My sweetie

Can't believe a year ago I was eagerly anticipating his birth. A year ago I could still feel his little feet kicking from the inside. I can see how the 'baby' can be the baby forever. You just want to hold on to them forever.

True Sneaky begins at 3

I know I've been seriously neglecting my blog. Sorry! It bugs me too cause this is their baby book. I think of some updates here...

Celia & Nicholas:
She and he have begun to be a bit sneaky. I didn't know this started at 3 years old. Examples:
1. Earlier in the day they were playing in a puddle on the basketball hoop. I didn't mind so much until Nicholas smeared mud on Celia's face. So it was off limits.
So later that same day i caught them playing in the puddle again and carrying some sand over to the puddle to mix. Nicholas saw me looking at them from the kitchen and said "Mommy, you're not supposed to look out here right now".
I said "I can see what you're doing over there"
He smiled and said "Don't you want to take pictures of us?"
He knows I about beg them to allow me to take pictures of them for practice, so he figured he could bribe me to forget what I've seen if he lets me take pictures of them.
Whose child is this? lol

2. Today I realized Celia wasn't in the livingroom with Nicholas and I said "Celia? Where's Celia"
Then "What are you getting in to Celia?"
I walk towards my room and I hear my bedside table door slam and see her reach for my slippers and she runs out saying "mommy!" and shoving a slipper in my face. I knew she was trying to distract me with my slipper. lol
Where do they learn this!?

There was another incident, but I can't remember right now.
Earlier this month we had Celia, Nicholas and Lauren at the park and Lauren had a sucker. Celia opened her arms to give Lauren a hug.... but also opened her mouth and tried to get a lick of the sucker while she hugged Lauren.

Sneaky, I tell ya! We had a talk about 'sneaky' in our house this week.

Aaron is crusing a lot, but he's such a cautious baby that he is so careful about how to get down and I think he's nervous to let go. Thats okay though. I can definitely see how the 'baby' of the family gets babied cause I don't want him to grow up too fast. He's such a cuddly boy. He will just melt into you and give the best baby hugs. He makes my day when he does that. :) As much as a baby his age is on the move all the time, those baby hugs and the 4 times a day I get to nurse him and hold him are the best. His 3 possible words are - momma, kitty, and maybe a rough 'hi'.

That's all for now. We're working on Letter D this week - dinosaurs.

Girls take a turn first...

Nicholas has been learning a little chivalry lately. We talked about sometimes how its polite to let girls go through doors first, etc. Celia's new manner was to let babies and smaller children go first. Well the other morning I had their clothes out in the livingroom and I called Nicholas over first to get dressed for the day. He had been playing with his cars on the floor in his pajamas by the front door.
Me: "Nicholas, why don't you come over and get dressed real quick"
Nicholas: "I don't want to mommy"
Me: "Just come over quick and then you'll be dressed and all done"
Nicholas: "Mommy. Remember how you said girls should take a turn first? Well, I think Celia should get dressed first mommy".

I just laughed out loud. He was so serious when he replied with that rebuttal that it made it that much more funny. He sure was clever. I see debate team in his future.

Letter Aa - Ants

I apologize for my long blog absence. Blogger has been being really difficult to load photos on to for some reason. I had to copy all my files to jpg (which they were??) and do it from my external hard drive. Although I have a feeling it is because of blogger. Seems like they have gliches now and again.
Anyway, we're alive and well. Here is our Tot School we did last week. We worked on Letter Aa again because I found some other fun activities. The Aa theme was ants.


Tot Tray activities - based on Montessori Trays

1. Using an eye dropper to suck and drip colored water onto the grippy thing. Nicholas was so proud that he could do it!




2. Play Ants in a tub with Sand

3. Spooning/transferring colored water between cups. This eventually included pouring between cups. The sponge is a nice way for toddlers to easily clean-up.

Letter Aa & Ants:
We start the class time with a story and I had a book bag set from the library. The library has themed bags and this bag had 7 ant books, an ant puppet, and a sheet with ant fingerplays. After a story, some songs, and some talking then we work on some activities. I don't have photos of everything, but here is the most of it!
After our (generally) 9-10am class time they have snack at 10am and during snack I will sit at the table and read some bible stories from their kids bible. They do enjoy this and ask for more stories. :)

Sorting Capital and lowercase Aa

Sorting colored little balls.

The kids love these dabber dots!

Sorting Ants by size - we did large to small and small to large

Matching the ant front number and the back dot number.

Practicing cutting on the lines - ant trails. We also played 'follow the leader' like ants do. lol

The little puff balls have circle magnets on the back to fill in the A dots.

Aaron's choice activity this week (for the life of me, iphoto will not allow me to rotate this photo and I don't have the time to work on it - so tilt your noggin). :)


just thought this was funny. Gideon in the highchair. The kids thought this was hilarious. Gideon didn't think it was so hilarious.

And a fun beanbag toss into a box!