God's Promise

We saw this rainbow in our neighborhood first thing this morning!

Waking up to a vivid picture of one of God's promises - that's a GREAT way to start our day!

Tooth #2

It has only been 5 days since Norah lost her first tooth, but tooth #2 came out too! She was even more traumatized this time. I thought she would be excited to get more money from the tooth fairy. Go figure.

Not Sure It Is Worth It!

The gloves at bedtime for Lucy - NOT going well! We are 4 nights in and Lucy has SCREAMED every night and naptime! She hasn't had a nap all week and she is exhausted! Our normally happy child, who never gets mad or angry or grumpy has been a grump all week! She is in her room right now crying and yawning and crying! I'm not sure what to do at this point because breaking Norah's habit was not this rough! We have even tried laying with her, but she tosses and turns and cries.

I am about to give up. I was hoping by day 3 or 4 things would be going better - but that is NOT the case! Ugh.

Mrs. America

If anyone is interested, the Mrs. America pageant in on right now - online. My friend, Andrea won!

First Tooth

I know I just posted a couple of days ago that Norah had a loose tooth, but it came out ALREADY!! She was incredibly traumatized by it. She was in the basement playing and came up crying hysterically! I just knew that her tooth came out!

It is now under her pillow. We'll see how much money the tooth fairy can scrounge up. What's the going rate these days?

Totally forgot to take a picture - I will do that tomorrow!

Remember This?

Remember this? We didn't have much luck with Lucy last year - she screamed and would sleep or nap. We decided that she was too little to give up naps so we stopped putting gloves on her after a couple of day. We decided to try it again with Lucy. My main reason for doing it now is that the girls get sick much more often than some of their friends because they always have (had - in Norah's case) their fingers in their mouth. Okay, ALWAYS is probably an extreme, but Lucy does suck her fingers a lot!! I am a little obsessive about hand washing - I even make them wash hands every time they touch a library book.

The process didn't go as smoothly with Norah as a few people had told us, but after about 6 months of off and on wearing gloves, Norah now has not sucked her fingers for about 6 months. However, Norah didn't really cry about wearing the gloves. She just sort of seemed to accept it and was okay with it. She never tried to get the tape off and at one point we stopped taping the gloves - she just left them on.

Lucy is just a little ornerier so I told Kevin that the process might be worse. I had a feeling she would cry and carry on, but since they have already been sick (Lucy got it first) - I am READY to break Lucy's habit!!

We put the gloves on her last night and Lucy kept saying, "I don't want to wear gloves!" and she started picking at the tape right away. We knew that as soon as the lights were out, she wouldn't be able to find the end of the tape. I also had a feeling that Lucy would cry - and I was right . We ended up putting Lucy in our bed - so she wouldn't bother Norah. I also laid with her for about 30 minutes - she was not asleep, but was totally quiet when I left the room. Kevin moved her to her own bed around 9 - we didn't hear anything from her until 6:30 this morning. We let her get in bed with us for a little while. Overall, I think Lucy did fine - except she has been cranky this morning. Lucy is now like Norah was - anything silky triggers the finger sucking so we have to put her blanket up during the day. She is NOT happy about that!

Naptime will be interesting. I have a feeling Lucy will be done with naps because of this. As long as she has some quiet time in her room - I am okay with that. Maybe she will go to sleep better at night without an afternoon nap.

I totally forgot to take a picture of her last night - I will do that tonight!!

We Are There in Spirit

Kevin and Lucy are at the Pumpkin Festival. Daphne, Norah and I are not - we are all sick. I have been pretty miserable since Thursday and Daphne and Norah have been miserable since yesterday morning (EARLY morning for Norah). We have all had coughs, green snotty noses, fevers, etc. Bleh - no fun at all. After 18 months of no breathing treatments for Norah, we are now doing them every 4 hours.

Lucy was actually the first one to get sick and the first one to get over it. Actually, she still has a little cold, but that may hang on for a while. My mom was in town for a couple of days this week, so on Thursday Mom took Lucy home with her - assuming we would all be coming up on Friday. Kevin had signed up to run in the Pumpkin Festival 10k, so he decided to go up last night, run this morning, take Lucy to the parade and then head home after lunch.

