June was a fun month — the weather has been pleasant, the kids have been playing outside, and we’ve been enjoying ourselves. Caden loved eating all the plums from our tree — he was constantly going to hunt for more plums on the ground. The lemonade stand has certainly been a hit! It started out as Kamy’s project, but it shifted into a joint venture where both kids were involved.
About half way through June, Kamy started splitting the proceeds from lemonade with Caden, so he got a solid income stream pretty quickly! With his money, he bought a sprinkler to play in and a kiddie pool. The kiddie pool has been a BIG hit! They were in and out of the water at least once a day. We set it up on the back deck, so I could see them from inside, it stayed clean since it wasn’t in the dirt and grass, and the big pine tree kept them in the shade. It worked out great.
Caden has had so much fun with the chickens! Both kids check for eggs several times per day, but Caden likes to catch them too. Kamy is a bit too timid to actually catch them, but she’ll cheer Caden on and then he’ll pass the chicken to her once it’s caught.
June was a rougher month regarding listening. A certain someone decided that the rules must be tested and would deliberately break them. One thing in particular we’ve been battling has been taking care of the potty correctly. Indoors. We’ll just leave the description there, but when the given excuse was “I didn’t want to come inside and stop playing,” we turned that into the consequence and Caden spent THREE separate days in his room. He could come out for meals, but that was it. Poor Kamy was so bored without her playmate! I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Caden though, since he knew what he was getting himself into when he did it. There was definitely no question about what would happen after the first time either. =P
Caden has created a sliding scale for rating his food. If you ask him how he likes something, he’ll say, “87 stars.” The key though, is knowing what the rating is based on! It certainly wasn’t on 100! One day it may be out of 55, the next day it would be 1055. 1055 is his new favorite number, by the way.
Caden loves his gymnastics class! He has Coach Tom, who coaches all the boys classes and the competition team. Tom is great with the kids and gives them so many opportunities to run out their energy, plus he is able to focus them enough to actually learn something and progress. It’s pretty impressive — I’d be hard pressed to deal with eight boys running around in the chaos of a busy gym. The boys use different equipment than the girls in gymnastics, so they’ve already introduced the parallel bars and the rings. Caden couldn’t be happier and loves going to gymnastics. The only downside is Kamy and Caden’s classes are back-to-back, so the other kid has to wait for an hour either before or after their class. It does mean I don’t have to drive up to the gym twice a week though, so that’s a victory for me. We’ve been packing the kids’ dinners and bringing them with us so the kids can eat while the other is in class. So far it’s been working out okay and it does help us get home and in bed on time.
School has gone well too — Caden’s learning about telling time, addition, greater than and less than, and writing practice. He listens to everything that Kamy is doing and is learning right along side her. He doesn’t retain quite as much, especially with our geography studies, but he’s involved and learning too. He loves to play games and will play games that are listed at a higher age bracket or have more complicated rules. The kids have played Monopoly Junior a lot, and the only rule we have left out is the doubling of rent when you own all properties in a color. Otherwise, watch out, because whether it’s from skill or just luck, Caden will give you a run for your money on almost any game you play!
