Category: the Oldest

Shorts, Sandals, Soap, and Seeds

Last night for pajamas I picked out none other than a pair of shorts. Now this is impressive on two levels. 1. The weather is warm enough for me to think this a good idea and 2. I’m was not freezing to death due to this pregnancy last night to even think about exposing my sun-needing legs.

For the past three pregnancies I have been a hot mess -literally, but for this one I’m cold. Take whatever housewife tales you want from that as to whether I am carrying a boy or a girl. 😉

Rachael has clearly voted for a girl, explaining a few times at random that Hannah (our girl choice name) is a really good name. I’m still not sure if she knows that her opinion will not create the gender of this baby.

In other news, our little red wagon has gotten much use amid the neighborhood walks. I had left it on the front porch after our first walk and thus been reminded about it since.

Yesterday it was so beautiful that we ditched the red wagon, due the distance we’d need to travel and the fact that if we bring the wagon then all 35lbs of a three year old feels the need to ride, and grabbed the stroller. Abi is still young enough that her legs give out at the end of the street. So instead of carrying the 26lb toddler on my hip, I thank the Lord for strollers and so does my back and arms.

After digging through the shoes box of hand-me-down shoes, I happily busted out a pair of little white (really off-white, but still lovable) sandals for my growing-footed toddler. Abi smiled as she wiggled her toes in the open air.

When Rachael asked for a pair of sandals as well, naturally, I was sad to not offer her the same excitement (Rachael LOVES getting clothes and shoes from the hand-me-down box ironically). So to the dollar store we headed. Oddly enough, our local dollar store has decent “throw away” shoes that are surprisingly well made. The sandals don’t usually make it to the hand-me-down box, as well as the Chuck Taylor’s (LOVE) do, but for $4, they have a great variety of styles and options. Rachael was thrilled to get to “pick out her own” shoes after I had weeded out the ones that would not fit with her wardrobe or the flip-flop between-the-toe ones that I knew she would highly dislike. So she picked these white ones with pink/purple butterflies (who would have thought) over the yellow/gray butterflied ones. I’m glad she picked them, they’re cute.

And of course until they break (your feet) in, they produce this:

When we turned the corner of our block on the way home we saw much to our squeals of delight and running, DADDY WAS HOME!!! I love watching a three year old’s reckless abandonment to hug her Daddy. “We just saw him at lunch,” isn’t going through her mind. She just adores him and Abi would have run too if she wouldn’t have been caged in Mommy’s favorite, a stroller. =) But Abi’s kicking legs and flailing arms spoke volumes of her intentions.

Bubble play with Daddy was a necessity on such a beautiful afternoon. These pictures brought to you by Matt’s photography skills. =)

Then two little ones delighted in standing on the back of the couch to watch Mommy refill the bird feeder. I watered just about everything but the bird feeder with small, weed-producing seeds. GREAT! But a successful bird feeder fill did eventually happen.

Dinner, nursery and youth group at church concluded our evening and produced a Mommy in pajamas of shorts tuckered out after a wonderful day.

Hope the weather finds you outside too. 

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Spontaneous Picnic at Duck Pond

For those of you with a dry wit, no our little family did not roast up some ducks for a picnic. But this afternoon after our library nursery rhyme group we spontaneously headed to a local duck park to have a picnic out in the warm sun.

We enjoyed our sandwiches, peanut butter and marshmallow for two lucky little girls, and tuna for two nutrition-minded adults.

With crackers and raisins still in hand we headed over to the ducks with a bag of mildly stale breadcrumbs.

We had not anticipated the affect of warm weather causing other families to have visited the ducks previously. So Matt and Rachael had a mini adventure trying to lull the already-full fat waddlers over to Mommy and Abi’s safe and comfortable bench. Abi, not enjoying the spontaneity of animals (they move too fast) warmed up to the idea of scattering bread a few inches from her feet after first starting the adventure in the safety and comfort of said bench. 

Rachael, fearless when her Daddy’s there to protect her, had a great time emptying the bag and distributing handfuls of bread all over the sidewalk in an effort to get them in the pond water. With increased practice, her aim and ability provided more comfortable distances for the over-eating pleasures of our new winged friends. But due to their previous meals, interest was soon lost and we found ourselves quite obliviously still unloading our bread for future pond-life snacks.

Then came the park play, critical when any park is in view.

 Abi trying to figure out how to approach crossing a bouncy bridge. 
She eventually decided that walking was acceptable when clinging to Mommy’s hand. Rachael also needed some reassuring when said bridge moved highly unpredictably and frighteningly.

The slide adventures were fun. 
As were the methods of getting to the slide: challenging and fun.

And then we headed over to the swings, upon Rachael’s leadership decision. Check out the contrast in the responses to the swings below.

