The Harvey Family: November and December (2017}

This month Brett:

talks about having birthdays a lot. He has been wanting to have pretend birthday parties and wants to blow out all the candles, then a few minutes later he is ready to add one candle and do it again. We make his pretend birthday cakes in his play kitchen and he likes to make pretend lemonade to go along with it.
is very interested in reading. He always wants to keep up with Blake and reading is one thing that he just can't through brute force. He knows all his letter sounds and tries to guess words once he knows the first letter.
loves playing school. His favorite is when he gets to play over with Mazie. He loves going up to her room to play school with her. I honestly don't know what they "learn" in Ms. Mazie's class, but it is apparently very enjoyable.
says that he needs Ellie at night. Ellie is our humidifier that looks like an elephant. He knows that we keep it on so that it will help with the boys' stuffy noses so when he is somewhere other than in the bedroom and he's having trouble breathing, he says that he must need Ellie (to add moisture into the air) so he can breathe better.
says "in the whole universe" a lot. "I'm the fastest boy in the whole universe." "I love this cheese more than anything in the whole universe." Apparently the world wasn't big enough.
has been coughing a ton. He has had post nasal drip for a while because of a cold or just the cold weather, but whatever the case, he will not blow it out of his nose so of course it just keeps making him cough. He finally got over it after about a month.
has been doing great reading 3 letter words by sounding them out. This is how we started Blake out with his reading, and Brett is picking up on it super fast. He never seems to be in the mood, but he read his first sentence this month and he still knows it and will tell you if you ask.
likes to play the "rhyme and spell" game. Chris came up with this game so the boys could both play. Brett's job was to come up with words that rhymed with the one Chris picked and Blake had to spell one of the words. Brett insists that we play that game before bed each night as a stall technique but he loves it.
always says "I don't know what to do" because he is picking up on queues from his brother about being bored. Brett loves to play with things but he doesn't like doing it alone most of the time. Blake doesn't like playing the same things so he'll always decline when Brett asks him to play.

This month Blake:

got his first teeth xrays. We went to the dentist and finally got Blake some xrays. We were curious to find out when he might start losing teeth and we got a pretty clear answer. The dentist said that if you get your teeth late as a baby, then you are very likely to lose them later in childhood as well. Based on his xrays, the dentist said he has probably a year and a half or 2 years before he expects Blake to start losing teeth. I think Blake is a little sad about it, but I've tried to convince him that it means his adult teeth will hopefully be in better shape than his peers because they'll be newer. For now he said that sounds good.
started getting nose bleeds again. We went from warm weather to cold weather pretty much overnight. The humidity dropped pretty quickly and Blake started getting nose bleeds at night and even 1 or 2 at school. We put him back on Allegra at night and using Ayr nose gel along with having a humidifier at night and after about a month he seems to be doing much better.
asks for definitions of big words. He is just a sponge when it comes to knowledge and he loves learning new words and trying his best to use them in everyday conversation. We've brought out our old dictionaries and he loves that so many words are in there and he can learn so much from them.
still hasn't gained enough control of his mouth to pronounce the letter R and I think it bothers him. He knows that people can't understand him and he is very aware of it. We were told that it is normal to not be able to make that sound until age 7 and that we shouldn't worry about it until then. I was worried that it would become so habitual that it would be hard to change, but he's doing great with his TH and L sounds that he struggled with for so long.
loves watching Mark Rober and The King of Random on YouTube. Mark Rober used to work at NASA and has an amazing way of being able to explain so many science things in a very simple manor that most people can understand it quite easily. I think Blake watched all of the videos he has on his YouTube channel and ended up moving on. The King of Random is another channel that Blake is rifling through and he is really great with science and physics experiment as well. Blake likes telling random people about dry ice and other things he learns on those videos.
counts by 2s a lot. When he counts things, he typically counts by 2s now that he knows how much faster it is. He counted up to 100 that way one day just to see if he could. Since he was able to do that, he asks other things like if I can count to a thousand by 20s. I told him I could but I would rather him try. He hasn't taken me up on that challenge yet.
had his first real snow where he got to go sledding. He had such a great time going down the hill in our backyard. We went together the first few times and then once he was comfortable with that, he did it on his own a few more times and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I was worried he'd think it was too fast, but by the end he was even pushing the ground away so he could go even faster.

Pics:

We made a "Thankful Tree" that we filled up with leaves listing the things we are most thankful for this year. The boys got a little tired of doing it after a week or so. I tried to help them get more creative, but maybe next year they'll be able to think of more things haha.

The leaves were much better once we found the right punch press. =)

We finally had a few family photos taken. Luckily our friend Eric came and helped us take them! These were the best ones.

And some individuals of the boys. <3

Blake decorating his gingerbread (graham cracker) house.

And the finished product.

Brett out collecting snow.

The boys love the snow!

Brett was so cute with his crafting this year.

Brett's Christmas program. He may have been a bit overwhelmed up on stage so he wasn't the most cheerful one up there... He had his buddy Beckett on one side and his friend Millie on the other at least.

This is how the boys counted down the days until Christmas. They each got to decorate one spot each day. It took a while but we finally found holiday stickers that were the appropriate size.