Some Delicious 6 month Stats

Check out these delicious 6 month stats! Isaac is just shy of 17 lbs and 26 inches long, which puts him in the 30-40 percentile.

 

Isaac is still the best little baby we could have asked for. His older siblings have never said a single negative thing about him, even now that he is entering the hair pulling and face grabbing phase.

Sitting practice generates plenty of slapstick humor 

Isaac was not at all a fan of "food" the first several weeks we tried giving it to him. There were many instances in which I'm pretty sure he didn't swallow a single spoonful, just rubbed it all over himself. I persevered because after Annie's allergy history, we want to make sure Isaac gets early exposure to plenty of types of foods. 

Gumming some cucumber

Continuing the tradition of forgetting to pack Isaac's hat when we go on hikes, sleeping Isaac rocks the nursing cover durag. 

Scorpion Halloween

This was the first year Elliot was willing to get his hands messy with pumpkin guts!

Unfortunately the carved pumpkins started molding like crazy and had to be thrown out 3 days later. 

The little kids opted for painting instead of carving

I let the kids go wild with decorations this year. We had very few walls in the house that didn't have at least one ghost taped to them. Elliot is way into a YouTube channel called "Art Hub for Kids" that has a whole playlist of Halloween drawing and origami videos that he worked his way through while listening to "Wee Sing for Halloween" on loop. 

Elliot invented this candy dispensing slide for social distanced trick or treating. It spits candy out of the terrifying bleeding eye face. It is pretty much a curtain rod box with several other completely unnecessary boxes taped to it. We go through massive amounts of tape in this house. 

This year we checked out Halloween at the zoo. It was under construction, but it was still fun to see all the decorations they had all around! Ethan is obsessed with skeletons, so he was on cloud nine the whole time. The kids ditched their costumes after 10 minutes, but mostly managed to keep their masks on.

Isaac was mostly interested in eating the animals on his shirt.

"Annie, what was your favorite animal at the zoo?"

"Ummm... the ducks."

"What about you, Elliot?"

"I liked the peeing Rhino!"

There was a great debate in our ward about whether or not to have a Halloween party. One of the hardest parts of this pandemic is that everyone has differing opinions about how much we should be returning to normal life. Some people are still in total quarantine, while others refuse to wear masks ever and think most people should return to normal life and just deal with the virus if they get sick. Most people draw lines somewhere in the middle. Are outdoor playdates ok? Gatherings are fine as long as everyone wears masks? It has created this social minefield that is terribly difficult to navigate.

Anyway, the ward compromised by having a costume photo contest the week before Halloween. You could submit your pictures on the facebook group, or sign up for a time slot to get nice pictures taken by someone in the ward who has a photography business. 

The Flythes had my favorite family theme- the year 2020. Will is a zoom work meeting (who needs pants when the video only shows your top half?), Liam is toilet paper, Belle is hand sanitizer, Evie is a couch potato, Eli is a covid-19 virus, and Jill is someone from the CDC in a hazmat suit. 

I was an art project. This is the dress that Breezy and Elliot made me for Christmas.

Puppy Annie

Dragon Isaac

You may have noticed that Elliot and Aaron were missing from our little photo shoot. On the way to the event, Elliot stepped on a scorpion in our garage and got a nasty sting on his foot. He had shooting pains up his leg and was not a happy camper. We iced it, gave him some children's tylenol, and calmed him down with candy and TV. I decided to take the little kids for pictures while Aaron stayed home with Elliot.

Two hours later, Elliot was acting strangely. He said it didn't hurt too much but that his "whole body felt weird." He was tired and tried to take a nap but had this nervous energy, and he couldn't keep still. Eventually he started complaining about an awful taste in his mouth. I gave him some chocolate milk, which he spat out all over the place. He was crying and rubbing his tongue and generally freaking out. I took a look in his mouth and his throat was swollen. That was one of the "severe" symptoms, so Aaron took him to urgent care. They noted that his eyes were doing this thing where they got unfocused and floated around independently from each other, which worried them enough to send him to the ER so that he would have access to antivenom if needed. They monitored him for a few hours, but he was getting better on his own, so they didn't end up giving him anything other than juice and crackers. Aaron and Elliot passed the time by making a catapult out of tongue depressors and discussing electricity. The highlight for Elliot was when they saw one doctor (some bro medical resident) punch another doctor in the butt.

