Back 2 School

This week was a big week for us as it was back-to-school in our neck of the woods! First order of business leading up to the week was hair - believe it or not! Justice has been growing his hair out to get cornrows for a looooong time, but it was still too short for my novice hands to attempt it. Through our foster care/adoption network at church I found out about an ISU student who does cornrows for only $15! She does hair out of her apartment as a side-job so it was pretty simple to get in for an appointment and to get them done!

You can imagine that it takes some pretty skillful hands to braid that short of hair! But what you probably can’t imagine is that this only took her an hour and 15 minutes!!!!! I know Justice was thankful for that, as these ended up being quite painful to get put in since his hair was so short and she had to get each row real tight. He loved the outcome though and especially loves how low maintenance these are to care for day to day.

Jennifer wanted to go back to her long hair for school, so we set aside a day to put in extensions. This time however, I decided to use synthetic hair that you can get at Sally’s Beauty Supply as I had heard that it helps the style to last much longer than the yarn that we used previously. We used 100% Kanekalon hair…

I really, really want to do these extensions with beads on the ends some time, but when I practice putting the beads on the doll it just takes sooooo long. Doing the style already takes long enough! But I did want to give Jennifer a little color/spunk to the extensions…something different/special for back to school….so we added in some hot pink accents!  Here was the finished look!

These turned out SO FUN! The hot pink hair was also 100% Kanekalon however I picked it up at a hair supply store in the inner city…they don’t sell this at our Sally’s. I put these extensions in exactly as I did the yarn extensions, however, I had to knot and burn the ends (with a lighter) to seal them. With the yarn extensions I could just knot them, but the synthetic hair won’t stay with only a knot. Having to burn each end caused putting in this style to take longer than last time. For our next go-round I think we will need to spread out the styling over 2 days instead of our all day marathon. But seeing Jennifer swing her hair in the mirror full of giggles, and dance around the house in her excitement of having long hair makes all the hard work worth it!

And here were my babies on their first day of school which was Monday of this week! Jayla started Kindergarten (!!!!), Justice ~ 5th grade, Jennifer ~ 1st grade, and JJ ~ 1st grade.

I held it together in sending Jayla off for her first big day of school until she got on the bus, sat down, and waved from the bus window with her sweet little smile. I smiled and waved back, then turned toward the house and lost it while Kenny Chesney started singing in my mind as if on cue – “Don’t blink…”

Since then, it has helped tremendously that Jayla is SO EXCITED to go to school each day! She just can’t seem to get enough of it and is all bubbly and bouncing off the walls each morning while we get ready! Here are her first two pieces of school work that she came home with...

 

JJ is also pretty pumped about school right now, especially when it comes to reading! He is a memorizer, so reading has come rather easy to him which I am so thankful for. For 1st grade he has been given a reading log in which we record the amount of time each day that he reads to us, or us to him. For every 100 minutes logged in he gets to add a bead to his guitar necklace kept at school which their class will wear on special occasions. For whatever reason, this has just tripped his trigger and the kid cannot stop reading! Jake thinks it is his competitive nature and that JJ wants to beat every kid in his class and get the most beads. Well, I can tell you that he is definitely on track for that! He barely gets in the door from off the bus and he is asking if he can read to me. We set the stopwatch on the phone and he usually goes for 30 minutes straight. I have to laugh at his reading posture because he reminds me of a little old man reading a newspaper.
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And did you notice what his choice of reading material is? That would be WWE character profiles and statistics. Every day this is what he reads to me. I should be able to spout off the biographies of every WWE character by the end of the month. :)

So with all the older rugrats in school now, that just leaves me and this little lady at home during the day!

Let me tell you, the girl is a HOOT! She has not missed a beat since the older ones have been gone! And having her one-on-one has helped me to appreciate her entertaining antics (and non-stop talking) much, much, more. :)