Today was the first day that Jabin did this:



Besides that, it occurred to me today how very little-boy-like he is becoming, very quickly, too! As nice as it is that he is now able to eat almost completely unassisted at meals (except soup), using a salad fork and teaspoon, and that he is showing all the signs of being an early talker (he already makes "his" versions of more than 30 words!), what happened to my baby? He has most definitely flown the coop, leaving this toothy, cheerful toddler in his place.

Noah, while progressing slowly in the potty-training department, has been making steps at least. Besides that, he is now in pretty much the same size of clothes as Jude, with the exception of slightly shorter pant length. He takes a nap about 5 out of 7 days. This weekend, at the home-schooling conference Jason and I attended, we realized that he is a "participatory" learner, meaning he doesn't understand something if you just tell him about it or show him--he has to actually do it. This would explain why we can sometimes not even get him to do a simple, single-pronged command--his brain is simply not set up to retain the information. Hopefully, now that we are armed with this knowledge, we can work with him a little more effectively on so many fronts. (The boy is brilliant, just different. At twelve months of age he could put together and take apart any wooden puzzle in our house, and would frequently sit doing so for half an hour at a time. That same attention span gets shortened to half a nanosecond when you ask him to, say, put forks on the table.)

After attending the conference this weekend, we have decided to put Jude into Kindergarten at the Catholic School this fall, but more than likely home-school after that. Some friends that were also attending have done that with their girls, and made some very encouraging remarks about the kindergarten program and teachers there, but want to homeschool for many of the same reasons I do. Jason and I just feel that Jude could really benefit from being in a group setting where he has to pay attention to a different authority figure than us, and not be totally distracted by the other kids. Also, Noah will likely benefit from the less-divided attention I will be able to afford him while Jude is at school.

Besides all that, we are building a house this summer! Yes, you heard me. The land has been purchased, and providing we can get a construction loan (so we don't have to camp while we are building!), we will begin building in about three to four weeks. How. excited. am I?!!

However, with the amount of time that this will be taking, among the other factors already mentioned, not homeschooling seemed like the best idea for this fall. (If it's not working, we can always change programs half-way through the school year.)

The last, but definitely not the least milestone I want to include in this post is that yesterday was Jason's and my seventh anniversary. After the craziness of having relatives visiting us last week (which we conscripted to help renovate), and the weekend away, we didn't do anything particularly special. But I have to say how amazingly special it is that I have got to live with the man of my dreams for seven years now. Sometimes I still want to pinch myself when I think about it. How did this guy end up picking me? But he did. And with each passing year, the love keeps growing.

"Blessed" doesn't even begin to describe how I feel.