Announcing Tigger!

Kanga is my hero~ Tigger was born this morning, weighing ELEVEN pounds and ELEVEN ounces, 21 1/2 inches long. I'm not sure if that puts him the same weight as Hercules, or maybe even a little bigger. :)

Can't wait to meet you, Tigger!

One Liners...

Okay, so Lilo is completely killing me these days with the crazy things she says. I don't know where she comes up with this stuff, but it's awesome.

• The other day she and Boo were playing and all of a sudden out of nowhere, Lilo turns to Boo and says, "Welcome to the jungle!"
• She has decided she is Princess Daisy. I don't know why, but it's become even more specific than general princess discussion. And when she is being PD, she refers to herself in the third person. Princess Daisy doesn't want to eat that. Princess Daisy does not clean.
• She's got this little shaky dance thing she does, and every time she says, "You want to see my booty shake? My daddy taught me how!" (which by the way is not the case. he looked very surprised to hear that he was supposedly responsible. )
• 
  

Breaking News!!

Kanga is being admitted to the hospital this evening- Tigger will be born in the morning!! Woo Hoo!!! Congratulations, prayers and good luck toward everyone in the hundred acre woods. :)

Friday Focus- Esmeralda

Who, me?

Esmeralda and Tinkerbell spend lots of time pestering each other and rolling on top of one another.

Miss Esme... she is such a cheerful girl, and oh so fashionable. She has leg warmers, and also pacifiers that announce her as Punk Princess. She's always dressed to the nines and tops it off with a smile. I love when she gets especially excited- she pants like a dog, with her tongue hanging out and her hands flapping with glee. It's awesome to watch. Most times though, she's very ladylike. She takes small bites of food and eats slowly and carefully. She's observant and watches everybody like a hawk. I have a dangle ring and she's the only baby who ever notices it. It's hard to feed her because she keeps trying to grab it. Likes the accessories better than the food, I guess. :)

Stall....

So. I lost the curriculum book somewhere. Horribly annoying. We are at a complete standstill with the safari work because I have all these cutesy pieces of paper and no instructions on what to do with them. This week is kid-driven and floor play and not so much themed until I find my silly book. Which is not a bad thing per se. I guess it's a good thing I had planned to carry it over to April anyway. Now we'll have lots of stuff to get done.

Friday Focus- Flik

Flik!! Next week is actually going to be his last week with us, so this is a spotlight/ wrap up/ we hope you have a great time at your new school kind of a post. The reality of this business is that we have to make room whenever one of us has a baby... so since Flik is the oldest of the bunch, he really is ready to move on to a big kid school and thus make space for Tigger. I'm guessing this may be the last time we'll have this particular issue though. With two kids each, I think Kanga and I are both done. But that's totally off-topic. :) He's going to have an awesome time at his new place with more kids his own age. Mixed age groups in a family setting are fabulous when you're little, but as they get bigger, they want the structure that being in a group with everybody your age can provide.

Flik. He cracks me up. He loves our iPhones with a great and abiding love. As soon as anybody walks through the door, he's checking out the situation. What kind of phone do you have? Does it play games? Can *I* play games on your phone? Nothing makes him happier than when we say yes, and if we say no, he just nods wisely and says, "We gotta be patient and wait for your phone...."

Can I play on your phone now? No? Okay. Be patient...

He and O'Malley are on the same t-ball team and so we hear a lot of discussion on technique, and witness a whole lotta "practice". Today the practice consisted of using the baseball bats like light sabers against each other. I feel for Coach Mike. He's got some work ahead of him. But at least they've got the "step and THROW!!!" part of it down.

Here he is enjoying a baseball cookie from O'Malley's birthday last week.


Can I play on your phone now? I be patient....

Flik doesn't take home very many art projects. He's perfectly happy to sit and listen and spout off all the information we learn- he knows ALL about mammals and remembers all kinds of details. But up till recently he hasn't been big on coloring, and he loves scissors to the point that his project is confetti. Generally once the scissors come out, there's no way there's gonna be enough left of the paper to make it home. That's not a big deal for me- I love process, not product. Especially when they're little and learning the motor skills, it's better to have them do what they like to do instead of worrying about what it's going to look like at the end. But! All of a sudden I think it's clicked. He cut out his hyena nearly perfectly and colored it too. He was so proud!