It was a long day for the buster bubbs, but fortunately he did not require any major interventions, and he was back to normal the next day. 

Elliot's Prenda group did a trunk or treat with siblings invited. 

Halloween dinner- bone bread, casserole in a pumpkin, and "monster eyes" made from cucumber and raisins. Claudia brought tons of nacho stuff too so it was a real feast. Afterwards I stayed behind to dispense candy with Elliot's candy slide and man the baby monitor while the rest of the Bloods went out trick or treating. The slide was a big hit. One little boy gave me a handful of his own candy so that I could give it back to him through the slide. All and all a great halloween!

Larry the jerk butterfly, and a cage for Annie

Annie's favorite birthday present was a cup of caterpillars! It is amazing what you can get mailed to your house these days. We got 5 tiny caterpillars in a cup with this brown stuff in the bottom that is apparently all they need to eat. After a week or so, the caterpillars hung upside down from the lid and made themselves into chrysalises. All of them except for Larry. 

Larry stayed a caterpillar long after the other ones. He crawled around on the lid and knocked two of the chrysalises down into the poop/food sludge before finally deciding he had enough space to make his own chrysalis. We took off the lid and put it in this pop up cage to wait for the butterflies to emerge. Somehow we missed every single one of them actually emerging, but we loved seeing them dry their wings and start to fly around the cage. True to form, Larry emerged a day late. 

Soon it was time to release Annie Jr, Sally, Lilly, Willems, and Larry into the wild. Naturally we invited the cousins over to witness the departure. 

Bree is such a great leader. She controlled the mob and got them to take turns getting to have the butterflies on their shirts. 

Annie holding Annie Jr (we can't actually tell them apart so I just picked a name whenever they asked me which one they were holding)

Around this same time, we decided to buy a crib net for Annie. She learned to climb out of her crib and wasn't napping any more, even though she obviously still needed at least a few naps a week. My little gal was a hot mess for a while there. The net goes all around the crib with a zipper door on top to get the kids in and out. My mom had the genius idea that we should call it the "butterfly net".  We tell her she is a caterpillar, wrap her up in blankets for her chrysalis, and tell her that she will be a butterfly when she wakes up. This worked SHOCKINGLY well. For several days, she would wake up and call "Mommyyyyy, I'm a butterfly now!" Even now that she has gotten used to it, she doesn't complain or try to escape. One time I was worried she was going to be cold at night so I snuck in and put another blanket on her. I didn't zip it back up afterwards, figuring she could just climb out in the morning. Around midnight she was crying, and when I went to check on her she was sad that it was open and  made me zip it closed again. 

Our lives have been very much improved by our Annie butterfly net!

3 Year Old Annie

 Annie had her much anticipated third birthday! Annie's current loves include the color yellow, dresses, nail polish, fairies, princesses, putting mousse in my hair, and the show "Pinkalicious." 

Rocking her new sunglasses

She is SUCH a good sister to Isaac. Somehow she still gets excited every time we need to change his diapers. "I WILL GET THE WIPES MOMMY"

We had some delicious chocolate cake with yellow banana ice cream made from our new soft serve ice cream machine

Annie is such a sweet little girl. She is always willing to share and gives the sweetest hugs and kisses. Lately she has been very attached to me and freaks out if I leave the room without her, so we get to have lots of great chats. She gets excited about anything we get to do together, even if it is cleaning bathrooms. She still talks about the time we were "the fix it girls" when we tightened the screws on the loose chair legs. She has also figured out how to get our Alexa to play music. We frequently hear her shout "Alexa! Play Elsa!" Somehow it knows that this means to play the Frozen 2 soundtrack. She is starting to get picky about food at dinner, but she eats 2-3 breakfasts per day. "Whember! LOTS of blueberries!" We sure love our Annie!

