Well I have not been the greatest at updating on the happenings of the whole Hughes family as of late, so here is an attempt... :)
Katherine:
Well Miss Katherine has had quite a wild few weeks with her broken arm and all. She is quite annoyed at her cast, but has really been quite the trooper since she cannot use her left hand to do much of anything since her arm is permanently in a bent 90 degree angle position. I had forgotten about this problem and fixed her favorite corn on the cob for dinner one night...silly Mommy! Katherine can't pick the cob up with both hands to eat it! Poor thing. But she improvised and ended up leaving the cob on the table (I know GROSS!) and eating it like a dog would eat out of his bowl. Chris and I just laughed. She didn't complain, so we didn't either. :) I wish I had captured a picture of her eating it, but it wasn't very ladylike, so maybe on second thought, I'm glad I didn't! She is growing like a weed and is busting out of almost all of her clothes! MOM! You need to go shopping! haha. She is wearing between a size 6 and 7 in clothes now which means we can start shopping in some of the "tween" areas of stores...REALLY?! She's still a baby, I am NOT ready to start thinking about teenage years...heaven help us! We have been struggling a bit with some honesty issues and her sneaking downstairs after we put her to bed for snacks, such as cookies, treats, gummy snacks, M&Ms, etc. Definitely not healthy stuff! Chris got the bright idea to set up a GoPro camera in the kitchen since she would not fess up the midnight snacks, but we KNEW she was doing it. Sure enough, the first night he set it up within 10 minutes or so of putting her to bed, she was sneaking down into the kitchen for a cookie. She didn't notice the camera so she headed back upstairs. About 2 minutes later...she's BACK! This time she noticed the camera and the look on her face was pitiful. She was like "OH NO! I'M BUSTED!" We have since had quite a few chats about honesty and how important it is, so hopefully this will no longer be an issue. :) We have also apparently not slowed down a bit from the broken arm. She is still wild and runs at full tilt pretty much all the time. Which is good that she's not afraid after breaking her arm, but not so good when you are trying to get a bone to heal! Last Friday we went back to Dr. H's office for an x-ray and new cast (so we thought). Dr. H was not in the office as he had a wedding at his house over the weekend, so we met with his wonderful PA Ms. Meg. She was great and they took X-rays of Katherine's arm and noticed that it is no longer straight (remember the no slowing down from above?!). It apparently got jarred since setting it and it's a bit crooked. Luckily the view that was most crucial of the arm showed that the side view is still straight, so they don't think they will need to reset it. Thank goodness! But, that meant we did NOT get a new cast...bummer. We will go back to see Dr. H next Wednesday the 14th and will hopefully get a waterproof cast then. We shall see!! Here are some pictures of Miss Katherine getting caught by the GoPro camera, with her baby brother and of her X-rays from last week.
Katherine and Andrew. They are equally smitten with each other. :)
The cookie monster grabs a cookie.
BUSTED!
Katherine's X Ray. Notice the picture on the right...the ulna (or bone on the left) is crooked. :(
Caroline:
Miss Caroline is just as sweet as can be. :) We have thankfully moved on from the constant potty accidents which seemed to crop up right after Mr. Andrew's birth. I think that was just a slight regression due to a major change in the family, but we are back to normal, thankfully!! She absolutely adores her baby brother and constantly calls him "my buddy." In fact, she informed me the other night that his name is "my buddy" and his nickname is Andrew. Gotta love it! She's very protective of him and wants to give him kisses and hold him constantly. I have a feeling Andrew is going to have both girls wrapped tightly around his little finger. ;) Caroline is growing like a weed and is now wearing size 4 clothes! Yikes! Where did my little baby go?! She still prefers dresses and still LOVES hippos. I have a feeling she is going to wonder one day why she loves hippos so much! We think it's pretty funny. She is very opinionated about most things these days and still talks very LOUDLY! We are constantly saying "Caroline, use your inside voice!" I think that's all part of being a middle child, but sometimes I just want to scream because she is SO loud. She absolutely LOVES to take walks and do pretty much anything and everything outside. She is also completely in love with her Daddy. She always wants to do something with him, which I think is quite sweet. :) She loves minestrone soup, chicken fingers and cheese to eat. She also has quite the sweet tooth, but she hasn't been sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night for snacks. ;) We have a hard time getting her to eat her dinner sometimes, so she rarely ends up getting dessert. We joke that Caroline is going to be the skinniest of us all because she never gets to eat dessert!
Caroline wearing a shirt she made in preschool...with a hippo on it! :)
Caroline and Andrew. Such sweethearts.
