Mommy or Employee?

Today as Ryan was reading his lesson to me, he read the word "employment." I asked him if he knew what it meant, and he pretty much had a good understanding. We had a discussion about what an employee is by talking about how Daddy works for the architect firm and he is their employee, to which Ryan responded, "Yeah, and you're our (Ryan and Abby's) employee!" Ha! No wonder I am taken for granted so much!

What Happens When Boys Play With Dolls

Ryan tends to be very bossy and domineering with his sister, so we've been trying to teach him to allow her to occasionally pick the games they play instead of making all the decisions himself. I was pleased last week to hear him asking her what she wanted to do and then actually doing it instead of trying to manipulate her into playing what he wants! After a short time I went in to praise him for being unselfish, etc., and I was cracking up at what they were playing. Abby had said she wanted to play with her Beauty and the Beast doll and toys, so they were doing that. But I noticed that Ryan had Belle and she had some of Abby's play rings around her waist. I asked if she was wearing belts, and Ryan informed me that they were in fact her propellers so she could fly around with them like a super hero!

Fun at Oaks Park

For Abby's birthday we took her to a local amusement park, Oaks Park. We knew she would love it but that Ryan would probably skip most of the rides. We were very proud of him though. He tried three different rides that he was initially too scared to do, and he went on two of them a second time! He has been showing some maturity lately in being more bold and trying some things that he thinks he doesn't like or is scared to try. It's been good to see him growing a bit in this area.


He was really excited about this slide until he got to the top and wanted to bail! But Daddy coaxed him into trying it, and he ended up loving it and begging to do it again!


He was terrified to try this balloon ride, but as Abby and Daddy were riding it, I tried to soothe his fears and I guess it worked because he announced he would go on it after all. He had a last minute panic and wanted to get off, but we didn't let him and he ended up liking it enough to ride it again later in the day.

Swimming: Second Time Around

Ryan had swimming lessons shortly after his third birthday in hopes it would help get over his fear of water. That was a disaster, to say the least. He was petrified and couldn't relax and enjoy it at all. So when our homeschool group had sign-ups for three- to five-year-olds, I was a little hesitant. He assured me he wanted to try again though, so we signed both him and Abby up for eight lessons.


Ryan, Abby, and their friend Frankie.
I was very pleasantly surprised! He has been doing fantastic! He is having a great time, he is putting his face in the water, he is going under the water to retrieve rings and things, and he is even jumping to the instructor from the side of the pool which was a HUGE ordeal last time! The only negative has been his resistance to taking a shower afterwards to rinse off the chlorine! However, since I told him he would have to skip the next class if he fought me about the shower again, he has done much better.


They both are doing so well, we're considering getting an annual family membership to the pool. It's quite reasonably priced (we are actually in district--gasp!), and it will give us another thing to do besides McDonald's when it's pouring down rain outside since it's an indoor pool. In the meantime, I'm enjoying watching him have fun in the water. What a relief!

Chon-ji

Doing warm-up crunches.
Ryan has been coming along with his Taekwon Do. He can count to ten in Korean, and he is about halfway through learning the first form called Chon-ji. He gets his left and right mixed up, and his kicking combinations look more like skipping, but he LOVES to kick!


He is now the only one who doesn't have a uniform, and he told me last week he wants one. We've been holding off because we haven't been convinced that he really likes it and wants to stick with it. So we made him a deal: Once he has learned his first form all the way through (doesn't have to be up to promotion standards), we will get him a uniform if he still wants to continue. He will have to have one if he wants to promote anyway, so we'll see what he decides and how hard he works.


The instructor is trying to help him bend as far back as possible!

Easter Sunday

Ryan has been excited about Easter for weeks! We had a very nice day, and one of the special things about it was listening to Ryan read the Easter story to us from the Bible! He read quite a bit and did a fantastic job. His reading skills have really improved this year. We did several things to try and point the kids back to the real meaning of Easter, and I think it worked well. (I am short on blog time these days, so here's Abby's post that talks about other things we did.)


We did lots of meaningful things, but I think Ryan's favorite thing was the egg hunt. We hid eggs for the kids to find (in the house since this is Oregon), and then he wanted us to go hide while he and Abby hid them for us to find. They did a good job, and we had fun finding them. Then we hid the eggs yet again for them to find them again.


Ryan got several new cars to add to his collection of vehicles from the movies Cars. He got a Filmore, which he has been wanting for quite some time!

Budding Photographer

As we were doing our geocaching last week, Ryan wanted to try taking our picture. He has a camera (freebie digital that takes horrid pictures) that he plays with, so he's been "practicing" with, but this is the first photo he's taken with our camera. He did a pretty good job, and exclaimed while he was bringing me the camera, "I think I got it straight!" He did indeed.