February has been a busy month for the Odendaal Clan, with all the little boys learning new things and growing up in their own way.
NJ has been working alot on his handwriting this month and is finally starting to accept that practice does improve his penmanship, He's also doing extremely well with his reading and is flying through the Biff, Chip and Kipper, Oxford Reading Tree series and will pick up books He hasn't yet read and having a go at them which is great since it is Him taking initiative with his studies.
EJ has been learning the Reception Common words list and is doing well with his basic Math skills, He really enjoys patterns and numbers alot and his speech is coming along at a great pace though there is a lisp on some words thanks to his tounge tie.
AJ has had a physical growth spurt and is starting to talk more, mostly still just babbles to himself while playing but there are a few more words being used regularly in his speech and hes learnt a few new signs as well which is helping ease the miscommunication and not being able to get his point across. He's getting into Puzzles alot and enjoying them and starting to show some skill holding a pen/pencil/crayon when drawing. I'm looking forward to some warmer weather so we can do some outdoor water paintings on the patio slabs.
CJ is growing so quickly hes 5 months old now and its hard to believe hes only been with us since September. His little personality is showing through strongly in his interactions with us and with his brothers. CJ learned to roll in early Jan from his tummy onto his back going both directions and a couple of weeks ago mastered going from back onto his tummy he now won't lie still enough for a whole nappy change and at each chance he gets is flipping himself over trying to get places.
Quite by accident we had an interesting discussion ( myself and the boys ) through the last couple of days as I was talking with some friends overseas through a Social Networking website that I am sure you are quite familiar with and one of the girls wanted to know how we all sounded when we spoke since only a few of us have met in person or spoken on the phone with each other so we posted short videos of us talking to our children so that we could hear each other speak, Of course the boys wanted to know what I was doing and listened/ watched the other clips with me and heard the different accents and words from across the world. I got questions like " What is a diaper Mummy?" from EJ with his cute little English accent and we had a chat about how in other countries then things often have different names and meanings to here in the UK, I highlighted this by going to the kitchen with them and pointing to the Kettle and asking what it was called, I got the response I expected of " Mummy that's the kettle you use to make the water hot to make your cuppa' teeeeeeeeeeeeeea! " my boys find it quite funny to put a Essex or Cockney twang onto that phrase when they say it and drag out the word Tea accenting it.
We are still holding out hoping for snow, though the rest of the country doesn't want it then to me its just not winter without some snow, there have been a few sleet showers and a couple of hailstorms but only one instance of falling snowflakes that melted on hitting the ground at our house.
so fingers crossed we get some snow on this cold front
