September Status Report

I can't believe that Amelia's hair is long enough and thick enough to pull back in an adult clip. It seemed like it took forever for her hair to get long enough to warrant any sort of hair accessory. 

She asks to help me in the kitchen every single day at least five times. Don't tell her brothers, but they've had assigned jobs at mealtime for three months and she hasn't had a specific duty because she's doing so many other things for me of her own free will. 

She is so smart and has a memory like a steel trap. She can listen to us read aloud and simultaneously play quietly and understand the plot perfectly.

A couple weeks ago in primary, the woman in charge was surveying the kids to find out who played musical instruments for an upcoming program. Amelia's hand shot into the air and she volunteered in all seriousness to play the spoons. Do you think we exposed her to enough music in Appalachia this summer?

She loves memorizing scriptures and poems right now.

Elias doesn't have night terrors anymore and that ends a very long stretch of scary midnight eyes-open screaming sessions. We're pretty sure he still has bad dreams, but they don't wake him up.

In his first day of tumbling class he approached every activity as if he were a soldier in training. You know how the marines call "oorah"? If he knew about that he'd be doing it in tumbling class. He is physically adept and surprised the group by getting up into a headstand all by himself against the wall on the first day.

Everyday he tells me he loves me at least twice without any prompting from me. But he loves Dan more than anything else in the world.

When we go outside in sunny weather E's comment is always "it's so shiny out here." He also says "I was hoping you'd say that" frequently, especially after I tell him we're going somewhere he wants to go or if I tell him that we're about to do something he wants to do.

Joshua has just recently become interested in specific football players and their statistics. He checks out books about them from the library and asks Dan his opinion. He also loves Pokemon books and Balloon Tower Defense Five. A lot.

I think he would make a great carpenter. He could have spent hours in the woodworking tent at Montpelier working with colonial era tools. 

He would do anything to get us to take him on a road trip across the  United States, but he frequently gets carsick. And there's the rub.

He is growing up intellectually and emotionally. He is really aware of the the real-life, scary things in the world and worries about them a lot especially at night. He has become more skilled at seeing things from different perspectives and he says "that's a tough one" to conclude his two-sided analyses just like Dan does.

He loves to give talks in primary (our weekly children's Sunday school program) and volunteers to give them whenever the assigned speaker is missing. My friend told me that two weeks ago he stood and said "So I was just asked to give this talk two minutes ago so bear with me. Just kidding. I love doing this last minute. So, I've been thinking about . . . ." and then he launched into his talk.