Happy Easter!

I didn't get a pic of them on their Easter egg hunt....but I did in their Sunday best. My favorite part of Easter was the chat on the way to church about the real meaning of Easter, and when Autumn piped up and said it's important cause if Jesus didn't come alive then he couldn't forgive us. My other favorite moment was that night when I said "let's sing a Easter song (I was thinking like....a song about Jesus) Autumn got a glint in her eye and said I KNOW ONE! Then she sang (to the tune of Jingle Bells) "EASTER EGGS EASTER EGGS EASTER ALL THE WAY!" With HUGE giggles from my 3 very sugar loaded kids. Which has been sung the last 3 nights with glorious running and skipping and giggling. My sillies.

Seriously sometimes I wish I could EAT my kiddies I love them so. Jude is just at that age where I can't get enough of "flash over at me" smiles when he loves something. Eeek!

Jude 18 months

18 months is really my favorite. I know they start rebelling at this age..and I know you have to watch them every minute. BUT you really get to see what they are like, and everything is JUST SO EXCITING! Butterflies, music, dancing, a dog, a fun car, anything just lights up his face with pure JOY and just makes me want to hop inside him and remember what it was like to be little again.

But the favorite of all favorite things...is his motorbike 

 So I decided to do his little 18 month photoshoot with him on his bike, cause nothing quite lights him up like these moments, see?

 He always sticks his tongue out when he rides and makes "vroom vroom bbbbbbrrrrrr" sounds so he's like really riding a motorbike. This usually ends up with lots of spit all over his shirt, but it's just too cute.

 My favorite pic of the day, I love how his eyes just light up when he smiles.

 And THIS FACE is the one he shoots me whenever he's got that pure JOY I was talking about earlier. I mean don't you just want to be HIM at that moment? Here he saw my neighbors (fake) frog on a rock, and turned to me with this shout of joy. I only caught half his face cause I had to whip up my camera to catch it.

At 18 months Jude loves animals more than my other kids did at this age. He makes these excited/cute sounds whenever he sees any animal. He's got most of his animal sounds down pat. My favorite one he makes is of a cat.

His favorite favorite thing to do is ride bikes. Yesterday he CRIED AT THE DOOR because it was raining and he couldn't ride. He'd make the tongue out "brrrrr" sound of a motorbike and just cried.

He's learning...to sign please instead of fussing (this one has taken crazy crazy practice!) to not pull his sisters hair, and to sign "all done" and "uppies"  instead of just jumping out of his high chair.  His first two word sentence was yesterday "bum...yuck!" when he had a stinky bum! His favorite word is "yuck" he uses it for everything (if his hands are dirty or if he sees a pile of ants or whatever).

His words are "juice, down, dum (for pacifier), da, ma, "go" for dog, car, yuck, bum, uh oh" He doesn't use many words compared to Autumn who was totally talking by now, but he manages to communicate quite well with signs and non verbal noises.

His brother and sister generally love him, he does get in their "big kid fun" sometimes, but they realize he's not meaning to ruin it.

We love him to bits!

BLAST FROM THE PAST This is Noah, 18 months in the same sweater :)

Summertime

Durban is hot and humid in Summer...like really humid. We've been housesitting for friends who have a pool so after school off we go to stay cool!

 And I've been teaching Autumn every day how to swim so we don't have to pay for swim lessons for her...she's now swimming across the whole pool taking breaths, yay!!!

 They play this fun game with Jude where they pop up and surprise him from under the water, he loves it

 And Noah just learned how to ride with no training wheels, so he rides almost every day, and Jude keeps up on his pushbike.

 And of course hours of swinging

 (Proud face with no training wheels!)

 Off he goes!

 He just needs help up big hills but he's totally riding!

Love these special times with my kiddies and I'm SO SO thankful I get to be at home with them!

Jude 15 months

So I used to do like monthly updates of each kid..and when you have 3 it just doesn't happen! So I'm going to stop, take a breath and blog about Jude at 15 months....just so I can capture the moment.

 Jude is SO SO different to my other two kiddies. He's ALWAYS ON THE GO. And he LOVES sports and balls and climbing and is just so so boy. The only time I can get a good shot of him is in the bath...which is where these shots are taken otherwise you click and he's half way out the frame!

He's got a fun personality...he loves to RUN and climb on top of Spurgeon our dog and ROLL with him, and he climbs up and down the Jungle Gym at our house with great ease. He loves all animals and I know when he's seen one on the road when we are driving cause he will light up and make all kinds of animal sounds. Right now he can say "Juice, dadda, momma, and "go" for dog, and he says a funny version of "one two, three" before he jumps into the pool. He gives really really great kisses, and hugs, and he LOVES to wave by to whoever is leaving, he will follow them blowing kisses and waving. His favorite thing is to see a butterfly flying, he goes crazy. He's more mischievous then my other two by nature so I always have to follow him to make sure he's not dumping something upside down or pulling something out of the cupboards.  We love our little guy!

Why aren't you in school?

"Why aren't you in school?" is asked by random strangers almost every time I went to the store with my kids...directed at my kids...with one eye on me. "Normal" here is if your like 2....your in school. So seeing a mom with THREE children at the store is well...unusual. So hence the questions.