The End of an Era

 Stephen and Claudia started looking around for a house right after Stephen got a job with the City of Tucson. They found an incredible house that is a 7 minute walk from out house. It has tons of upgrades, and the previous owners were mysteriously never around very much, so it is in great shape. They put an offer on the house the day they went to see it, and it got accepted the next day! After almost a year of delay, things moved really fast. 

On moving day, Aaron and Stephen met at the storage unit with some volunteers from Elders Quorum. They moved everything over pretty quick, but Aaron was tragically wounded in the process. A headboard that was leaning against a truck fell over and scraped 4 inches of skin off the back of his ankle. It took about a month for him to be able to walk in shoes without it hurting and a total of 5 weeks for the scab to heal all the way. We got pretty good at bandaging it, but it was a bummer that he had to miss out on running and swimming for so long. 

Isaac checking out the dress up stuff in the new loft

It was quite a year for Stephen and Claudia. I know they definitely would rather have not had to go through all the uncertainty and moving around, but I am very grateful for how well we got to know them as we lived together. And the end result is exactly what we hoped for- they are so dang close to us that we are able to meet up super easily. Aaron and Stephen go running together twice a week, and Claudia and I meet at the park or pool at least once a week. 

They made us this poster with their Halloween candy

Prenda

2020 is a very unusual year to start kindergarten. If Elliot were to take the public school option, he would have been entirely remote at first with an eventual move to a hybrid classroom where he would attend in person twice a week and remotely the other 3 days a week. The schools were forced to go remote at the end of last year, and everyone I know who experienced it said that it was absolutely awful. The thought of Elliot having zoom calls with 20+ other kindergarteners and wrestling over homework that would probably be boring for him was completely unappealing. 

For a while I was considering homeschooling. Claudia was set on homeschooling this year because they still had a ton of uncertainty of where they would end up when Stephen got a job, and I was excited about the idea of doing school together for a while. But then I heard about a new thing called Prenda that I got super excited about. 

Prenda is an Arizona charter school that has been around for 2 years. It operates as a collection of microschools in people's homes throughout the state. Microschools are classes of 5-10 kids led by a "guide." The guide receives training is paid through Prenda. A friend of mine in the ward who was previously a substitute teacher decided to open a microschool in her house. Elliot signed up with a total of 7 kids grade K-2. They meet Monday through Thursday from 8-12.  That's a 16 hour school week compared to the traditional 35 hours (our public school has full day kindergarten). 

The kids spend an hour a day working on self paced math and reading on the computer. I'm a fan of this method- the computer makes sure that concepts are mastered before they move onto the next topics. Every kid gets to move at their own pace. A friend of mine whose kid is at the public school says that her son's kindergarten class is making sure all the kids can count to 20, which Elliot could do 3 years ago. He would be tearing his hair out in boredom. Since he gets to work at his own pace, he worked his way through all of Kindergarten math in the first 3 months of school. He's slowing down now that he hit challenging material, which is also good for him- he doesn't naturally like being challenged. Prenda focuses a lot on growth mindset. 

Elliot loves Dreambox, the math program, but thinks the reading one (Lexia) is pretty boring. He can read well above his grade level, but the program is making him walk through each sound every letter combination makes. I concede that it is a bit tedious. I keep him flush with library books at home (a challenge because he tears through them) and don't worry too much about his Lexia progress. 

The rest of the day is spent doing group activities. They bake, do experiments, write stories together, invent, have poetry tea time, play games, learn about history and other countries, all sorts of stuff. 

This is probably unnecessary, but here's the outline of their daily schedule:

Coming in Activity (8-8:10) -blocks, books, math manipulatives, writing practice

Community Circle (8:10-8:25)- team building, story time, growth mindset, meditation, etc...

