This post covers all about Kye from November 🙂
BIG NEWS this month! We started watching Star Wars 🙂 Which sounds super crazy for me to be allowing to go down haha. Basically we keep our kids pretty sheltered when it comes to entertainment. They don’t watch tv at all (other than sports or an occasional HGTV show with Zach where he can fast forward commercials) and only watch DVDs that we own. When we see a new movie I always look it up on Plugged In and Common Sense Media and we watch it as a family so I can be there to answer questions, make comments, etc to help keep things at their level and appropriate for them to view.
This isn’t a big deal for the girls. Princesses are popular and age appropriate for many years. But for Kye it’s tricky when it comes to Disney trips and toys and such. Toys are really marketed after movies and the toys for his age are mostly things he doesn’t know about. He still loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse dvds. They don’t make “cool” Mickey Mouse toys haha!
Zach and I talked about it and knew we kinda needed to make a decision on which route to take. Disney owns Marvel as well as Star Wars. Both are having an increasing presence at the parks and both have TONS of toys on the market. Zach and his mom enjoyed watching Star Wars together when he was young and I asked around a lot and most people seemed to agree that Star Wars was MUCH less violent, sex-driven, and less foul language ridden than super hero stuff. We actually decided to go the Star Wars route before we even heard they were having a 7th film!
Since I have never watched them all and Zach hasn’t in years, we decided to buy the whole series on DVD and watch them with Kye over the holidays. I researched each one prior to watching on Common Sense Media and y’all they aren’t bad at all. I was surprised at how little violence there was! Out of all 6 movies we only had one scene where we had to tell Kye to close his eyes (Princess Leia in a sexy costume with dancers around her). I was also very, very impressed with the story line. It’s VERY easy to relate Luke/Anaken to Jesus and choosing to live a life for Christ (Luke) and choosing to be a slave to sin and follow satan (Anaken).
I honestly enjoyed them all and so did Zach! It was fun for Kye to get to stay up late to watch them with us and we all three enjoyed it. Britt has been told when she turns 6 we will re-watch them all with her too 😉 We spread them out and watched the first one over Thanksgiving break (we just finished the last one this past weekend which was the 2nd weekend in Jan). We debated what order to watch them in and decided to do release date order (4,5,6,1,2,3). I have read that the BEST way to watch them is 4, 5, 2, 3, 6 and skip 1 all together. I do agree that I wish we would have watched 6 last as I think it gives a much more cheerful, positive ending. I kinda wanna watch it again after finishing 3!
Kye LOVED them all. I do think some of the storylines were a bit over his head and the whole jumping back in time for 1, 2, and 3 was a tad confusing. He didn’t fully understand that when someone’s plane was shot that they’d die and kept thinking up solutions to make them all ok. He LOVED Luke. I now tell Kye that he’s my Luke. Kye really does have so much in common with Luke. He has such a strong moral compass and does not want anything to do with anything bad. He doesn’t understand why people like Darth Vadar toys and such b/c Darth is the BAD GUY. I’m a Han Solo girl myself, dude has some serious swag 🙂
While Britt and I were on our girls’ trip Zach took Kye and Tess to Toys R Us to do a free Lego building thing! I’ve heard of these before but they’ve always been stuff I didn’t think Kye would enjoy…this time it was a little Star Wars plane 🙂 He loved it!
Well. I knew the day would come soon and it’s arrived! Kye is no longer interested in kids meals at fast food places. We rarely eat fast food and when we do it’s often on kids’ nights so we get their meals free or discounted. Kye just eats more than the kids meal has! Usually I can get the people to give him a larger handful of fries and I let him finish Britt’s food so we can still get away with the kids meal but at CFA this month he asked if he could order a big chicken sandwich. He loved it and downed that best 😉 (yes, he also really loves ketchup haha!)
