Friday Focus: Perdita

Just because Perdita is the youngest kiddo we have right now- don't you dare make the mistake of thinking she's a baby. She might look vaguely like one in this picture, but she is a force to be reckoned with.

In just a month or so, she grew tons of hair.  It's much longer than it was even just at her birthday.  She very much enjoys her food- besides rubbing it IN her hair, she sticks it to her forehead.  I believe that's ground beef there.  It's definitely a fabulous plaything, even if sometimes she doesn't use it for nutritional value.

Sister is a mountain goat of the first degree.  It is very difficult to get her to keep her feet on the floor lately.  You turn your back for one second and she's leaping through the air like a gazelle.  The worst thing is that when she's standing on the couch, she DIVES as soon as she realizes you're looking at her.  One of these days I'm worried she's gonna misjudge the edge of the cushions and hit the floor hard.  So far though, she's golden.  She's also a big dancer.  I always ask her if she'd like fries with her shake.  She's got some hip moves working.  She also knows all the motions to the Wheels on the Bus song and comes running when she hears it.

She and my girl Duchess still have an ongoing love affair.  Pretty sure Duchess would be totally fine if Perdita's parents never came back to pick her up.  Perdita feels the same way- she and I can be flirting and playing and she's happy in my arms, and the second Duchess walks in I am dogmeat.  She can't get away from me fast enough as she flings herself toward my daughter.  It's funny. 

She and Alice have also become very good friends.  Both of them seem to think that the other is the only person in the playroom worth playing with.  They cook and clean and dance and sing.  It's very cute.  I hear that Alice does quite a bit of talking about Perdita at home on the weekends as well, and Perdita said Alice's name yesterday.  I think she's about to hit a vocabulary explosion herself.

Important Sensory Work

Most of the time, at the age we have, the process is way more important than the product.  Kids are learning how to color, how to glue, use scissors, figure out how things are put together, and what they like.  Now that school is back in session and we're doing curriculum again, we try to do crafts at least a few times a week.  There are days when a paper looks like the idea I had in my head, but honestly those are few and far between.  SO many times I send home a paper that looks like the kid did nothing, but there's almost always a back story.  Today I caught it on video.  Mater's woolly sheep is not so woolly, but there's a reason, and he learned a lot about the concept of "sticky" today!

See, here are the finished products.  You can see that Tigger took this activity to heart.  (top right.)  He glued, he pulled cotton, he stuck with wild abandon.  There's enough wool for a whole flock of sheep on that paper.  (And now I'm wondering about the collective noun for sheep because flock seems wrong.  Herd?  Hmmm.... Kindle?  Murder?  Oh hey!  Look what google says!)

Answer:

The collective noun is a flock of sheep.

His father has a large flock of sheep.

Other collective nouns for sheep are a drift, a down, a drove, a fold, a folk, a trip, a mob, a hurtle, or a herd.

A group of sheep is called a flock. A larger group can be called a band or mob.

And you know, this is how our days go on a regular basis.  We start out to do one thing, and all of a sudden we're googling answers to their questions and watching you tube videos of sheep getting shorn.  Anyway.  Back to the art!

So Mater's is on the bottom left, and looks like he was napping through the whole craft time.  Not the case!  There is a lot of dried glue on there, since he had a good time working with the glue stick.  Then he tried the cotton balls, and madness ensued.

Oh PLEASE upload, Mr. Video!

It's the best minute and twenty of my morning.  He goes to grab the cotton, but his fingers are so gluey that he can't wipe it off onto the paper and there's a lot of flailing and grunting in the attempt to remove wool from fingers.  Then he tries to wipe it on Lady's paper with no success, and then tries to eat the glue stick, and then throws the glue stick and gets angry.  At that point I stopped filming to help him wash.  :)  

So that's why I send home papers for the littles even when it looks like they didn't do anything.  Learning is always happening.

We're doing Big Red Barn for the next few weeks or till they're tired of it.  We've used this curriculum before, back when Hercules and Tigger were our littlest ones.  I think they were seven and ten months old and none of our other kids were born or here yet.  It's fun to go back and do it again with a different bunch of kids.  They're all loving it just as much.

Closings

I know not all the parents read the blog, but many of you do, so I'm going to put this here and then remember to tell everyone soon as well!

We are going to be closed the first week of this coming year.  The schedule we gave you at the beginning of 2012 already showed we'd be closed that Monday and Tuesday for the holidays, but things have come up and I'll be in Orlando that whole week, December 31- January 4.  We are going to pro-rate the fees for that week- you'll pay for just Monday and Tuesday.

We don't have the entire 2013 schedule of holidays and closings ready to hand out yet, but I know you need to plan for this extra closing ahead of time so wanted to throw it out there.

