The Harvey Family: January {2018}

This month was ridiculously cold. I don't think I've ever experienced temperatures below zero before and we had over a week with temperatures that never got above freezing. Needless to say, that groundhog had better be wrong about the whole "6 extra weeks of winter" thing. A lot of the month was spent waiting for snow or waiting for the temperatures to get back above freezing so we could clean the salt off our cars.

This month Brett:

likes to give me the "thumbs up" sign when he likes things. When he tries a food for the first time and he likes it, he'll go "MOM" then wait for eye contact, and smile and give me a thumbs up with an outstretched arm.
has become quite the artist. He is constantly drawing at school and at home. He started coming home from school with pictures of our house and other random places with roads connecting them. He would always draw our house the same way; a square with a triangle roof and lots of clouds and smoke coming out of our imaginary chimney, then a walkway to the driveway and then roads. The roads connected our house to the zoo, the grocery store, Kroger (yes I know this is a grocery store), and the baby store (uh, what? - I asked him about it and he said this is where you get babies like on the movie Boss Baby). He's also gotten really good at drawing stick people and I have no idea where he learned it since we haven't really talked about it at home.
absolutely loves going to Lunch Bunch at school. He used to fuss about going to school, but now that he goes to Lunch Bunch a few times a month, he is really excited about going! He told me that all of his other classmates went to it so he kinda felt left out when he didn't go. It's a win/win when they have enough spots for him to attend because he gets to go with his buddy Beckett, and I get an extra hour of time to get stuff done around the house!
can write just about all his letters but still won't hold his pencil the right way. He holds his pencil with the caveman grip, like an inch from the top of it. It is actually quite amazing how well he draws for such a difficult grip. I keep trying to help him do it the right way but he hasn't figured out how to do it comfortably yet so he keeps switching back.
started reading books from the library. He really doesn't want to get started, but once he starts, he is really good at sounding out words and remembering them. He's starting the Bob book series like Blake did because it seemed to work really well and it structured really well for beginning readers. I've been trying to get him to recognize the sight words "the" and "and" and it hasn't worked very well yet.

This month Blake:

has been very serious about seat belt wearing. Before we get the car out of park he becomes the safety patrol and makes sure that everyone has their safety belt on even if we're just going from the mailbox to our garage. He always tells me that he just really wants to make sure that everyone is safe. This boy has such a big heart.
has been getting much better with spelling words. In school, they have certain times where they are expected to sound out words on their own. He is doing really well with it and the vowel sounds seem to be the main hold up if he runs into any trouble. When we would ask him to do it at home he would freeze and not do it because once it was spelled wrong he'd know it because he couldn't read it back. Luckily, he doesn't give his teacher a hard time at school and he's actually trying and doing really well with it.
helped write his thank you letters for Christmas gifts. He is growing so fast with his writing skills and he can write his words so fast now. He was writing notes faster than I could address them! Such a proud Mom moment!
has been wanting to play Twister all the time. I think he AND Brett have been asking to play this almost every night. I'm not sure which they like more, getting the whole family to play games together or delaying bedtime. Either way, it has been pretty cool getting to play family games with 4 players and make it through to the very end without someone getting a temper and throwing it across the room.
has had a very dry and flaky scalp. The weather has been extremely dry and I think we've all had an itchy scalp to some extent. We've started him on Selsun Blue to hopefully get the dead skin off and start to let his new skin grow back stronger.

Pics:

Trying my best to get an up close photo of some beautiful snowflakes. I still have some work to do, but these were really cool looking. This was the day that snow fell most of the morning but there was nothing on the radar at all and it even continued to snow when the sun came out for a while.