Show Off Day

Ms Mimmie did a show off day this week for the parents to come and see what we've been doing in class.  Predictably, some of them were reluctant to show off and spent the time huddled in mom or dad's lap.  I took a bunch of video and pictures today during class to try to get a more accurate representation of the day.  They all love it- it's really fun to see them marching around and blasting off. 

You can tell the minute Remy sees me filming him.  All moving stops immediately and he just stares at me suspiciously.

Some more fun blasting off shots.  This whole month they've been grooving to the space music from an old Mother Goose Time theme.  It's actually one of my old CDs.  I ripped them all to my iTunes and gave them to her so she could use them in her classes.  The kids are somewhat familiar with the songs since they hear them when we play music during meals and it's been fun to keep the same theme going all month.

Merryweather wanted so badly to be dancing with the big kids.  She was singing and kicking so much that Mimmie decided to give her a turn with the log roll.

SUCH CUTENESS I CANNOT STAND IT.

Recent Funny Things

• I drink a lot of diet coke most days.  Sometimes I burp.  Usually I blame it on my kids.  When they aren't around I try to restrain it but the other day a big one surprised me.  So I blamed it on Girl Friday.  "GF!?  Did you burp?"  She looked at me with a look I've sometimes seen on my husband's face when I ask him something stupid like do these pants make me look fat, the look that acknowledges there is no right answer to this question.  Polite girl has obviously been taught not to contradict her teacher, but she knows she didn't do it.  Mental quandary.  Finally she tells me, "Yes.  I did.  BUT YOU DID TOO!!!"
• During our ABC work we talked about the letter that Hercules's last name starts with.  I mentioned it, and he was correcting me with the initial of his first name, so we talked through how he has several names and they start with different letters.  Then he tells me triumphantly, "Yes!  I am Hercules Middle Name Last Name, and I live in my car!!"
• I was standing at the counter making breakfast and I see this little hand sneaking up to grab something.  I thought it was Lady because she had been standing behind me just a second ago, so I said, "Lady, what are you doing?"  And then this little pat on my bum, and Alice says in a tiny sweet voice, "Hi.  Alice."  Love the correction.  So gentle.
• We had a lively discussion about wings, and how boys and girls do not have wings, but bats do, and birds.  Girl Friday told me, "I DO have wings!  I fly!"  And I said, "you do?  That's so silly!  Where do you keep your wings?"  And she tells me, "on the airplane!"
• We sometimes refer to Perdita as Smalls, because a) she is, and it's funny to see how nimble she is at such a tiny size, and b) her monkey-climbing tactics lead us to say "you're killing me, smalls!"  The other day she took something from Tigger and ran, and he yelled "you're killing me, smalls" at her. 
• Roo was talking about wanting to buy something and Kanga asked her if she had any money.  "Yes," says, "in your wallet!"
• I put the picture right before this one on facebook, where Remy was completely full of oatmeal and needed serious grooming.  In the comments we discussed his need to return to factory settings.  I got him pretty clean, all things considered, but I had to take this picture during the process because it made me laugh a lot.

Friday Focus: Girl Friday

I don't think I've ever done a post on our Girl Friday.  I have a tag for that name and it was actually talking about another little girl we took care of a few years back, in the exact same situation.  My home church does MDO and preschool four days a week, off on Fridays.  So every now and then we'll have somebody who wants to come only Friday because school is closed.  Our current Girl Friday started at the beginning of the year and then was off for the summer, so she's just started back with us a couple weeks ago.

She is quite fetching.  Even wet from Songkran.

I don't actually have very many pictures of her that are any kind of recent, so I borrowed this one off her momma's facebook page.  Isn't she a doll baby?

She's lots of fun.  If you ask her what her favorite thing is to do at my house, she'll tell you the broom.  "I love to sweep!"  And it's true, she does.  It's funny to me, but she does love it.  We have a little housekeeping bucket with whisk brooms and dustpans and irons and all that.  She'll make a beeline for the brooms and dustpans.  The yellow one is her particular favorite, but she'll make do with the red and blue if need be.  Intent on keeping us clean and safe.

She's also EXTREMELY articulate.  She just turned two in July and she's been speaking in complete sentences for months.  She knows her ABCs, all 50 states, and has a huge repertoire of songs.  The other day she was singing "someone's in the kitchen with Dinah"... I went in to get her up from her nap because I could hear a rousing chorus with many verses.  I think it surprised her that I know that song too.

She likes my cooking too.  I dig that.  I'm all about food = love and it makes me happy when the kids like what I make.  So many of them go through crazy picky stages that it's nice to have someone compliment the chef.  She's usually good for three helpings of most anything.  "Oh!  Brown rice!  I love this food!  More green beans please?"  Such a polite girlie.

Always Fun...

It never gets old for me to watch a baby falling asleep in his lunch. I love it every single time. Simba gets tired about 20 minutes before lunch is ready, but he's eating so much big boy food now that I hate to put him down without letting him eat what the other kids are going to have. He ends up dozing in his food on a semi-regular basis. It makes me happy. He's so cute.


Every kid I put in the jumperoo falls asleep in it at least once. O'Malley and ... (what did I used to call the baby I had last year... I can't remember his Disney name...) anyway, both of them used to keep jumping in their sleep. Girl Friday doesn't do that- once she falls asleep, she is OUT.


Oh! I remember now- Eeyore. That's what I called him. This one:

He'll be 2 next month- I bet he looks SO different. He probably has some more hair now. :) It always cracks me up when I haven't seen a kid in awhile and they've gotten tons of hair. It looks like they're wearing wigs.