 I'd see those moms with their crumb free cars, hair perfectly done, being able to go into change stalls without worrying about your 1 year old escaping while you are trying on a swimsuit, no one asking you for juice, or food, or crying cause it's a bit close to nap time. And a small part of me at that moment would think..."yeah...exactly why don't I have that kind of life...and why aren't my kids in school...I mean...they could go for free to the preschool our church offers...so why am I doing this exactly?" (while my hair is up in a wet curly bun instead of blow dried straight...and oh, is that spit up on my shirt...and crumbs in my hair? quickly wipe with a wet wipe...and Jude is crying cause he's tired)

 But then I'd think about all the small lessons we'd learn on the way to the store (being kind to your brother, he's tired now, don't fight about who gets to hold on to the shopping cart...share, see the beautiful cloud, God made that isn't it awesome? etc etc) ...and all the awesome chats that wouldn't have happened on the way, and I remember I'm doing this cause I LOVE my kids and part of life is shopping, and there are tons of lessons to be had at home and out especially the little years. The first 5 years are so so important.

 We aren't a family that is "only homeschool" or "only private/public school" and we said we'd take it 1 year at a time and evaluate every year if it was time to send our kids to school or not. This last year after praying about it I homeschooled Noah and Autumn. (3 and 5) It was great, they learned so much and so did I. Noah learned how to read alot this year, so did Autumn..she just picked it up from Noah. We did a bit of math and Bible memory as well, and some science. Noah's mind is SO SO eager to learn that I actually couldn't keep up. Like we went through a weeks worth of homeschool stuff easily in a day. Then I'd have to make it up as I went along the other days.

This year we prayed a lot again, we went to open days at schools to see if Noah would fit somewhere for Grade R (Kindergarten) and the Christian school down the road seemed perfect just perfect for him...and he seemed ready. Very ready. I usually trust the decisions he makes, he's not clingy anymore but confident, he makes friends easily, and he was taking A LOT of my time teaching because he's just so so so eager to learn. All the "information" kinda books (planets, space, animal life, oceans, volcanoes) you name it we had read it, several hundred times it seemed like. We even exhausted all the library books on these topics. And I felt I needed to concentrate a bit on Autumn and Jude and not miss those crucial years with them because I was keeping up with Noah's very eager mind.

So we prayed and on Wednesday was his first day at school. I thought I would ball, really. But it just seemed so RIGHT and the Lord's timing seemed so perfect, that I didn't even think twice about it. And off he went into his classroom and he loved it. He's been there 3 days now, and he loves it. He's a bit shy to make friends but all those kids have been going to that school since they were 2 and know each other, so it will take a while, but he loves his teacher, and she loves the Lord which is awesome. They start every day with a devotion, and he's learning that it's fun to just "play" and not learn all the time, something I've been trying to teach him too!

So now I have special morning time with Autumn and Jude, which is special to me...Autumn I'm still trying to teach the basics of the gospel, and Noah would answer all the questions and now SHE'S forced to think about things for herself. Which I'm VERY thankful for. And well, with Jude...he's now learning his body parts and what sounds animals make. :)

Happy New Year!

Kitchen Kitchen

Autumn gets in these "pretend pretend" moods where she plays for hours cooking up a storm. You'll often hear her say things like "I'm making soup, don't eat your cupcake until your done with your soup"

 And she'll often make you an awesome toasted sandwich

 And hot cups of tea...with sugar that must be heated up "just so"

 We love our little chef in the making

OCTOBER

So after chasing after my walking 1 year old I haven't blogged in a while...here's a month in a flash!

Since all the grandparents came to visit Jude for his 1st birthday we pulled out the mattress and the kids had "Archer Olympics" every day where they would do somersaults and rolls and jumps for hours (it rains in October, so yay for inside activities!)

 Lots of giggles and hugs

 And fun rolls and loves

 My parents came and we went to see some African animals and stayed in a tree house!

 The game drives were long...so Jude didn't hold up but Jude and Autumn loved seeing all the animals

 We saw a heard of like 50 elephant

 And stayed in a fun treehouse where all the cottages were up on stilts with Grandma and Grandpa

 Grandma and Grandpa came and visited for 3 weeks from America, we had lots of fun with them

 BOTH grandparents came for Jude's birthday...so special

 Noah went to his firs karate competition and won a bronze medal..he was so excited.

 Jude is walking everywhere and doesn't crawl at all anymore, he climbs everything and keeps me on my toes. I found my cellphone outside my bedroom window and my favorite shoes in the trash. We love our little mischeif guy

 Autumn loves loves dress up and wants to wear a dress up dress everyday...and sometimes wears them to ballet practice. She skipped for the first time a few weeks ago after months of hopping, so ballet has really improved her coordination we love our little ballerina!

 The local shops were having a halloween trick or treat so we got all dressed up, two Spidermans and a Tangled

 When we got there it was freezing cold and raining...and my kids were crying...so we went to a special chocolate restaurant and had hot chocolate and cake instead

 Special hot chocolate mmm

 Jude dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween..all 3 of my kids wore this for their first Halloween

 And we carved pumpkins the kids really love this every year

 Autumn wanted to carve a butterfly

 And we got to go trick or treating with a friend...they got tons of candy

 And Noah lost his first tooth at 5! He's lost his second tooth too now and got special money from the tooth mouse (cause the tooth fairy is too girly!

And that was our October :)