You Had Me At Hello

We met a house last week and fell in love...hard. As the girl said in the movie Jerry Maguire, "You had me at 'Hello'."

We made an offer on "our" house but were beaten to the punch by another buyer. Oh, that hurts. It's been a hard break-up for us. However, we will keep a stiff upper lip and carry on our search. Perhaps next weekend.

Mayor of Bubbleville

The kids all love taking a bath. Sometimes they all bathe together. Other times they just mosh into the bathroom vying for a ringside seat for whomever is in the tub. It is always a wild FUN time! Isaac named himself the Mayor of Bubbleville last night in his bath. :)

Snow!

We had about 4 inches of snow over the weekend and we had a blast playing in the snow Saturday morning. Our neighbors Shea and her son Luke came over to play too. The sun came out and the temperature rose, by the afternoon most of the snow was gone.

Playtime

The weather, like most of the country, has just been crazy this winter. A few days of springtime temperatures then snow, then rain, then whatever. A few days we have escaped the confines of the house and played outside and on the back deck when it was warm enough. The girls love to be out there and Isaac loves to entertain and play as well. Mama loves the change of scenery, plus it really is a peaceful, pretty back yard.

Our First Gold Medal

In honor of the Winter Olympics beginning today, I'd like to report on our first gold medal recieved for outstanding athleticism. And the winner is.....




Isaac -- Gold Medal!

For amazing feats on the basketball court at YMCA Basketball Buddies!



He has really enjoyed going to basketball practice this winter at the Y. They do lots fun games that involved bowling pins, hula hoops, and red-light/green-light type of stuff. Occasionally they dribble and shot some baskets too. It's a perfect entree to the actual sport.



We plan on signing him up for the preschool soccer class for May; I predict that will be a real hit too.

School friends

When I dropped Isaac off at preschool the other morning I was chatting with his teacher Ms. Kristen. She mentioned in passing that Isaac was very popular with some of the other kids. So much so that apparently two of the children would "fight" to see who got to sit next to Isaac at the table during snack time. That struck me as funny!

One of the children is his friend LillyAnn who Isaac has been close to for several years and the other is a little boy named Nicholas. Nicolas's mom mentioned that her son just "LOVES" Isaac and talks about him all the time! I am so glad that Isaac is making friends and I'm hoping that he must be a good friend to others if kids like him so much. Especially since Isaac has historically been difficult to leave at school, we are so pleased and excited that he has a comfortable little group now.

They go to chapel once a week on Wednesdays; the teachers and the pastor of the church Mr. Thom share bible stories and sing bible songs. Isaac really loves it, although he always tells me that HE didn't sing. HE just likes to listen. But I know that he is internalizing the songs. I hear him sing all the time around the house and up in his room for quiet time.

We had talked about moving him to another preschool closer to the location of our new house, but stories like these reinforce my initial thoughts to keep him where he is. We should appreciate a good thing when we have it!

Hi Y'all!

Grace likes to wave "hello" now. She puts her left arm up in the air and waves it around. She talks until you look her way, and if you smile or laugh she just waaaaaves that arm around giggling and laughing. She gets the biggest kick out of it; we do too!

Sadie is starting to say "mamamama."Both girls are talking more and more everyday, whether we fully understand them or not. But usually they can communicate pretty well.

A plug

The girls kicked the pacifier habit around 3 months. Somehow we just got out of the habit and forgot to use them over time. I guess we've always been fearful of the scenario of a baby who is dependent on a pacifier but loses it in the crib in the middle of the night and then you have to get up and put it back in their mouth. No thank you--we have enough wakeups without that kind of thing.

However, since the girls have been teething we occasionally give them a paci to chew on. Literally they just chew on it, and not necessarily the plug part. It can keep them busy and help their gums feel better. But over the last several days Sadie has decided that she likes to suck on the pacifier as intended. I got them up from their afternoon nap yesterday and Sadie was standing there mute, pacifier in her mouth. It made me so sad. I like it when she is squealing and talking and even crying in impatience. Anything but a plugged baby (I mean, I'm sure it has its place in church). And then this afternoon she found a pacifier in her room again and crawled around for about an hour plugged and silent.

You can tell that she's really a newby with the pacifier. For instance, I put her in the highchair for dinner and she tried to eat her cheerios....with the pacifier still in. I think this is a lesson that she'll have to learn for herself.

(I'm trying to post a video of the pacifier/cheerio incident, but there's some sort of glitch. Stay tuned).

happenstance or design?

This morning Isaac was working on the alphabet. I would like to say that I have all of these organized "lesson plans" for teaching (codeword for keeping him busy and engaged, often independently), but in fact most of our learning fun is very organic and either comes through play or brainstorming with craft materials.

So, we have this big tub of foam letters that are sticky-backed. What do you do with a couple hundred foam letters? Hmmm...first of all, dump about 1/3 of them onto a cookie tray (to contain the mess). Second, let Isaac randomly rummage through the letters and stick them on a big sheet of paper. Finally, brainstorm! I copied numbers and letters onto a sheet of paper and he searched through the pile of letters for the corresponding figure to stick on top of the tracings.

This kept him interested for about an hour; complete with "happy dance" on the chair whenever he was able to find a letter and stick it on himself.

I love seeing Isaac really dig into fun activities like this. Another favorite of his is playing with little beads--stringing them onto yarn or pipe cleaners, counting them, sorting into different containers, etc.

He also likes pretend play; today we played "post office" with him bringing his wallet (my cast-off) and play money from a Life board game. I guess he's been to the Post Office with me quite a few times to mail packages for Bookmooch.com.