 Verses:

I would like to take this moment to inform you that we did not offer or enforce Abi riding the swing. Abi chose to get in the swing, a choice we always leave up to her without any persuading, because inevitably every time the above terrified face occurs and immediate rescuing is required. Abi DOES NOT like swingset swings. Not in the safety and comfort of our backyard, not at the park, not when everyone else is doing it. Abi and swingset swings are a BIG no-no. Yet I find it funny that she is in love with the concept of swinging, from afar the idea of swinging does look fun, but the actual event of swinging always ends up the same horrifying way. God love the little girl. That face just makes you want to reassure the poor thing that NEVER AGAIN will we ever let her convince herself that she might like swings. But alas, we let her steak her independence (provided that it isn’t defiant or harmful) and then rescue her from her former drive when it turns to trauma.

So much fun had by all on our spontaneous picnic at the duck pond. Even a left-behind dinosaur friend enjoyed our company.

Enjoy the beautiful weather, all, and please… by all means, please don’t roast up the local ducks. 😉

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Priority Announcements

We told Rachael and Abi about our pregnancy last night. Abi just wanted in her bed, it was late. =) But Rachael was quite excited. She kept saying that we could have a little brother and a little sister. TWO babies later. Um…. no, child. Nice try, though. hehehe. But it was pretty sweet that a lot of Rachael’s joy was for Abi getting to be a big sister too.

Looking forward to our secret being a new normal.

– thankful.

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Our First "Significant" Snow

We took the opportunity today, in March, to celebrate our first “significant” snow by playing outside for a handful of minutes.

To keep with the norm, we over-bundled our children producing this:

Abi couldn’t get back up when she fell over. No crying, just called for Mommy ’til I could rescue her. =)

Then outside we headed for robotic-movement-like snow walking. Since all our outside toys were happily stored away for the “winter” we’ve been having, walking and snow inspection were the favored sports.

Movement frequently produced “I’m stuck” moments for the youngest.

Until eventually she stopped dead in her tracks (refusing to move), put her hand straight out and announced, “Walk, Mommy. Walk!” Clearly assistance was not an option. =)

Then there was the three-year-old idea of going down the slide which resulted in Mommy picking her up because the ladder was slippery and “eww, dirt” felt the need to dust all the snow off each step of the ladder, thus revealing a mild layer of slippery ice. Then came for the top of the slide dusting – necessary, especially once your pants are already soaked through.

And at last… the slide. 

Promptly followed by the fall-off at the end. 

Abi was less brave, allowing for this “look away from the sun” picture

before demanding Mommy’s hand of assistance. She had no desire to repeat Rachael’s tumbling dismount.

Daddy joined in the fun too, swinging our little frozen robots to their squealing delights. 

And then with a short bout of swinging, we decided inside was a great place to shed our dirty “snow” layers and enjoy a nice warm bath.

Here lies the product of three people playing in the snow (Daddy had already left for work and taken care of his things by then) – Nevermind the Feline Investigation Service on the left.

Straight into the tub went the girls and straight into the wash went the layers.
And our “significant” winter snow had all melted in the sunny places by 10am.

Great snow morning indeed!

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Homeschooling Life

This past week’s been a quiet week of cleaning, homeschooling, and living. Nothing really to report, except that my house looks more straightened than it has in a long time. The laundry is also caught up to the point that I’m waiting on the clothes we are wearing today before I can make a full load. Don’t you love that feeling? Everything cleaned, folded and hung.

Abi got a little bug at the end of the week, resulting in some extra TLC and some unusual behavior for a day. But her character has returned with restful sleep.

We did the letter Gg in homeschooling this week. It was a fairly uneventful week of finger painting, puzzle work, reasoning worksheets, pattern work, and tracing/free handing letters. Rachael continues to write all her work with a fist-grab crayon hold that I don’t plan on correcting until we finish our Alphabet series in August (I have vacation breaks planned in). In August, the plan is to switch to our Answers in Genesis pre-kindergarten curriculum when Rachael is 3.5 years old. With the more structured curriculum, it will build on Rachael’s previous exposure to the alphabet and work on honing in more fine motor and cognitive skills. As with any pre-kindergarten material, Rachael will then be ready to either repeat the pre-K material or begin Kindergarten material at 4.5 (or whenever she completes the 180 lessons). I do not think age, but ability defines a child’s readiness for school, though maturity is certainly something to be considered. So we’ll see how she’s trucking along and tweak accordingly. I have no personal goals of Rachael being a genius nor do I feel that her age should restrain her willingness to learn. I’m just trying to cease the opportunities to play upon her enthusiasm and expanding attention span in exposing and absorbing as much as we can. Thus far it has worked out well.

