The Harvey Family: August, September, and October {2019}

This month Brett:

started sleeping with a weighted blanket. He used to have such a hard time falling asleep at night. He would toss and turn and talk and do gymnastics in bed before finally being able to fall asleep at least 30 minutes later. Now he snuggles one of his stuffed animals, I lie the blanket over him, turn on the seahorse light with lullabys, and he can settle down and fall asleep in 10-15 minutes. It has been wonderful for his sleep and anxiety at night. It took a couple tries to get a blanket that was an appropriate weight for him, but we ended up with one that was about 10% of his body weight.
has been telling time and completely understands length of time and what happens at all times during the day. He does math associated with time as well. One night it was 6:41 and, just for the heck of it, I asked if he knew how long until "lights out" (which is at 8). He only thought about it for like 2 seconds, and he said "19 minutes". He actually figured it out faster than I could in my head.
loves playing Prodigy. It is a computer based math game plus battle game in one. They get to collect things while answering math questions to beat enemies. Since there is no kindergarten level, Brett has been doing the 1st grade math and doing perfectly with it.
had a little trouble adjusting to school at first. There must've been too many new things being asked of him and when he has too many behaviors corrected he gets upset. He's settled into a groove now and seems to enjoy going to school.
has been fighting doing reading for learning time at home, so we've switched over to just doing sight word flash cards. He's done really well and has learned most of the beginner sight word sets that we have. We'll soon be moving onto the advanced sight words, so hopefully he'll get comfortable enough to actually read books where he knows most of the words.
doesn't like going upstairs in our house by himself. He's apparently scared of something but neither of us know what it is.

This month Blake:

has decided he doesn't like Sunbutter sandwiches anymore. After eating them every day for 5 years or so, I honestly can't blame him. Now we have to figure out some other source of nutrition for him to take to lunch each day that is also tree-nut free because of the special allergy lunch table that he sits at.
has become very picky with food in general. We've settled on a few foods that he will eat and those are the foods he eats most days; cinnamon and brown sugar bagels for breakfast, and hamburgers and noodles for dinner.
decided his favorite subject in school is writing. He's always had a lot to say, so this is a great outlet for him to write down all the information he would normally put into words during the day. I love how creative and thorough he is when it comes to his writing!
got to go on a field trip to a national park that had a ton of fossils. Apparently the Cincinnati area used to be at the bottom of the ocean and a ton of animals fossils are here. The second grade curriculum has a unit of fossils so I got to go with his class to Ceasars Creek and was amazed at how much the kids knew about the local fossils that I'd never heard of.
is always tipping his chair. He never wants to sit in it, just leans against it and tips it to the side. He said he does it at school too and fell out of his chair one time.

Pics:

First day of 2nd grade for Blake.

And first day of AM Kindergarten for Brett.

Brett's sunflower finally bloomed, so here is a pic of him (with forced smile) with it.

Then my lovely tomatoes.

And orange pepper plant.

We had our house trim and shutters painted and it looks nice and fresh. The other good thing is that all the wood should be protected for many years now.

End of summer garden update: All the tomatoes and peppers did extremely well and stayed very healthy all year. I sadly ended up having to cut them down once the temperatures dropped below freezing. The zucchini and squash plants fell victim to powdery mildew early in the summer so they didn't last long sadly. The cherry tomatoes and golden jubilee tomatoes did really well next to each other.

"Blake's" cherry tomato plant did really well also.

The small orange pepper plant did really well with a ton of growth, but the peppers just take so long to mature.

The golden jubilee tomatoes really started doing well at the end of the summer.

Blake washing the Rav.

We harvested our sunflower seeds before they molded this year. Maybe we'll remember to plant them next spring.

We decided to make Halloween cookies this year with some cookie cutters that we've had lying around for years. They turned out really great!

The final trays of cookies before they got baked.

Blake's tray.

Brett's tray.

Our yearly tradition of painting pumpkins. Normally we paint the smaller ones, but we didn't get a chance to go to the farm this year so all we could find were the larger ones.