I play your iPhone now? :)

Size Matters

We have a couple of big baby dolls in the playroom that all the kids love to carry around and feed and wrap in my kitchen towels. Then when they're done, they usually end up tossing them face down on the floor. This causes Kanga and me to have heart failure when we come in and see a baby lying on its face in a corner somewhere. Just for a split second it's terrifying, even when you KNOW all the small babies are in the other room.

So. For comparison:

Mr. Hercules is in the middle. Baby dolls on either side. Slightly alarming, isn't it? :)

Friday Focus- Tinkerbell

Tinkerbell is a pretty hardcore sleeper. Sometimes it takes her a few minutes to get settled, but once she does, she kind of looks like she's sleeping off some sort of binge. I LOVE when she falls asleep with things near her. It's hilarious. A bottle in your eye? No worries. Sleeping too hard to even notice.


She and Esmeralda do the tandem nap sometimes, if they both end up drifting off while they're eating. Otherwise one of them rolls over into the other's kicking range and cries while her friend beats her up. Either that or they get on their tummies and stare suspiciously at each other.


She was very upset with me because Kanga was working on getting her breakfast, way too slowly, evidently... she was trying very hard to pull a Dorothy the dinosaur and eat all my red roses. Caught her with a petal in her hand that she'd yanked off and took it away right before she could get it in her mouth. How dare I deprive her of nature?



Oh, Tinkerbell. Your rolls are so delicious. Even YOU like to eat them.


This headband would not stay where it belonged. It took a pretty long time for it to make her mad though- mostly she just looked perplexed as it slid lower. She's a good sport about stuff like that.


She's started waving hello and goodbye recently, and I got my first hug when she came in last Monday morning. So fun! A real hug with little squishy arms tight around my neck. Love that.

She hates to be alone and loves the bustle of kids swirling around her. She always takes her first nap of the morning on the living room floor while we're watching tv and getting breakfast and hollering. Things are loud and crazy and she totally digs it. It's usually her best sleep of the day. If she's awake, she's gotta be where the action is. She protests very loudly if we try to go do art or read a book or anything in the other room where she can't see us. As of this week, she's up on all fours rocking back and forth, so I think it won't be long at ALL before she's wicked fast, crawling all over and keeping up with the big kids. A woman on a mission. :)

Safari Video

My one complaint about our mammals theme last month was that they didn't include any photographs of the animals and we were always having to look for suitable videos on youtube. That can be chancy when you don't know if Mr. Lion will all of a sudden begin to love on Mrs. Lion or something. So. I was really pleased to get a notification that for safari month, Mother Goose Time created their own youtube video! It's got some of the songs from our soundtrack and pictures of a lot of the things we're discussing this month.



I'm so excited! The kids have watched it several times already and I'm sure we'll be coming back to it often.

Spring Is Almost Here!

We're going to be doing all sorts of spring activities next week. I LOVE the beginning of spring. The weather here generally cooperates, although not always... grr... and it's so much fun to take walks and look at new flowers and birds and greenery. I love tulips and daffodils and hyacinths and irises and baby bunnies and chocolate ones too!

My family is ... I don't like to say religious. That has such a negative, holy-roller kind of connotation to me. Anyway, we take Easter pretty seriously around here, and I love talking to my own kids about Jesus and what He did for us. As a teacher though, I know not everybody follows those beliefs and I want to be respectful about differing opinions. I've found that the thing that works best for me is to completely separate Easter and spring. My kids get their "spring baskets" on March 20/21 for the first day of spring. We do our spring egg hunt then, and talk about chicks and bunnies and all the cutesy sugary section of the holiday then. Then that leaves Easter open to be more focused on Biblical content. I want them to be able to have all the chocolate bunnies and silly stuff that goes along with the secular part of the season, but I'm just not comfortable with mixing the two things so closely. Spring is great for egg hunts and peeps. Easter is for Jesus. We do lots of Holy Week stuff at my church. Just not the egg hunt. We do our own.