In school this month Kye’s class read The Wizard of Oz which is SO special to me. As a little girl I was obsessed with it. I had some red slippers and everything. They had a Wizard of Oz day where they watched the movie and had a parade! Everyone dressed up as different characters from the film. I knew there would be a million Dorothy’s and a ton of tin men so Kye and I brainstormed to come up with something that wouldn’t be so overdone. He was THE only member of the Lollipop Guild in the entire 1st grade! I was a bit surprised that more parents didn’t jump on the munchkin wagon b/c it was SUCH an easy costume!!! I just bought him a larger shirt from Goodwill and cut it then glued oversized felt pieces on his color. We even let him grow his hair out so we could style it for the big day 🙂 He was SO excited and it did make me sad that some of the kids in his class teased him. However he said once they did the parade and went to the older classes (3rd-5th) that ALL the kids kept saying his was the coolest. Duh older kids know that the lollipop guild is the jam!
G-Mama and the girls and I went to see him in his parade! It was ADORABLE!!! However it totally brought me to tears to see so many kids who weren’t dressed in the theme. I told Zach that when Britt is in 1st grade we should donate some lion masks or something so that everyone will have some sort of costume to wear!
Kye is my little inventor. He is ALWAYS going around the house thinking of ways he can recycle stuff into other things. This month he decided to invent his own board game. He did a great job! We have played it many times! It’s inspired by Candy Land but does have a few variations to it! He named it “Double Trouble Candy Land”
Every game has to have rules!
Something about Kye that I really admire is his strong work ethic. Kid likes to WORK and is very motivated to earn money. He has his bank account and has had a lemonade stand, has sold watermelons, and has sold his own handmade bookmarks to earn profit. He is saving for his future home and car (no joke). He continually comes to me with ideas of ways to make money but they are just not appropriate for a kid his age. Like he will say he wants to go to people’s houses and clean for them or do work for them and he’s just not old enough yet for those responsibilities. We did talk about how Mr. Rusty had hurt his eye (please keep praying for him!) and probably needed some legit help. We talked about how it’s important to help family just to be nice and not to expect to be paid but that maybe he could ask Big Papa if he could do work for him. He went over to their house one afternoon after school and worked a solid 90 min. He picked up sticks and took it very seriously and I was told he did a good job! He got paid for his work and was SO PROUD! If anyone in town needs some help Kye is always available! 😉
Kye’s new school doesn’t collect boxes for the Christmas Shoebox charity that Kye has always done each year. He still put together a box to send with Britt to her school. He takes such care in picking out gifts that he thinks the child will like and it makes me so proud!
Kye has been asking about gum for awhile now. I read that it’s really not appropriate for kids under age 5 to chew gum and honestly I hate it. I’ve tried it twice and both times was disgusted. I also don’t like it when others chew it around me. It drives me nuts. I’m usually polite about it, except when it comes to my husband haha I’m like nooooo kissing for youuuuuu. 😉 Kye got some gum from church so I let him try it before his camping trip as they planned on chewing lots of gum then. He liked it! But I don’t think he hardcore loved it, I think he more liked it b/c he’d been wanting to do it and finally got to?
If you don’t own any Magna-Tiles
they are AWESOME! They aren’t cheap but you can find deals on them throughout the year if you keep an eye out. Kye is very creative with them and I think they are really great for him. I think he will enjoy legos but I like the freedom these allow for him to have and how they allow him to think outside a set of instructions! (sidenote…yes Kye still loves to be in underwear haha)
Since it’s important for Kye to get his sleep at night we have moved his Mario Kart time to the weekends. We used to let him stay up late one night a week to play it (typically 45 min to an hour of play time total and it’s always together with Zach) but now usually we spend an hour while the girls nap on Sundays playing. I have started playing too and it’s really fun. I’ve seen a lot of change in his ability to handle losing more gracefully. He’s still extremely competitive but I think he’s handling it better!
Kye eats breakfast at 650ish each morning then has lunch at 1050 and we eat dinner at 530! He comes home a lot after school very hungry! I don’t mind him having a small snack and I’m proud of him for making it himself but I about died when I saw this MASSIVE bowl of yogurt raisins and cheerios haha!
