teeth and taekwondo

Iona seems to be getting more teeth coming in. I can't seem to tell where they are coming, but she's chewing on her hand and drooling buckets. And she's started BITING. Never went through that with Aidan. She's been wrestling on the floor with Aidan and biting him on the back. He runs around with wet spots on the back of his shirt. She has only hurt him one time, but now, of course, we are on the lookout for it more. She did bite me once today, but she learned pretty quickly that it wasn't appropriate. Thanks to a friend's suggestion, I gave her some crunchy food with dinner. She got to try a frosted mini wheat and thought it was amazing!

She also is learning to climb on the furniture. She can climb on the chair with no problem--we've had to move some of the things we kept out of her reach over there. She can ALMOST get on the couch and gets REALLY mad if we don't help.

On the plus side, she has learned to say "hug" and "hi" recently. She'll go around and say hi over and over again--so cute! And she will come up to us and hug and kiss us pretty often. She and Aidan play together so well for the most part. She hates to see Aidan in time out--she tries to either sit with him and hug him when he's crying or keep peeking at him.

Aidan has been taking taekwondo at this wonderful local gym. This Saturday he will be testing to move up to the next belt--white with a yellow stripe. He has to do the star form and also will get to break a board. It's so neat to see him progress in this. He loves it so much because he gets to be like the ninja turtles. He's really growing in his coordination. We are so excited for him! We've also had Iona in a mommy-and-me gymnastics class and she is doing very well in there. I think she's the littlest one, but she amazes us with what she can do there. We think we're going to keep her in it through the school year to give her some one-on-one time with us.

We're gearing up for school starting in a couple of weeks around here. I can't believe the summer is going so fast! We haven't spent as much time this year in the water or at the park, but it's been hard with Iona's 2-nap schedule. As of this week, I lay her down for an hour in the morning but she usually doesn't sleep. It's good for her to have some time by herself, though. But what's nice now is that if we have something going on in the morning, we can go out and do that and not interrupt the nap-she-never-takes in the morning. And when school starts, I'll have an hour of uninterrupted time with Aidan to work.

We talked with Aidan tonight a little about how school may not always be in the morning for us. On certain days, when we have something big happening that day, school may be in the afternoon or evening or not at all. He had a rough time with that info, but by the end he seemed to come around. We've learned he needs to be mentally prepared for changes like that...just like his mommy! We specifically mentioned the day we readopt Iona, which will happen in the morning. On that day we'll probably do some school in the afternoon. Or skip it. We'll see.

Speaking of homeschooling, I just came across this WONDERFUL site, and I'm excited to dig into it more.

We're starting to get the itch for a bigger house. We need a fenced yard for our kids--living on the corner next to train tracks with no fence isn't the most ideal, although after visiting Ethiopia we are so blessed and thankful for what we have. We're also looking for more bedrooms as we think of adding to our family. We'd like to pay off debt first and put on a new roof and maybe fix a couple of other things around here, but we'll see what happens. We had talked about moving away from the area at one point, but we have no leads at the moment. I guess we'll see what God wants to show us when He is good and ready for us to move.