Here’s a quick update on everyone.
Ruby has been doing a tumbling class. Today was the last class for the summer. I loved the teacher/instructor. She is very calm and patient with each little student. When we first signed up online, her class was going to have 14 little two and three year olds. They quickly broke that class up into two different classes. On average, her class had about 5 kids each session. The instructor’s 12 year old daughter was the helper for each class. She was very good at herding the little kitties about the tumbling mat. 🙂 The first two sessions, I stayed really close to the mat and gave little reminders to Ruby about where to stand or to look at the teacher. She did very well considering she’s never been in an active class and never knowing the instructor (In her Sunday School class, she has always known her teacher, it’s pretty structured and there are toys to play with.) The gym that we were at is air conditioned and is WIDE OPEN. There is just a little tumbling mat on the floor. The little routine is the same each time. The kids gather on the floor around the teacher in a cute little circle where they wait for others to arrive. Once the clock reaches 9am, the instructor starts a little song and each student passes around the stuffed animal for the day. The stuff animals they have used have been: butterfly, giraffe, bumble bee, and a gray cat. They say “Ruby has the butterfly, she spins it around and passes it down. What do you think about that?” It’s a rhetorical question. They don’t have a reply. The little cuties just sit and smile. Out of the group, Ruby was the youngest at 2 1/2. The others were three or near four years old. She might have been the youngest, but she was the most enthusiastic. She tried very hard. From all the activities, she loved doing the animal moves or automotive moves the best. The moves she does the most at home are moving like a kangaroo and a spinning around like a helicopter. However, a motorcycle sometimes makes an appearance during the day. On the last day of the class, only three little girls were present. They got to do a little obstacle course. First, the girls had to go down the “cheese wedge”, then across the beam and they finished out on the trampoline. Ms. Krista, the instructor, would tell or show the girls what to do at each station. The funniest part was watching the girls roll down the wedge. No one was really good at it. Ruby was the funniest. The instructor was brilliant for putting her last. Ruby needed all the instruction and observation she could get and still had a hard time figuring out how to roll down the wedge. At first, she had a hard time taking turns and was excited to get on the wedge. She also liked to look over if I was moving around or videoing her.
Herding cats, would be a better statement to describe the class. From the same little girl that has to go to the bathroom at the same time every session, to the little boy with different “owies”, the instructor had her hands full. Ruby’s most favorite part of the class was getting a sticker. She always put it on her cheek. Everyone else put theirs on their hand. She’s a leader not a follower. 🙂
Clara is doing very well. She is a very sweet, cuddly baby. Ruby was always high maintenance and let her feelings be known very loudly and very often. Some people say that Clara seems easier because she is the second born and we aren’t as uptight. I whole heartily disagree. Ruby has always been loud, stubborn and very independent. She hated being covered up, strapped in, cuddled, swaddled, hard time calming down, hated bathes, etc. This second kid just goes with the flow. And truth be told she does a good bit of sitting by herself because of her overly dramatic and high maintenance older sister. True story. Clara is on a schedule and Ruby is on a completely different schedule. The only similarities between the two are: they go to bed at night around the same time and they have the same parents. That’s about it. It’s going to be a interesting 16 or 18 more years at the Wooster house. Right now, Clara is sleeping and Ruby, aka Mickey Mouse, is playing with a balloon that I blow up and she promptly lets all the air out while screaming for joy at the top of her lungs.
Speaking of sleeping…..it was mentioned somewhere up there….Clara is sleeping through the night. Ruby was sleeping through the night by 3 weeks. Clara had a harder time but by five weeks she was sleeping through the night. Our definition of sleeping through the night is any where from 5 and half hours to 6 and a half hours. Now at three months, she is sleeping a solid 6 and half hours straight. She eats at 6 am and then goes right back to sleep without fussing and I wake her back up at 10 am. She’s awake until 12pm, fusses a little, then takes a nap from 12pm to 2pm. She eats again and then is up for the rest of the day. She’ll take little cat naps here and there. She eats at 2pm and 6pm. She has a fussy time around 8pm but is done by 9pm. She eats for the final time around 10pm. Like with Ruby, she gets a bottle of my breast milk after she eats at 10pm. (I make tons of milk in the morning and it tapers off by the evening. So I pump my own milk in the morning time and she gets a supplemental bottle after she eats at 10pm, so we know she is full for the night.)
Clara is getting better and better at making eye contact. She is also finding her little voice and you can get a good smile or little chuckle out of her. All of a sudden she’s holding her head up and likes sitting up like a big girl. She can’t sit up for very long periods of time and tires out easily. Her hair still sticks straight up on her head. Her hair is getting lighter and lighter. She still has very light eyebrows. Her eyes are a blue/green/hazel color. Babies eyes can change color from 6months to a year.
Clara at 2monts
As for the grown up here, we are making it. Since April, Wooster has not slowed down. Note to self: Having a newborn during the months of April-October on a large working farm is not a good time. In two weeks, Wooster has worked 190 hours. April was all about planting. May is cultivating, fertilizing, dammar diking, planting soybeans and more fertilizing. June is all about wheat harvest, fertilizing, spraying, and sprinklers. July is all about catching up from the spring and June rainfalls with fertilizing, sprinklers and spraying that couldn’t get done back in June. These last few weeks of July they are focusing on sprinkler/pivot maintenance and getting the bins ready for corn harvest, spraying and other odds and ends. He is gone every morning by 6:15 and tries to make it home by 10pm. He does not eat lunch at home. I pack his breakfast/lunch/snacks every day. We see him periodically on some days. We will pack up in the truck and go sit in the field he is working in, make a visit to the shop, or go sit at a hay shed. Sometimes we take cookies, popsicles or cool cokes.
With all that farm work, people around here refer to the wives as “summer widows”. The days are long and everyone counts down until the harvest in October. Our harvest will be late this year. (They were about 3 weeks behind in getting the corn in the ground because of the snow and cold temps in April.) With 5,000 acres at our farm here in Byers ( 12,000 or so more over at Greensburg), the guys have a good bit to do everyday.
As with me, I am focusing on keeping everyone on schedule, food made, house work done, clothes for people to wear, diapers changed and entertainment for a 2 year old and 3 month old. And we just started our preschool homeschool two weeks ago. So, really not much going on at all. 🙂
Mickey Mouse aka Ruby visits Papa Bear at the hay shed
Wooster and Ruby sharing a freezy pop a the hay shed
Georgia Girl…errr Mickey Mouse at the hay shed. Grain cart in the background.
Ruby tries riding a scooter at the shop
spraying