School is still going well. I wouldn’t say that Kye loves school. He has asked me many times about homeschooling. Kye really loves to be with his family (I don’t mind that one bit!) and I do think he may get a bit bored at school which does worry me some. He has picked up the common core math stuff very, very easily and enjoyed explaining it to me haha!
Zach is refinishing our dining room table so the kids have had fun having so much space! Kye built the biggest train track yet!
He had a sale in the playroom 😉
He cracks me up with his dressing up for pretend play. He creates characters and uses funny voices and makes up storylines for them. He is ALWAYS the good guy which I love about him but I have had to talk to him about allowing Britt to be the good guy too. I don’t want her to grow up always being the villain!
More About Kye:
- Kye’s teacher talked to me a lot this month regarding Discovery and also talked to me about how well liked Kye is. My #1 goal in life for my children is for them to spend eternity in Heaven. #2 is to help lead others there. Hearing that Kye is a strong leader in the classroom and well liked by his peers is a blessing as I know he can be a light to so many and hopefully use his leadership abilities to lead them to Christ!
- Kye is very empathetic and is starting to understand things on a deeper level. He cried a good bit when we watched Inside Out. We watched it twice and he even cried the second time. He said it just makes him really sad that we can’t keep our memories forever and that he won’t always remember being a child. Zach told him not to worry bc he has TONS of blog books he can read so he won’t forget anything 🙂
- He also cried when watching The Fox and the Hound and randomly cried and told me he was just so sad that Tess isn’t a baby anymore!
- When Kye wanted to work for Big Papa this month he asked if he could text GMama and ask her about it. It took him 30 min to type this on my phone: “Dear mama I want to work for big papa i am sorry that big papa got hurt can you pick me up from school so I can go to the barn and earn money thank you love kye”
- We got our flu shots this month and we played a game to see who could be the toughest. Kye told the nurse he’d for sure win and she asked why and he said “Boys are tougher than girls. That’s why boys build stuff and girls cook” hahahaha
- At Thanksgiving Zach’s cousin, Austin, brought his new baby, Kara, and Kye was SO sweet with her! He LOVES babies!
- At lunch at CFA with Robyn’s crew I overheard Kye talking to LL. They were talking about author’s purpose and Kye was explaining what persuasion meant and he said “like I persuade my mom to let me do stuff” ha! I about died and now we always joke about him persuading me 😉 He DOES have this ability to persuade!
- On Thanksgiving Kye read that poem thing from the original settlers and we had candy corn for him to give everyone. When we went to Little Mama’s we took the candy corn there as well and I told the kids, after they’d had several pieces along with turkey cookies, that they couldn’t have any more. They were playing on the porch and I walked out and saw both Kye and Britt eating the candy corn and when they saw they were caught they immediately acted like they didn’t’ have it and Kye tried to blame Britt! OH I was NOT HAPPY. They both got spankings from Daddy at Little Mama’s. Kye said he was very embarrassed at me for telling them why he got a spanking and I told him how embarrassed I was that he chose to disobey me and especially to lead his sister down the path of disobedience! He gets very upset when he makes a poor choice and always talks about how mad he is at Adam and Eve for eating the fruit 😉
- At Thanksgiving Kye said he is thankful for the freedom to worship 🙂
- Leading up to the holidays we talked about our favorite Christmas traditions. Kye said his are meeting Santa and eating Christmas cookies on Christmas morning 🙂
- This month I came home during naps and when I got out of my car a little girl who lives a couple houses down came up to me and asked if Kye could come play! It was the first time that’s ever happened! She’s in his class so we let Kye play outside with her for a little bit. Not gonna lie I was a nervous wreck. I don’t know her parents so Zach went and met them and told Kye he wasn’t allowed to go inside their house, he could just play outside. We miiiiight have checked on him like 4 times in the hour he was over there haha
Videos:
I’m truly so blessed to be Kye’s mom! He is just growing and changing everyday!
