Jen's page
School has officially begun! Isaac is glad to get back into the routine of going to Dana's everyday. He loves the other kids. I picked him up one day this week and I could hear a stampede as she opened the door (it's really only 4 kids). Isaac was trying to run with the other 3. He got knocked down by them and had a funny irritated look on his face when I saw him. He's keeping up; helping with clean up and now answering our questions, which is really cute. I'll ask him, "How was your Dana today?" and he'll answer, "Nana," which means Dana. (Not to be confused with "Na-na," with slightly different intonation which means banana, his favorite fruit!) He's starting to attempt to answer by saying something jibberish to almost everything we ask.
With teaching, I've almost completed all of my fall testing and I've selected the 7 students I will be working with. Tomorrow is a paperwork day. Slowly, I will start lessons with kids this week. I'm excited. There will, as always, be a few challenges, but that keeps me on my toes.
Small group begins again on the 12th. We are happily re-joining the group we "birthed" from several years ago. We are studying "The Power of a Praying Parent." We went with the group to pizza on Friday without children, and I'm truly looking forward to reconnecting with some young parents and families.
Life is good!

Jen's page
We counted Isaac's words and, even though my brother doesn't believe me, he says between 35 and 40 words. When we were on vacation, Isaac was jabbering gobbledy-gook. Tim said,
"Jen, did you hear that? Isaac just said, 'Mom, I want a cheese pizza for dinner'."
I laughed and so did he.

Jen's page
Howdy! Today is the last day of July and I never posted in June! Yikes! I'll do better!
We have had a super summer. It has been very relaxing just hanging out with the boy. He's fun. We gave up the bottle before b-day 1 (yes!), and he started walking during his birthday week. I tried to give up one of the naps, but after talking to someone about it, I decided to keep both and it's been going really well. Isaac loves to sleep and this is good! He now knows the routine and even asks for the door to be closed once he has his pj's on at night ("door"). My goal has been to get the routine down so that I only have to lay him down and he goes nite-nite on his own. GOAL ACHIEVED! He does have a small security blanket that he needs to have when he goes to sleep. I'm sure as I head back to work-school, it will take a few days for him to get back into the routine.

I'm looking forward to going back to work and having my own space this year. I'm sure it will be a good change. I can hardly wait to set up my little space.

I wanted to enjoy these last few days and do some cooking. Today I made a recipe and I'm planning one for tomorrow, too. I have a few errands to run tomorrow, also. I hope to get an early walk in, too, before it's 80 degrees.

Have a happy day.