Educational Stuff

We had our parent-teacher conference with Anna's teachers several weeks ago. It seems she's doing well and has come a long way since our first conference back in October. They said that she "has found her place in the classroom." She's "far ahead of the game regarding letters." They tested her at knowing 25 upper case and 25 lower case letters (I thought she knew them all) and said she has made great improvements in numbers and meaningful counting. They said she's shown progress in using materials appropriately, being task-oriented and completing work in a timely manner, working independently/being self-directed, following 2/3 step directions, responding well to adults. We need to work with her on sequencing pictures (arranging in correct order, for example, these pictures: a child grabs for a jacket; the child puts the jacket on; the child zips it up; the child walks outdoors).

They also showed us two pages each with the same photos. In the fall, she was asked to color the pictures with the appropriate colors; and again she was asked to do the same thing in the spring. In the fall she colored the tomato, frog, window, grapes and squirrel orange and the banana pink with some blue stripes. In the spring, she colored the tomato red, the frog green, the window peach, the grapes purple, the squirrel gray and the banana yellow. She also apparently does a lot of cutting at school — which helps with fine motor skills — and is now cutting curves as well as straight lines. (Both kids LUV to cut, BTW. I recently bought them each age-appropriate scissors. Anna even gave me a sudden "thank you for buying me scissors" while in the middle of her first cutting session.)

All in all, we were pretty happy with what we heard. She continues to have potty accidents at school, though. Not every day and not even every week. But this week she had two accidents.

There are only three more weeks of school left, and May is going to be very busy for them. I think she will be going on three field trips and will also have something called "Wheels Day," when the students bring their bikes or trikes to school for a day of fun.

In other educational news, today while we were driving around Alexander asked me what letter random words start with. They started with objects he saw through the window. After a bit, I went into teacher mode and turned the tables on him and was shocked when he could tell me that D was for dog, M for mommy and A for Anna and Alexander.
Anna has been doing this for a while and knows what many words begin with and is actively sounding out most letters, or at least I'm actively encouraging it when we read books. She also just learned what an exclamation point is and a question mark and how they're used.

I'm including a photo of Anna's first drawings. At least this is the first I've ever seen her draw. If she's done these at school, she hasn't brought them home. Usually when she takes pen to paper it has been sort of chicken scratch and scribbles and some letters or attempts at letters, lines, circles. But a few weeks ago she sat on my lap while I was sitting at our desk and said she wanted to draw Daddy (her drawing of him is the largest figure on the left). I instructed her to draw a circle for a head, then the lines commonly seen in stick figures, fingers, etc. I didn't hold her hand to guide it and was impressed at her drawings. She even drew pupils in the eyes! I haven't done research to know if this is on schedule, behind or ahead for her age group. But it doesn't matter. It was all new to me, so I was pretty excited!

'I Want To Bake A Cake'

Anna awoke from her nap Thursday and said out of the blue: "I want to bake a cake." OK, I said! So she and I baked a Devil's Food bundt-style cake (and I later made some homemade icing with a tinge of lemon flavor...what a combination).

She loves helping me in the kitchen! And that's great because I love to cook. She is getting quite skilled on cracking open the eggs. It can get a little cramped because our kitchen is smallish, but it's manageable with just one child. When Alexander insists on helping, too, that's when it really gets cramped! I think on this day he was happy to keep himself occupied downstairs.

While the cake was baking I told her she could lick the bowl. And she took me literally, as you can see.

Neighborhood Deer

Bubbles

Here are some bubble-blowing photos from one of our great days last week. BTW, I don't know how often you're keeping up with the blog, but if you check daily then you might want to scroll down below the "Little Readers and Writers" post. A video clip I've been trying to post for a few days got placed there just now. The posts go up based on the day and time that you start it as a draft. My hubby just helped me figure out why I couldn't get the darn thing to post! It's essentially because I'm not a good editor. It was way too long. But after a lesson on how to trim down video we're good to go again.

Little Readers and Writers

Here are a couple photos of the children reading to each other.