We are finally able to fit three across thanks to a seat belt extender. When I told the girl to smile for a picture, this is what Caroline did. Is she shooting me with her foot or doing a kung fu kick?!
Andrew:
Andrew is now 7 weeks old and is growing like a WEED! He still eats about every 2-3 hours during the day and occasionally will cluster feed for an hour or two (meaning he eats CONSTANTLY for that period), but at night he has been sleeping 8 hours straight for the past 3 days!!! YIPPEE!!!! The first night he did that I wanted to jump for joy! He is so sweet and still sleeps most of the day, but he is starting to have "wakeful" periods where he will just stare at the girls and I. Around dinnertime he gets pretty fussy, but I think it's mostly from being tired and he's just ready for bed. I feel a bit bad for Christopher because he really only sees him when he's super fussy, but really he's not a fussy baby. We have had a few tummy issues which did lend themselves to some fussing, but we think we have figured out that he is gluten intolerant, just like Daddy. I have eliminated gluten from my diet and that has helped tremendously! He had this horrible rash on his face, neck, eyelids, ears, shoulders and beginning to go down his chest, but now that we have been gluten free for a week or more the rash is almost completely gone and his tummy issues have completely disappeared! Not so fun for mom as I am not used to eating Gluten Free all the time and I don't automatically remember that I can't eat certain things. I'm having to retrain myself. It's been a bit of a challenge, but Christopher just says "now you know what I feel like." :) He does still have some dry skin, but I think that's related to the cooler weather we have had lately. I hope so anyway. :) He is close to 11 pounds now if not more than 11 pounds. I just packed away his newborn and 0-3 month outfits. I have to admit I did shed a tear because my baby is growing way to fast! He is fully into 3-6 month outfits and I don't think he's going to be wearing these for long! Some he already fills out pretty well. Yikes! Our kiddos are growing up way too fast. :( Here are some pictures of the little guy. :)
My sweet little guy. Here he was still fighting the mad rash on his face and neck. :(
Sitting up in the Bumbo like a big boy! Right before I snapped the picture he was sitting up nice and straight. Oh well!
Are YOU talking to ME?
Mommy caught a smile!!
Such a sweet guy!
Homeschool:
Well it is hard to believe but we are in week 10 of 12 for Classical Conversations (CC) before we take a long break for the Holidays. I cannot believe that we are halfway through the full year's curriculum for CC! We have learned SOOO much. I think Mommy has learned more in 10 weeks of CC than I learned in all of my many years of school! Insanity! Katherine is doing SO well with the memory work and Caroline is picking up a lot of it as well. Katherine is also well on her way to being a reader! She can read level one readers pretty well with a little help sounding things out, but for the most part she can do it herself. She has learned 40 phonograms (of 72) and a bunch of spelling rules to help her sound things out and learn how to spell. She can accurately spell a ton of words (I've lost track of how many exactly) and her handwriting is improving daily. Math is still her favorite subject BY FAR. She's learned to read the clock (analog and digital), she counting money, making patterns, sorting, identifying objects by shape, size, color, etc. She amazes me with how quickly we blast through the lessons. We are almost through with lessons from the March lesson plans and it's only November...and honestly we haven't been doing too much math since Andrew was born just because it's been a little wild around here. So that will tell just how far ahead she is in math. Caroline is working diligently on her letters, shapes, colors, comparisons (bigger, smaller, longer, shorter, etc), counting and numbers. Today I was working with Katherine on a math lesson and Caroline came over and said "I want to do that." Sure enough she sat down and did the whole lesson by herself! She is so smart and I have a feeling she will be way ahead once we start in on the Kindergarten curriculum for her. Hard to say what Andrew will be like since he will have homeschool to listen in on for years before he's ready to actually join in! :) Here are some pictures of us doing some math. Language Arts and Memory Work for CC don't lend themselves very well to pictures, but math does! So here ya go!
Doing math lessons on half full, measuring, following a recipe, and mixing colors.
Same day as above.
Katherine measuring her pencil and deciding if the ruler is longer or shorter than the pencil. The other objects in front of her were in the "longer than" pile.
Another view of her in action.
Caroline doing the same lesson! Measuring the glue stick.
The glue stick is shorter than the pencil! :)
I also made my first ever piece of clothing from scratch. I made a romper for Mr. Andrew. Not too bad for a first attempt! I still need to hem the bottom and put the snaps on, but other than that's it's finished! :) I'll have to post a picture with him in it!
Well that about sums up the Hughes for a while! I cannot believe we have two weeks until Thanksgiving!! How did that happen?! I feel like I missed a few weeks...or months! Hopefully I will post again next week with pictures of a new waterproof cast for Miss Katherine!! :)
