All About Jake

The blog the last few months has focused a lot on Hollon. I certainly didn't want Jake to be left out. I tend to get more pictures of Hollon, because she is home with me all day, but rest assured we are all staying involved with all of Jake's activities! Here is what's been going on with Jake these last few months...

School. School is going really well. Jake is a typical student. He likes school, but I wouldn't say he loves it. He likes going to school, but gets more excited about the weekends or a holiday off. Who can blame him, I feel the same way! He really likes his teacher Mrs. Rmeily. She seems to make school as much fun as you can make it and seems to care deeply for the kids. Jake is part of a class of 20 kids. 9 boys & 11 girls. He likes his classmates and his favorite friends are Brycin, Rylan & Roberto. I am a room mom volunteer so I've gotten to see Jake's interaction with his classmates. He seems to be well liked and he seems to equally like his classmates. (Even though he says the girls in his class are really bossy.) I was at their Thanksgiving feast and we sat across from Roberto's family. Roberto's mom said that all Roberto talks about is Jake so she was glad to finally meet the Jake she hears all about. I'm glad that Jake has made friends and I hope he is always a friend back to people. He & I have had a lot of talks about times when maybe someone doesn't want to be our friend (we've already dealt with that this year) and how we should always be nice to everyone, especially someone who no one else wants to be friends with. I feel like at school, there is such a focus on the academics (which is great!), but that we've got to install it more so at home on being a good person & Christian. Sometimes Jake gets it, and other times I know it just goes in one ear and out the other. But we are working on it, praying about it and try to lead by example.

I asked Jake the other day what his favorite part of school was, and he said when I come pick him up. Um, try again. He finally decided on recess, lunch, library, fitness lab & center time. Robbie takes Jake to school and I pick him up. He takes his lunch most days, but he chooses to buy his lunch from school 1 or 2 days a week.   

The picture below is from the first day of school. The parents could not walk the kids all the way to their classroom, so they have a photographer there to take the token "first day of school picture with teacher". And of course that way they could charge you to buy the picture.

Mrs. Rmeily & Jake

Fall Kindergarten School Picture

Football. We just wrapped up football season. They practiced the month of August and then had games September & October. We never imagined that we'd let Jake play football in Kindergarten, but I'm glad we did. Jake seemed to enjoy it and he learned a lot. We were really proud of him, because he didn't cry once. And sometimes he got knocked down pretty hard. Jake is still not an aggressive child, but it did gave Robbie some opportunities to explain to Jake when to stand up for yourself and when to walk away. (Which is still really hard to know which to do even as an adult!) Jake played center, so he snapped the ball. He did really well and tended to only have 1 or 2 bad snaps a game. A lot of the kids on his team were also on his baseball team, so it was fun to get to know those families even more. Robbie was a coach again, so I was glad for the extra time together this gave Robbie & Jake. All in all it was a great experience.

Jake is the one with his head down and hands on the ball

Sometimes we'd find him doing stuff like this.
In other words, not paying a bit of attention.

Sister. Jake has been such a good big brother to his baby sister. He is so proud of her and she is pretty smitten with him. She lights up when he comes into the room. He is pretty gentle with her for the most part, even though sometimes he can get aggressive with trying to kiss her on the cheek. He is a huge help when running to grab something for us or soothing Hollon.

Funny things he says. 

• I love the show Cops and I think I've passed that love down to Jake. Any time he hears the intro music coming on (the song "Bad Boys") he gets excited. He calls the show Bad Boys.
• He loves the song "Light Em Up" by Fallout Boy. Robbie listens to the sport radio station taking Jake to school, and they play a little of that song for their show intro. So Jake would walk around singing "light em up, up, up, light em up up up. Fireeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". So we let Jake hear the whole song. He dances around any time we play it.
• The other day I was asking him about his day at school. You have to ask him 100 questions about his day to find out even a tiny little bit. I guess one day he had enough of my questions and said "mom, I appreciate you want know about my day, but it is getting on my nerves". 
• He says that nana & gran are the boss of me, mimi & granddad are the boss of Robbie, Robbie & I are the boss of him and he is the boss of Hollon.