Friday Focus: Remy

I have hardly talked about Remy at all on the blog.  He's been here since February with not much advertising.  Then for the summer he's only been coming one day a week, so I don't have very many current pictures.  He is so much fun!  Such a sunny little kid.  He's got this crinkly smile that kind of squishes up his face and is adorable. Before I got used to it I thought he was about to cry, because he tips his head a little toward his raised shoulder at the same time- almost a wince.  And then the cute squishy smile.  It's funny.

He likes to go under the table very quietly and then pop up into my lap and scare me.  He's pretty stealthy, so it actually does scare me a good majority of the time.  Then he laughs at me.

He's a pretty good eater most of the time, and his big sisters are very concerned with his intake.  It's super cute- every day when they come to pick him up they ask what he ate for breakfast and for lunch and for a snack.  :)  So nice that he has cheerleaders.

Language Smiles

With all this vocabulary explosion from so many kids, we're back into the land of fun misheard words and silly pronunciations.  It makes me happy.

Alice:  HA-YO!  (hello.)  SO happy to see us when we go in to get her up from nap.  Usually followed by, "I POOP!  BUM!"

Hercules: Have-a-doctor.  I think helicopter is my very favorite word because there are SO many silly variations of it.  He'll say, "Have a doctor and a airplane!" and for awhile I thought he was telling me that he had a doctor and an airplane.  But no.  He has a helicopter and an airplane.

Roo: Melon.  She's very big into play food and ordering off the restaurant menu and constantly asks what we'd like to eat.  Whenever we say LEMONade, it turns into melonade.

Our summer boy likes to eat "manny" for breakfast rather than banana. I always want to ask him if he's handy.  He also says "there he are" instead of "there he is", which I love because when I was in college we had friends with a little boy who said that and I haven't heard anybody do it in about 15 years. 

Friday Focus: Tigger

Tigger has turned two with a vengeance.  He's at that age where you want to squeeze his fat cheeks and love him and he pats your face and tells you he loves you.  He's obsessed with squirrels and chases after them like they're exotic, never-before-seen creatures.  He plays with trains and makes sound effects and shows you fun insights into his mind.  He's got large chunks of his favorite books memorized and will sit for a quite a while pointing and telling you what will happen next.  He's a doll.

He's also at that age where the pictures of him are cuter than the reality.  The reality is a snot-laden, pouty, defiant mess.  He lies on the floor and screams for no reason.  He sticks so close to Kanga that she can do nothing alone, and yet he still manages to run away when she calls him to come do something.  He jumps off furniture constantly, antagonizes Roo and his friends, and has smashed his mouth so it bled four times in the past two days. He's a beast.

Basically his day goes dollbeastdollbeastdolldollbeastbeast until your head spins and you never know what is coming next.  The highs are so high, and the lows are so very low.  Welcome to the downward spiral into "two and a half".   This is pretty standard, and it's this age where I've heard parents say they must be failing at their jobs because the kid used to mind and now he doesn't.  It's just the age.  Tigger will be all doll again soon.  :)  I'm not always this candid about behavior on the blog, but he is Kanga's and I love him like my own.  I'm not saying anything we haven't discussed at length, and we take turns talking him off the ledge when he gets into a mood.  In fact, there are times where he listens to me so much better than he does to his mother that I have to talk HER off the ledge.  Also normal.

You'd never think he misbehaved, ever, judging by this wide-eyed goodness:

Take my picture, Auntie, he yells as he RUNS at me.  This is what I got by the time the camera clicked, and I actually like it a lot.

Water fun during Songkran.  Love to squeeze the fat doll baby...

Suspicious beast...

I have no idea what you're talking about.  I'm just sitting here eating my pizza nicely.

Where Does the Time Go?

It has been way too long since I posted.  I've got three Friday Focus posts in draft that I haven't quite finished.  We got a new little boy who started the first week of June and is only here for the summer, and I haven't even mentioned him.  Alice is talking.  Perdita is walking.  Roo is potty trained.  It's ridiculous, all the monumental occasions that are passing us by without being documented.

I still want to go back and do all that, but my good intentions fall by the wayside every now and then.  So here are a few quick shots:

 Here is cutie pie Summer Boy.

 We're working on The Little Engine That Could for our "read it once again" program and pretty much everyone is big enough to color now.  Alice, Mater, and Lady are especially pleased to sit at the table with the bigger kids!

Perdita thinks my kids are hilarious and they chase her around and make her laugh so hard she falls down.

Summer is flying by- come schooltime O'Malley will be going off to kindergarten and Duchess will be in fourth grade.  Aurora's new baby sibling is slated to be arriving sometime this fall, and we've still got a slot available.  Give us a call if you need childcare!  :)