August

Around our house, we have been really trying to teach the kids more responsibility. They are each assigned a chore to do for the week. One chore is the dishes, another is picking up the rest of the house, and Kate gets to choose one room to pick up. Aimee just helps pick up what she wants to. When Jayke has the dishes and Ethan has the rest of the house, the house is a mess the entire week. You see, Jayke hates doing dishes and Ethan can't stand picking up all the messes. BUT, when it's the other way around, the house actually feels nice and I don't have to keep reminding the boys to do their chores every five minutes, which actually frees up my time to do my responsibilities like cooking and laundry. Ethan absolutely loves doing the dishes and he actually does them pretty quickly and Jayke is the same way about tidying up the rest of the house. If it were just a matter of keeping the house clean, I would leave them with those chores permanently. But, it is not about the house, it is about the kids and responsibility, so every other week I spend most of my time bugging the kids every five minutes for a few hours until I am finally at my wits end and start threatening them with some horrible punishment like "no cookies for you today". Here is a picture of Ethan happily doing his dishes.

Earlier this week, Jayke officially turned into Mater. He lost his 8th tooth. Actually, I pulled it out. His other tooth was starting to come down, so his gums were swelling and discoloring from all the pressure. I had him get me some tissue and just started moving his tooth around. There was so much pressure on the sides from the other teeth that it was a little difficult to move, but I kept moving it around (all the while ignoring his screaming of "it hurts" and "ouch") until finally I pushed it backward and POP! It flew to the back of his mouth, about to go into his throat and I made him roll over and spit it out. Here is a picture of him before he realized what he looked like.

The toothfairy even brought him a ring-pop type of sucker that had Mater teeth on them. It was hillarious!

Here is another of my favorite things. After family prayer at night the kids like to tackle Ryan. When they are done tackling him, they force Ryan to give them "dinosaur" rides. How his body holds up to their weight, I'll never know, but those kids LOVE it when Daddy lets them have a dinosaur ride. I think he wins Father of the Year for this!