Conquer (8:30-9:30)- Math and Literacy

Recess/Free Play (9:30-9:45)

Collaborate (9:45-10:30)- Group activities (science, history, nature study, math challenges, poetry, etc)

Snack and Read Aloud (10:30-10:50)

Create (10:50-11:35)- Mostly individual art, writing, building, baking, STEM challenges

Cleanup (11:35-11:45)

Struggle and success (11:45-12)- wrap-up, plan for tomorrow 

Elliot has days where he puts up a stink about not wanting to go, but I think it is way less than it would have been if he was going to public school, and also a lot less fights that we would have if I was homeschooling him. 

One of the quirks of our specific microschool is that we all agreed to be extremely strict with social distancing due to Covid. The teacher is immunocompromised, and one of the kids has a dad who is going through chemotherapy right now. The idea was that if we were all super strict, our families could interact with each other safely inside and outside of school. We were pretty much hermits when we signed up over the summer, but now that things have loosened up a little bit, I have started to chaff against the restrictions a little bit. Whenever we travel or have family travel to visit us, we have to quarantine for 2 weeks before sending Elliot back to school in person. Luckily, we have it set up so that the kids can zoom in for the group project time and do the computer work at home. When he's doing school at home, I have to log that he had 4 hours of "educational value" time in the day. We are very flexible about what we count, and those days where I tried to do "mommy school" have actually been super fun. I like that I get a taste of homeschool without nearly as much pressure or long term time commitments. 

So far we are really liking Prenda. The question I get asked most often is if I'm worried about the eventual transition back to public school. Yes, it will be an adjustment, but it seems silly to not put a kid in the best school for him out of concern that he will have to go to a less good school in the future. Putting him in a mediocre school environment just so that he gets used to it? Nah. I want to stoke Elliot's curiosity and genuine love of learning. This model of school is working really well for our family, and I hope to keep him in it for at least a few years. 

A couple of lake trips

The highlight of late summer was a couple of outings to the lakes. First up was Lake Pena Blanca, which we love for the cliff jumping. The downside of this lake is that the beach is non-existent, and most of the few little areas of water access were taken. We did snag one, but it was small and sloping, and the little kids kept falling over themselves. We only stayed for about an hour because another group got too close to us, and we were being covid cautious. But that one hour was really fun! We got Bree hooked on cliff jumping. She was pretty scared at first, so I held her hand, and we jumped together. Elliot had a blast jumping off a little rock, and the littler kids loved bobbing around in their floaties watching all the jumpers. 

We attempted to make sandwiches in our tiny beach area but it was very unpleasant, so we packed up and found a nearby picnic area for lunch. 

What is this chin thing they are both doing? #brotherbuddies

The next weekend we tried out Patagonia lake. Less adventurous, but they have an actual beach area. Weirdly there were a TON of motorcycles that drove by and ate lunch in the parking lot before leaving. Like easily 100 motorcycles. 

Claudia is always stealing my baby

My kids are so photogenic

Seriously

Little hike to the rainbow bridge

I'm glad that we have at least a couple bodies of water that actually have water in them around here!

TURTLE PATROL

 Ok, enough of the cute beach pictures and on to the exciting stuff, which is the TURTLE PATROL!

Who are the turtle patrol, you may ask? Well. They are pretty much the greatest heroes our world has ever known. I hope to one day be worthy to don the embroidered t-shirt and join their noble ranks. 

Apparently Holden Beach is a nesting ground for sea turtles. On the beach right near our house was a roped off area with a sign about nesting sea turtles. One night on a whim I asked Aaron to go on a night walk with me around midnight (we stayed on AZ time schedules). We quickly noticed these strange tracks that looked a lot like a very light bike had ridden all over the beach. We tried following some but they were all over the place. As we were coming back to the house, we found two turtles right by the stairs!

Sea turtles dig themselves out of the sand and follow the moon to find the ocean. These poor little fellas were confused by the lights coming through our windows and were heading in the wrong direction. We used the flashlights on our phones to get them to head towards the ocean instead. It was amazing how responsive to light they were- it felt like I was controlling them with a remote.

Breezy had bad insomnia that night and went outside around sunrise. She discovered another baby turtle and had a crowd gather around her as she led it to the water. 

Later that day, we saw a brigade of masked folks wearing matching shirts and hats march purposefully towards the roped off nest. Apparently they patrol the beach every day, and the squad assembled when the tracks were found. 