Our alphabet series (approximately one letter per week), is solely for the purpose of exposing Rachael to the alphabet this time around. Since this is all new territory for her, I didn’t want her to be discouraged by the fine motor work and the pre-kindergarten level work of the Answers and Genesis curriculum. Since the Pre-K curriculum makes the assumption that the child is already somewhat familiar with the alphabet, therefore building on further skills of writing the letters correctly (emphasis on capitals), I didn’t want Rachael to be so distracted by the challenge of the foreign shapes of letters that she miss out on the joy and challenge of learning the other material. Answers in Genesis also uses the one letter per week method for the first 26 weeks and then continues on for there so the transition should not be abrupt. We’ll merely add on more to Rachael’s workload as her attention span continues to increase, striving to naturally challenge her newly advanced skills. During our current alphabet series, we are using good old dollar store preschool books to provide additional worksheet reasoning exercises. Rachael has enjoyed cutting, pasting, coloring by dots/numbers, reasoning, etc. worksheets that we do together in introduction to pre-K skills. She has gone from very scary cutting (eeek!) to more controlled paper manipulation and intentional cutting. It’s also really neat to watch her brain learn to reason from clues and prompts. So much is happening in that little head of hers in drawing connections, recalling information, and absorbing new information.

We also enjoy learning basic math skills, like counting beads/counters into an egg carton or into containers. We have used some marvelous $1 target bin colored shape counters to stack numbers 1-10 in an abacus style to teach her brain the concept of 10 being “larger” than 1, etc. We’ve enjoyed comparing measured amounts of water for “more than” and “less than” qualities. And we’re just touching into the concept of viewing a number as a whole collection of things. It really has been a joy to watch the lights turn on and see that “I’ve got it” smile creep onto her face, followed by her accomplished giggle.

It’s so neat to watch her put together things as her brain creatively computes making a big picture with many pieces. (Found the above sculpture as a bath-time creation and in delighting in her creative work, I took this picture).

Abi has been enjoying our homeschooling too, frequently taking the opportunity to rearrange materials on the table as she sees fit. 😉 She also enjoys the extra snuggle time that “sitting still” requires of Mommy. Abi finds herself enjoying looking at books and participating in group games (like shape and number races), running and imitating Rachael’s actions. On more squirmy or needy days, Abi draws a picture (scribbles like mad with any crayon she can reach) on the back of Rachael’s work or on a nearby scrap of paper. Since we are doing homeschooling primarily on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings for only about an hour to an hour and a half, Abi has found a greater sense of independent play in her “I don’t have to share this” freedoms. Honestly, Abi is able to entertain herself for the majority of the homeschooling session without requiring redirection. Her favorite, by far, is sitting on the floor reading and talking to her books. Seriously the kid will do it for an hour!

Post homeschool, Rachael gives Abi a hug and thanks Abi for letting Rachael do homeschool (I want her to see that we’re all giving to her education) and then the two friends play together for the remaining hour (or less depending on when we get started) until lunch. I love the jubilant play that ensues after homeschool sessions. It’s like a reuniting of two long-lost friends. =)

So for now that’s a little look into what homeschooling looks like in these parts.

Some days we have field trips to spice things up. But most days we just do a handful of preschool-appropriate tasks, even cooking on a brave day (Abi always must help), mixing up worksheets (you can only sit still for so long) and hands-on activities with races reviewing information and dancing or playing instruments to music. Right now it’s just all about exposing Rachael to the things she’ll be later required to produce fruit from with increased practice and watching as time and exposure produces that fruit, many times, faster than anticipated.

I am so blessed by her little heart and her little mind as she delights in the joys of learning. It really is so precious to get to share this time with her and do something together just me and my Rachael.

I look forward to the one-on-one that Abi’s schooling will create as well in the distant future. And am grateful for her patient snuggles and contentment to watch and repeat Rachael’s lessons (my little teacher) and even participate some too, in sharing Mommy with big sister.

It is so rewarding that some simple intentionality in education can lead to such delightful fruit in both my girls.

– thankful and blessed. 

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Rebounding School

We were sick with a stomach virus – all of us except Rachael, so homeschool was put on hold while I was *ahem* rotting into the couch. But today we picked back up from where we left off on Monday and, while we decided to have school in our Monkey jammies (slow start post sickness), we found ourselves back in the regular swing of homeschool excitement.

We are learning the concepts of “more”, “less”, “most”, “least”, “more than”, and “less than” in preparation for expanded math skills. To familiarize ourselves with the language and build on the math concepts, we used food dye in bowls this morning, pouring and comparing various amounts. At first we began comparing different colors and when the concepts were obviously sticking, then we started comparing alike colors to reinforce the concepts themselves and not just identifying difference based on color. Then we lined up four different amounts and compared them in a large group, ranking them from “most” down to “least” with comparing each size until we found the right places in line. It was quite fun work with two large measuring cups (the initial starting point of the water), a funnel (for my increased accuracy in pouring) and four bowls.

This joy about “the one with the most”
And “the one with the least” ensued. 

Then an obstacle course helped us practice two preschool skills of walking on a straight line

and walking backward with a “crawl through the tunnel” and “hurry down the slide” to keep things exciting.

Rachael enjoyed her “watch this Mommy” accomplishments with flailing arms for balance. =)

Today was a good step back into the ordinary.

Now back to my laundry while the girls enjoy some together play post school. And then, I guess, we’ll actually change out of pajamas…. maybe. 😉

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