Let me just say that Norah has sobbed over the fact that she didn't get to go. To people like me, the P-fest is a HUGE deal. I mean if you are from Morton, the pumpkin capital of the world - it is a part of who you are! I think I have missed twice - that's it. This makes the third. It is not as big of a deal to Kevin - since he didn't grow up in Morton. However, after 9 years of marriage - I think he is learning. It is a HUGE deal to Norah. She has been talking about and couldn't wait to go! My mom bought shirts for the girls to wear while we were there.

So even though, the Norah and Daphne are still in St. Louis, they are there in spirit (and yes, I fixed their hair even though they are sick. They had pumpkin bows to match - I couldn't resist):

Norah seems like she is starting to feel better. We will keep up the treatments until the cough goes away, but poor Daphne seems sort of miserable today. She slept well last night, thankfully, but her nose is running, her eyes are puffy, and she is just sort of fussy.

Kevin emailed me this picture of Lucy at the parade:

8 Months!

Wow - 8 months!! Daphne has really changed over the last month!! She is officially crawling - as of about 2 weeks ago. At first she just crawled around whatever room she was in - now, however, she crawls EVERYWHERE!! She seems to like the kitchen right now - maybe she likes the feel of the cold tile on her legs. I don't know, but whether someone is in the kitchen or not, she often crawls there and just sits.

Now that she is great at crawling, Daphne is trying to pull herself to standing. For now she uses things like a stool or basket or her sisters to help her stand up. It won't be long, though, before she can pull herself up to the couch.

She says, "dadadada." She has no idea what she is saying, but she can say it.

She is perfecting the art of spitting! It is lovely, really. If she is not eating, she is spitting drool. If she is eating, she is spitting her food! She tends to spray whoever is feeding her. Nice, I know.

She pretty much likes any food we give her. Her favorite seems to be watermelon. At first I just pureed it and mixed it with her cereal. This week, I cut it into tiny pieces and she ate it. I also put it in a Sassy Teething Feeder - which she loves!! She is taking all bottles now - but she is a pokey eater!! She is often so distracted by what is going on around her that she doesn't want to eat.

Daphne's top 2 teeth popped through over the weekend. She was incredibly fussing for several days so we are thankful to have a break for a little while!! (Side note, Norah's 2 bottom teeth are loose and we just noticed this week that she has permanent teeth coming in behind them. She is wiggling the teeth like crazy so we don't have to pull them!!)

When she smiles she often wrinkles up her little nose - totally cracks us up!! She is becoming quite the ham and we are enjoying every moment with her!!!

2 Polls

Norah is working on a little project for math so she created 2 polls in my sidebar - What is your favorite color? and What is your favorite season?

Please take a moment to select your answer!! Thanks!!

Note to Self

Baby dolls probably don't like guacamole or pepsi, so there was no need for me to drop mine on Lucy's doll.

She Must be Getting Sick!

Remember this?

That same daughter just asked me if she could put pants on (really? on a day that it's 85 degrees?). I said sure and she ran up to her room and put pants on!!!! I am not joking, she hasn't worn pants in about 4 months and then it was ONLY if I insisted that she wears pants. She has not chosen to wear pants in 2 - yes, 2 years!!!

Mrs. America

Congrats to my friend, Andrea!! She was Mrs. Missouri and last night won the Mrs. America Pageant!!

Weeks 1 & 2 in Review

We have now completed 2 weeks of school. We did a lot and had a lot of fun!!

Last week, I tried to focus on getting back into a routine - we really haven't had much of a routine for Norah and Lucy since Daphne was born over 7 months ago. Daphne has been on a great schedule for about 4 months, but poor Norah and Lucy have had to just go with the flow.