I know that's pretty different from what most people consider "normal", and I'm okay with that. :) My kids don't do the Easter bunny. (or Santa either, for that matter, but that's a whole 'nother story...) They know that I pick the things to go in their baskets, although they are under super strict orders to not spoil the fun for their friends. It's usually not an issue since they get their baskets a few weeks ahead or behind everyone else. Little kids don't connect the two events that closely for awhile.

Anyhow... all that to say, we're going to be having our Spring Egg Hunt soon. Since spring break is next week and I am not sure who will be here that Friday, we'll be doing it on Monday, March 22. If it's nice it will be outside. If not, in the playroom. There will be lots of fun activities and that's when we'll do all the typical stuff that usually happens around Easter. And then we're closed on April 2 for Good Friday.

I'm weird. I know. :) But it works for me.

Friday Focus- Lilo

Lilo is a princess. She tells us this on a regular basis. She cannot clean because she is a princess. She doesn't want to eat that food because she is a princess. She needs to play dress up now because why? Yes. She is a princess. Usually I say "Yes, not a policeman." She of course doesn't get the Kindergarten Cop reference and just looks at me funny, but it makes me happy anyway so I keep doing it.


As a self-proclaimed princess, there are certain things that she expects of the others, especially the boys. "Flik, I will dance now. You will dance with me."

"No." Nicely, but still no. He backs away.

"Then you will watch me dance. I dance now." And off she goes, twirling around so closely to him that his escape routes are blocked. Therefore he watches her dance. I hate to tell her this will probably never change.


Anything that has previously happened was "lasterday". This is one of my all time favorite made-up kid words, I think. I have a feeling it will become standard verbiage around here long after she graduates.

Her moods change in an instant. Three has been harder than two for her by FAR. She's coming up on four though, so I hope to see this expression on her face a tiny bit less. :)

February Recap

Mammal month is now over. :) I think this one was the most interesting and successful theme we've had in awhile. Sometimes by about halfway through the month, either I'm tired of it or they are. We were able to stick to it and there are only about 3 or 4 animals we didn't do. I think we're going to take the leftovers from the past three months at the end of March and do a review of each one during April. Saves a bit of curriculum money and keeps it fresh in their minds, not to mention cleaning out the clutter in my art box.

Today starts Going On A Safari. We'll be studying African animals, culture, weather, and landscape. Looks like fun and should give us a chance to practice our new mammal identification skills as well.

Roo has been doing awesome in her physical therapy lately and her new stander was delivered last week. It's really bittersweet to watch her work with it. It's absolutely awesome that it's available, and that now she's able to stand up on a level with the other kids her age and have both hands free to color or play. I'm so thankful that we live in a time where we have so many opportunities to meet kids' needs in so many different ways. On the other hand, I hate so much that she even needs it in the first place. She's a magical kid. So much fun, with worlds of depth to her that a picture of her in a chair doesn't begin to cover. But, one step at a time. It's Kanga's fervent hope that working in the stander will give Roo the strength and balance she needs to be able to get up and walk away on her own. In the meantime, she really loves being in it and it's so much fun to get her involved in big kid stuff.


Bianca has joined the ranks of the big kids as well. Her schedule for a long time had been that she took a long morning nap and woke up for a late lunch while the big kids napped, and then many times was ready to go back down when they woke up. So she never got to interact with them much, and I didn't have very many pictures of her in the group. She's been enjoying the past few weeks running with the crowd now that she doesn't sleep quite as much.


Chip and Tinkerbell coordinated wearing their UT clothes the other day. It cracked me up that I COULD NOT get a picture of either of them smiling while wearing it. It was more like, see, my parents like this school and made me wear these clothes but I am so not excited about it... so cute though.


Silvermist has decided that she loves Aurora, and also Aurora's mom. She always wants to hang out for a few minutes when Aurora gets picked up. The girls are ten days apart and talk about each other all the time. Love it.


And in other news, Flik and O'Malley play games on their "iPhones" all day long. These are my old cell phones from several generations of electronics ago, with zero charge, nothing working at ALL. But they play skeeball and the alien game and text their families and talk to each other constantly about what new content might be downloaded. It's hilarious. Boys of the technology era, for sure. It's nice that they can blend it all in with their imagination so well.


I would imagine that our March recap will include Kanga delivering Tigger! The time is getting close on that. Chip's mom is going to be our backup and will be here while things get settled in the Hundred Acre Woods. :)