glued it inside where a heart should be. He was satisfied. Now, though, any bug that he comes across I feel sorry for! Really. He keeps them for a couple of days as a pet and then dissects them to find what??? The HEART!!! Tiny black beetles, caterpillars, and today was a grasshopper. We are so glad we are not bugs....

Samuel is 7 1/2. I can tell he's going through a growing spurt. He LOVES his Taekwondo class, even when the instructor makes them do push-ups till they are just about dead, makes them hold 1lb. weights for about 5 min. or more, and just pushes them HARD. Samuel is holding on and loves to go back and take this class. Today he just couldn't think of what he wanted to explore or learn about. We talked and talked and finally he sat down with 5 recipe books. We wanted to just experiment in my kitchen! Great! I didn't care. He decided on and made a great 1776 Flag Cake with the original 13 colonies. He read about it and taught his siblings all about it when he was done. He just loves to use his hands....

Hyrum is in the same Taekwondo class and even though he doesn't have the natural confidence about his strength his coach pushed him till I was expecting him to quit and break down. NO!!! He didn't. He was pushed to the edge and even further and he didn't break at all. I was so amazed and grateful to watch this first hand. I loved the confidence level that shot up as he realized himself what he could do. Hyrum's been really studious this week and always finding something creative to work on when he has his own free time.

Mary's latest passion is babysitting! The 13 books and 2 dvds that she's been immersing herself has been preparing her for this time. We hired her last weekend and she had another job today. We'll hire her again soon and just keep letting her practice what she's studying up about. I know she wants to do this, so I'm so excited to see her learn how to take care of children at a young age to prepare her to be a mother. Our relationship is changing as she grows up! I love having her around and having awesome experiences together. She always greets me with a hug in the morning!!!

We had fun taking our school work to the park this week. I can't get over how beautiful the weather is and it takes us outside all the time!!!

Do I understand my children? I can't say I know them perfectly, but I am sure enjoying the time I have with them to watch them grow up!