Saints, Scooters, & Cocoons {7 Quick Takes}

Hooray, Friday! I told the kids we would take things easy for school for Advent and John Paul is NOT pleased that this means he doesn't get to just completely slack off... But hey, we still need to do MOST of our subjects, it's just very likely that science will get dropped soon because I don't feel like reading it by the time we're done with everything else.

How about 7 Quick Takes?

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 The kids have been playing a TON with our saint blocks lately (still 10% off with code YAYROSIE but order soon, shop closes December 14!) and sorting them by category, then running upstairs to dress up as their favorite saints. Of course, this mostly means a dress-up explosion up in their bedroom, but it IS cute, at least!

Shoot you guys I cannot remember which saints they were trying to be here... St. Clare for sure in the middle, and the others? I do NOT know.

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Edith has been spending every possible moment outside (even when it's COLD) so she can ride her cute little birthday present (which we got her to replace a very old, very broken little truck she had been riding on for the past year), but she ALSO just figured out how to ride Peters scooter and it's adorable.

"I don't use TWO foots, I use ONE foot. ONE foot on da gwound, NOT TWO foots on da gwound!!"

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 Peter and I went to forage for greenery to make the Advent wreath look a little less pitiful, but it was tricky getting juniper branches because there were a million cocoons on the trees! Any idea what kind of moths these will turn into?

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Well... We tried.

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 But really, back to Edith. After all, she's the real star of the blog these days! (Her little dress SLAYS me, you guys.)

It took a good... 20 months? Before she would play independently and not just cling to me all the time. And she does it SO WELL now, except for the hundred times a day she starts whining, "I taaaaaaaan't... I taaaaaaaan't do it..." Now, 99% of the time she figures it out on her own, and the other 1% she either comes to me for help or collapses into an inconsolable toddler puddle.

But it's interesting to see how MY reaction has changed over the years—the same situation with John Paul would have resulted in me helping him immediately (he had a lower threshold for frustration naturally, but my eagerness to jump in didn't exactly help). But with more kids, I've naturally figured out when to watch and let the kids figure things out for themselves, and when to step in and offer help. Most of the time, they'll figure things out on their own! Let's hope this works in the later years, too...

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Lunchtime scenes! Trying to get our book for the day in during lunch, in the hopes that full mouths would mean quiet?

Nope. John Paul and Elizabeth insisted on playing poker while I read (with Magformers as currency, you guys I couldn't make this up if I wanted to), Cecilia and Mary Claire wanted to read their own books, and Peter was basically the only one listening.

But so far we've actually gotten through every book! It helps that I've decided to just make it part of school for the day...

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Not to brag, but you guys we have lit the candle EVERY NIGHT and read from our calendar and sung Advent songs together (really just 'O Come Divine Messiah' and 'O Come, O Come Emmanuel') and there hasn't been too much fighting over who gets to snuff the candles, so I'm going to count it as a liturgical living win!


Bonus take!

 My sister is in desperate need of a new sweater and while I am hoping I found her a new one, here are some of the options I came up with just in case you have the exact same standards!

Linking up with Kelly!