We wait until around 9 to start school - which is perfect because Norah has been sleeping until 8:30 and Daphne goes back down around 9. We start with a little circle time (requested by Norah). We read some books, do our calendar, sing some songs, practice Bible verses, review sight words, and sometimes do something special depending on what we are reading that day. Two mornings a week, I am also do some preschool stuff for Lucy so we add in a Montessori activity demonstration and a number of the week. I am not exclusively using the Montessori methond for Lucy, but I am doing a lot. As the second child she likes to do things independently and she likes to have quite a bit of say over what she does. In order to keep things running smoothly while teaching preschool and kindergarten at the same time, Lucy has quite a bit of independent learning while choosing things from the Montessori shelf. Norah has actually enjoyed some of the new activities, too. They both beg to do something from the Montessori shelf on the days that we are not actually doing preschool.

We are reading a couple of pages every day from the Usborne Internet-linked Children's Encyclopedia and then getting online to find out a little more about the topic and doing some related activities. Okay, if you have never seen or heard of this encyclopedia, it is FANTASTIC!!! Today, we read about castle life and then got online to learn a little more. There was a picture of a castle and you could click on different areas of the castle for more information and to do an activity specific to that area. For whatever reason, Norah was interested in the dungeon. This was the activity they wanted to do. We read the little story and then click on "You say what happens" to get here to create a personalized escape plan. Very fun. The girls wanted to do it multiple times. I am planning on having an Usborne Books party in October or early November so if you are interested in this book, check back later.

After circle time Norah usually does some table work which includes copywork or a journal page and a page from Explode the Code. Right now for her copywork we are practicing writing her whole name (she has been able to do this for awhile, but has gotten VERY sloppy), and our address. She may journal whatever she wants, but then she writes one sentence describing her picture.

Next we do a math lesson. Each day she does 4 or 5 practice addition problems using our math drawers. Okay, I could take a picture of ours, but I took the lazy way out and just linked to the inspiration. Norah LOVES this activity. I am also using it with Lucy, but instead of addition problems she just gets a number card and has to count out that many counters. The past 2 weeks we have focused on sorting, graphing and describing different groups of items. We used bear counters, m&m's, pasta, and people counters. We have also started talking about sets of 10 and describing numbers with how many tens and ones. We also reviewed patterning, but Norah told me that was "waaaay too easy!"

For science we are focusing on nature studies. We are trying to take a nature hike at least once a week and we use our findings as a springboard for our science lessons. Also, some of our read-alouds are science related. We will also do some experiments along the way - magnets, sink-float, etc.

At rest time (naptime for Lucy and Daphne) Norah is reading a book to me and then I am reading a couple of chapters from our read-alouds to her. We have finished 3 chapter books in just a couple of weeks. The great thing about homeschooling is that if Norah wants me to read ahead - we totally can. I don't have to stick exactly to the lesson plan.

Using Foreign Language Friends, Norah has completed the shapes activities and is working on body parts. We are also doing some extra activities to help her review the Spanish words that she has already learned.

We are also doing art and music - more on that later. We are busy, busy in the mornings, but the girls have been excited to get started. It helps tremendously that Daphne usually takes a decent morning nap.

She Knows What She Wants

Those of you who know Norah, know that she only wear skirts. Now, I don't mean she prefers skirts or she rarely wears anything else. She ONLY wears skirts - as in she NEVER wears anything else! This summer I have let her wears skirts. Really, little girl skirts are not much different from shorts (they all have shorts underneath), so I didn't make a big deal of it. She has one pair of shorts that Heather gave us and maybe one pair of capris. It can drive me CRAZY, but it is one of those battles not worth fighting.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, when Old Navy was having a sale on jeans - $8 for jeans up to 5T, I told the girls we were going so I could get them all some new jeans.

Norah responds, "Mom, I. don't. wear. jeans."

I try to remind her that it is going to get cold so she will need a pair of jeans (seriously, we are talking 1 pair not 5).

She says, "I will just wear thick tights. I. don't. wear. jeans."

I remind her that Savannah has some really cute jeans and capri pants.

She says, "That's fine for Savannah, but I. don't. wear. jeans."

This last time she said it as if to say, "End. of. story."