Long overdue post

It has been a busy summer so far, and I have been neglectful of this little blog, it seems to come last on my list of things to do these days. I will try to do a few posts over the next few days to fill you in a bit on what we have been doing this summer.

Let's see, Quincy is still not wanting to potty train, he no longer even wants to wear underwear. Occasionally, he will play on a potty seat, so we now have one in the living room for him to play with. He often will tell me when he is going, but never wants to go in the potty. I'm being patient and letting him set the pace, trying very hard not to push him. We'll see.

We've been using a new responsibility chart/reward system with Miles that has been working quite well. He has a chart with seven different responsibilities that we can change weekly, ranging from making his bed, feeding the pets, to showing respect, no whining, etc. He can earn a smiley face for each responsibility each day, and if he earns an entire row of smiley faces, he earns a gold coin (plastic) that he can save in his treasure chest. He can also earn or lose gold coins for super good/bad behavior. Once a week he can shop at the 'Mom & Dad store' to redeem his coins for candy, toys, coupons for late bedtime, extra screen time, all sorts of stuff, but some of the stuff is quite expensive (in gold coins) so he he has to chose to save or spend. He has really responded great to this system and works very hard to earn gold coins. He is learning to do chores, the type of behavior we expect from him and how to save.

Some of the things we have done so far, we have been blueberry picking, a trip to NY to visit family, a couple of camping trips - a weekend and a week, a trip to the city to the 'big' zoo (as Miles calls it.) A couple of community band concerts, July 4th on the beach with a campfire, and good friends watching fireworks while the kids caught ghost crabs, a tour of Miles kindergarten and starting to get him ready for school.

Miles is very apprehensive of kindergarten. Last weekend we took him out bookbag and lunch box shopping, he picked out the coolest Ironman bookbag and a Ben 10 lunch box. He was excited about them, and got excited to show off his Ben 10 lunch box at lunchtime, but still fearful of school. Yesterday morning Mike took Miles to visit his elementary school, met the principal and got a tour of the school. He came home and didn't want to tell me much, except that there were 2 playgrounds and a closet full of sports balls in the gym. Last night there was a school readiness fair for the entire school district, he got to see his principal again, she remembered him and although he hid from her at first, later on he talked with her one on one. We got to ride a school bus, a first time thing for Quincy, he was so excited he could barely talk! Miles was super excited and I do believe he is looking forward to riding the bus to school. So at least we may get him there.

Wow, this has turned out to be a long post, and totally not at all going in the direction I planned when I logged on. I do feel that this blog has not ended up being what I originally thought I would do. I feel that instead of just being a let you all know what we are up to and what is going on in our life, it has become a highlight reel of our best of times. Almost a brag blog, look at us doing fun things type of blog. And that isn't really what I like to do. I am excited when we do fun things or the kids do cute/funny stuff, but I don't really like to feel like I am bragging. I also don't like to share bad stuff and feel like I am looking for sympathy. So I am going to try to be more well rounded here, still share fun stuff, but include more day-to-day and not-so-great stuff as well.