The cluster of  patrollers as seen from our window

Naturally I went down to check out the action and learn some turtle facts. Apparently turtle nests have around 100 eggs, most of which hatch all on the same night. The main hatching event probably happened earlier in the night that we found some. The turtle patrol built this runway around the nest to point them towards the ocean if any latecomers were going to hatch. They then went door to door telling everyone to turn off their lights on the beach side of the house and hung out, dispersing more turtle facts for a while. 

Breezy and I camped out for a while after the turtle patrol dispersed. Sadly no turtles were observed hatching. The next morning there was maybe one faint set of tracks coming down the runway, but it was hard to tell. 

This was such a neat experience, and I feel super lucky that we just happened to go outside the one night that it was happening even if we missed the main part of the event. Turtle patrol is now one of my many ideas for how I want to spend retirement. #goals

Nobody got Covid at the Beach

Our trip to Holden beach in August was a much needed taste of normal life. It started with a few days at Mimi and Grumpa's house. Grumpa has all sorts of new Keto cooking skills and we got to sample his world renowned yogurt and chocolates. 

My kids absolutely adore their Mimi an Grumpa. Isaac is no exception!

This happy little dude sucks up the attention. He is so chill that he gets left to roll around contentedly a lot at our house, but he is oh so quick to smile and laugh when anyone comes to play with him. 

Annie "sleeping" on the drive to the beach. 

We spent a lot of time chilling on this deck watching the ocean! This was our first time getting a beach front property, and my parents say they are hooked. It was SO convenient being able to look out the window and see who all was down at the beach. It made it so that we didn't have to coordinate everyone's comings and goings and everyone could just come and go more casually.

It was hard to pick out the best picture of Isaac with his Grumpa. These two both greatly enjoy chilling together. 

He needed some ventilation

Ok just one more because I love these people. Also notice Breezy playing her kalimba in the background.

This girl loves her accessories 

Morgan is an excellent cook! 

For the past several years, the Johnsons have crashed the Blood's reunions at Holden Beach. This year none of the Bloods were planning on going- but due to shifting Covid plans some Bloods were able to come too! Timmy stayed with us and Jonny and Megan rented a house across the street with some of their friends. It was a great arrangement. 

Not a great picture, but proof that the Maryland Bloods were there. This was when Seth was recovering from a Jellyfish sting. 

I do love me some games. My current favorite is Ramshackle Rover, another Max creation. 

Look at this champ making things work. Breezy's life has been rocked this year by a fibromyalgia diagnosis. This was the first time we have seen her sweet new crutches. 

Breezy had a couple of days where she felt good enough to boogie board! Also, this was the first year that Elliot was willing to legitimately boogie board. I was very impressed with him- he kept going even after some good wipe outs. Both Annie and Elliot were big fans of wave jumping this year, even when the waves were so big we had to lift them over our heads. It was a wee bit exhausting but lots of fun. 

Me with a catch of sand crabs. I legitimately want to fry and eat some next year. No one else has been persuaded that this is a good idea. 

There were some very talented sand art craftsman down the beach

2020 has been a turbulent time for a lot of our loved ones, but a lot of good has come from it too. 

Clam with a volleyball pearl

Timmy with the beginnings of his village constructed out of washed up reeds. Eventually a huge temple ornamented with crab claws was added around where he was standing along with several other homes. We kept seeing people stop to take pictures of it. 

Max and Morgan did a great job of parenting Annie for a week. 

Isaac... we don't deserve Isaac. He napped on the beach every day. I nursed him and put him on a beach chair in the shade next to the chatting grown ups, and he would conk out for a couple of hours. 

Contrary from what you would think from this delightfully awkward picture, Aaron and Elliot are great buds. They spent a ton of time building castles with cannons to defend them from the waves. 

Aaron persuaded Grandma Blood to give him this "Magic Multiplication" board last time he visited her. He passed it on to Elliot, who played with it for days and made it into this pretend laptop. And this is why Aaron and Elliot get along so well.