And also a couple of them writing and drawing. Anna is practicing the letter S. She's writing quite a few letters pretty good now. Alexander can also write some letters. His fine motor skills are exceptional, maybe better than Anna's. I probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but his letters tend to be really small. And, sometimes I think he's better at coloring inside the lines than Anna is. Maybe she just doesn't care to color inside the lines that much all the time. But I'm starting to digress, because I have another post coming up about her sudden drawing abilities.





P.S.: I'm trying to mix things up with some video. But I apparently forgot how to do it. Coming soon, though.

Pops

It's been a while since I posted video. Here's a clip of my three kids from Saturday afternoon.


Oh, and a couple other popsicle stills from a few days earlier that were too cute not to post.

Finally, Warm Weather

The forecast didn't disappoint: Yesterday was great outdoor weather! It was already 82 when I drove by a bank around 12:30 p.m. I don't know how hot it eventually got.

We ate ice-cream filled popsicles outside, played T-ball and golf and just generally ran around.

Here are the highlights.

P.S. It's 83 out there right now, and the kids are up from nap ready to hit it again.

Look How Big I'm Getting

I had to post this picture of Alexander because I think he just looks so big! I swear he's jumped a full size in a few months. Back in the autumn and early winter months he could fit into 24-month sized pants and most 2Ts were too big/long. Now 2Ts are just right, if not on the verge of being too short. He can also wear some 3T shirts without them seeming too huge. Of course, it depends on the brand. But he's definitely a growing boy!

When She Dresses Herself

Here's how Anna dressed herself for after-nap play time yesterday.

In her defense, I'll admit it's mostly my doing. After nap, I asked her to put on the pink pants since they were already out of her closet and on her floor and to find some socks and shoes so we could go play outside. She protested about the pants. "No! Daddy said they too little." (Apparently, Mikel is the one who pulled them out of the closet earlier that morning so she could wear them for the day but abandoned his plan when he saw how small they were.) I said, "I know, but we're just going to play outside for a while so you can put them on because they're going to get dirty soon. It's OK."

Boy, has she really grown since last summer! The next thing I know, she walks into Alexander's room with calf-length pants on, navy blue socks and yellow and white flip flops. I wish I'd had the camera with me then. I told her the socks didn't match but to at least change the flip flop shoes. She appropriately picked her tennis shoes but put them on the wrong feet as usual. Oh, and her cute little Polo shirt, sadly, appears to be too small. It's on the short side. I got it for her before we even brought her home from Russia. Of course, it was out of season and too big at that point.

I then gave the kids hats (too small, also). Instead of her white hat she picked this plaid one that matched one of Alexander's old outfits.

A Boy And His Dog

I could probably say this about Anna and Shreve, also, but the cuter pictures are of Alex and Shreve. Plus, I do think Alexander seems to be a tad bit more taken with Shreve than Anna is.

And as far as Shreve is concerned, he'll be anybody's best friend when there is the prospect of food.

'This Like A Band-Aid'

"This like a Band-Aid," Alexander said of his apple slice as he stuck it to his leg and then to his face during lunch.

"That's wrong," I said, after glorifying his antics with some picture-taking.

Spring Snow

Seems like we get just as much snow around here in the spring as we do during the actual winter months. After being under winter weather advisories (and a blizzard warning not that far away from us) yesterday, it's supposed to be like 74 degrees on Monday. Craziness!

What we have out there now is that wet, heavy kind of snow! Here are some pics of the children enjoying snow play this morning, including one of snow sitting prettily on the evergreen tree branches, one of the children trekking through the backyard as if they were in a snowy Siberian landscape, a couple of them playing with sand toys and one of them racing (my idea to try to get them tired out for their naps!).

Just Another Day

Alexander puts on a tough-guy face to go along with his new tattoo, courtesy of a McDonald's Happy Meal. (I know, I said I would never do that. The fast-food stuff, not the tat stuff.) Actually, Mikel put this tattoo on him one evening when I was out singing or something. Needless to say I was very taken aback the next morning when I was helping Alexander get out of his PJs and into his daily wear.

