The Kavanaugh Report

With five kids it can definitely be hard to balance everyone and their individual needs. It can be easy for any one child to get lost in the mix and not really get the one-on-one attention that children need and deserve. One of the reasons I am grateful for Montessori, specifically Montessori parenting, that Montessori is designed for multi-age environments. It is foundational to the method for multiple ages to be together learning and working along side each other. 

Six years ago when I was pregnant with Gus, we decided that we would take a more natural approach to gross motor development moving forward. The ideas come from Magda Gerber and Emmi Pikler and super basically mean, allowing a child to develop their gross motor skills at their own pace without adult "help" or intervention. In strict terms this means avoiding tummy time, any device that places a child in a position they cannot achieve on their own, and no propping of babies. As we learned in my RIE training, and in my personal experience, this leads to safer, confident, and capable babies, toddlers, and children. 

I feel like I say this all the time, but wow, time moves fast when you're a parent. Nora recently turned eight-years-old and is an actual full blown big kid now. After I shared a little "lately" update of Gus at 5 , I decided I would do the same thing for my other bigger kids.

I can't believe it, my tiny baby Teddy is less than a month away from being three-years-old! Time really does fly by in the blink of an eye, especially with your fourth baby. Teddy is such a wonderful little passionate toddler, both serious and funny. He is extremely confident and just says what he wants and needs. He will let you know if he likes something or not by saying he "loves it" or "hates it." There's no in between for him. 

I love to read to my babies. Reading to Penelope has been an important part of our daily routine. Although being a fifth baby, often she is listening to books meant for one of her older siblings. But, I do try to make time to read books meant for babies. Either way,  I hope we are instilling a love of reading with her early and that those feelings will stick with her for life.

Typically, my older kids are past the point of many structured art trays. They just have access to a lot of different art materials and sort of go with the flow. However, with all my big kids home from school this summer, I'm trying to add a couple more structured works that allow them to return to work more than once. The biggest hit from this art work, has been making beads from FIMO clay . 

One of the more challenging parts of preparing a Montessori home is creating spaces that work for all your children all at once. Preparing an environment that meets the needs of a baby, toddler and an elementary aged kid can feel really hard. While Montessori schools are also mixed age, the children in the prepared environment are all of the same general developmental stage. This isn't always true at home, and requires some balancing on our part to make it all work. 

I can't believe that as I'm writing this Penelope is a whole 6-months-old. It feels like just yesterday that she was a tiny baby newborn snuggled up in my arms. Now, she's rolling around, scooting on her back and just interested in everything in her world.  

Last night we were having our annual block party in our neighborhood and among the fun and games, Gus came running up to me and said, "Look Mom! I have a loose tooth!" And sure enough one of his little baby teeth was wiggling back and forth with ease. I was shook. I (most definitely) teared up. In my mind, we are nowhere near this phase with him. I don't know if it's a side effect of the pandemic, or what, but in my mind's eye he is still like 3-years-old. 

Penelope is such a love of a baby. She is so happy, calm, and observant. I don't think it's super productive to compare babies but she is a lot like Gus was. Very super chill and not very movement motivated. While she can roll to her belly and back to her back, and scoot on her back, she is very content to just sit still and just watch all the action around her.