Settling into a new routine

Fall is all about setting up new routines for me.  Henri's now in preschool two mornings a week and has to be at his school in the next town over the same time Carter needs to be in 1st grade down the street. Luckily my neighbor has twins and the same schools and days :)  So she picks Henri up with his little backpack two days a week and leaves her first grader with me and I take the big kids to school, then we switch off and each take an afternoon pickup.  I have to leave Valerie with her since I still, with 3 kids only have the station wagon and she has a minivan.

Valerie walks all over the place and has discovered this means she can get into even more stuff than before. She's going upstairs, but not downstairs.  The kids were all sleeping through the night but she's now waking up, oh, every hour and drooling constantly (Paul even asked, "how can all that drool come from such a small person?")  Henri and Valerie are figuring out the sibling thing. They make each other laugh and also yell at each other over the stupidest things!

A few pics to share:

Carter had picture day this week, so Henri also wanted his hair done and picture taken.

Valerie looking cute-we went to the park and had someone take pictures of us all...

Henri's first day of preschool...

most of what Henri tells us about school involves the guinea pigs and the toads.

I'm frantically getting as much prepared as possible for our Mothers of Preschoolers group. I'm the Craft coordinator for the year, so I'm shopping for supplies as well as doing samples.  We have over 55 people registered and our first meeting isn't until Friday!  I'm also helping with projects for the kids, which I haven't even started on yet.  I also started a bible study today on John. Not the book of John, but learning about him as a biblical persona.

We still have Mondays "off" which is quickly turning into my cleaning house day and running errands occurs while Henri's at preschool. I'd forgotten how much quicker it is to do errands with only one child!  We also have all our afternoons free as well, which are usually spent relaxing after a busy morning before big kids come home. I'm swapping 2 days a week for pickup as well, so it's busy on the days when it's my turn, but so relaxing on the days when I just wait for children to show up on my doorstep :)

Valerie's walking everywhere and better now, she's finally learned to move her knees! She's also changing direction, getting faster and getting back up when she falls rather than giving up and just crawling. I think her walking is finally faster than her crawling :)

That's all for this week, I'll update again soon!