We had a busy busy day. It felt good to get going early and get some things accomplished. For starters I got myself dressed early while Mikel helped the children get ready. He had a doctor checkup, so I took Anna to school. Normally he drops her off on his way to work. Alexander and Shreve came along, also, because once we dropped off Anna we stopped for coffee and then headed over to Shreve's vet. His groomer gave him a much-needed pedicure. Alexander was so cute. He LOVES animals and is very gentle with them. He got to pet about four other dogs, two cats, three tiny kitties. And he asked before petting. Well, actually, in some cases he asked as he was starting to pet. And he also got to help the lady behind the desk feed the goldfish. When he wasn't busy with the animals he played at a little kiddy table.

We were back on the road and headed home by 9:45 a.m. We stopped long enough to drop off Shreve and then headed back out to the YMCA, where I signed us up for a family membership. The Y here is awesome! We signed up because they have a nursery drop-in, where you can leave your children for as much as 2.5 hours a day while you're working out or doing whatever on the Y's properties. Among many other things, the Y offers swim lessons (which we will be taking advantage of) and gymnastics classes. I observed a gymnastics class for Anna's age-group the other night. I have to say I was a little disappointed, but I know I'm comparing it to the specialized private gymnastics-only training center where she goes now. I felt this class got a little better as it went on, and Mikel and I decided that we could make the change now since we don't even really know how well she likes it or will want to stick with it. I really believe in consistency for children, so I hate the change for that reason. But she can still learn the same basics at the Y. And they do have all the same equipment, just the structure of the class and the surroundings didn't seem as nice to me. And there was only one teacher per the 5 or 6 kids. We can always bump her back over to the better gymnastics-only center if it seems like this is something she is really good at and wants to pursue. The Y also has a wonderful free-standing arts-and-science center for children next door and offers lots of classes like children's pottery and what have you. It also offers many levels of all-day or half-day preschool classes, which I originally looked into more than a year ago, but we're not going to bother with that since we really like Anna's Montessori school.

Anyway, Alexander and I left the Y by 11:15 a.m. and headed a few blocks over to Mikel's office, where he met us out front. He and Alexander walked around the block to get their hair cut together while I went to pick up Anna from school. The children are so used to each other and routines. Anna's first words were: "Where's Alex?" We had a brief chat with her teacher about our parent-teacher conference time next week, then we went back downtown and met the boys at their hair appointment.

Next, we had lunch next door at a cute little greasy-diner-type place where Mikel usually eats when he doesn't come home for lunch. In fact, he was still at the hair place when I walked the kids in, sat them down and ordered so we could speed up the process a bit. The waitress knew exactly what he usually orders and I didn't even have to tell her his name. I just said, as I was scanning down the menu items, "My husband comes in here sometimes for lunch and he always gets the same thing..."

On our way back home the kids and I drove the car through a carwash. Alexander, who used to cry at the thought of them, seems to be comfortable enough nowadays. Still a bit tentative though, I think. Anna said to him several times: "It's OK. You don't have to be scared."

It was 2 p.m. by the time we got home, pottied and down for a nap. They both slept but only a little over an hour. After nap we had a snack, a little play time and then hit the bathtub. I let the kids take a longer-than-usual bath today, while I sat on the bathroom floor and folded up clean clothes and read the paper. By the time we got out of the bath, brushed our teeth and dried off it was probably 5:30ish.

Then the really yuckiest, most-disgusting thing you can think of happened. Alexander pooped right on Anna's carpeted floor! I had not made sure he covered his bottom fast enough but thought it wasn't much of an issue since I've been bragging to my whole family about how he's now potty-trained. I have no idea why this happened. I was in his room at the time about to hang up his clothes when he ran in and told me there was poop on the floor. When I saw the enormous mess all I could say was that Shreve doesn't even do that! I had to bring out the rarely used pet carpet-cleaning supplies for this job!

Needless to say, even though I felt it was a pretty good day, I was glad it was near the end and that Mikel would soon be home. I didn't have time to cook dinner after all this, so we enjoyed leftovers.

Energy And Disagreements

Sometimes lots of energy ...



Leads to disagreements ...