Friday Focus: Violet

It's Violet! Her mama decided pictures were okay after all, so you get to meet her officially.  She's not so sure about the idea, but I like this picture.  Shows off her gorgeous eyes.

She cracks me up- I'm convinced there are actually two Violets.  There is the one that her mama knows, and then there is the one who comes to daycare.  Both are fabulous, but they act so differently that it's comical.  Every time I say something about what she's doing, how she acts in different situations, the things she likes to eat, the way she sleeps, ANYTHING, it's almost always the exact opposite of what she does while she's at home.  I'm always so surprised to hear about her evenings and weekends, because I never get to see most of the things that she does there.

Here she's very deliberate and kind of serious.  She gives out big smiles, but I think I've only heard her laugh once or twice, and she's cautious and careful.  She gets her feelings hurt pretty quickly and will be upset by people coming too closely, even if they don't touch her or knock her down.  Rather a large personal bubble.  :)  And at home, she sounds really giggly and carefree.  Of course, Mufasa is never at her house trying to crowd her, so there's that.

I've never had anybody do this before and I think it's the cutest thing!  I bet her mama will be the kind who puts cute notes in the lunchbox every day.  I always think I'm going to do that at the beginning of the school year and I never actually do it.

Friday Focus: Maid Marian

Maid Marian has turned one recently and is ready to attack the world with both hands. She's such a sunny little kid a majority of the time.  Lots of fun to hang around! 

She's pretty much always willing to do the cheesy poses.  I can't remember if she put this hat on herself or if we staged it, but she loves having the camera in her face either way.

See!  I will come closer now and show you my cuteness!  Also can I have a bite of whatever you're eating please?

Again with the hats.  I didn't realize we have multiple pictures of her in headgear but apparently that's how we've amused ourselves this summer.

She's not been wildly enthusiastic about making the transition from hand-fed by us to doing it herself.  I could never get her to eat a banana, until I remembered a little guy I took care of years ago who refused to eat cut-up food.  Sure enough, she's the same way.  I mean really, who wants to eat broken food?  It needs to be large so she can drag it home to her den and gnaw it to death.  Clearly.

Uh, no thanks.  Little pieces are for babies.  I'm all grown up and I am far too cool for this stuff.  But check out my snazzy accessories!

She loves being able to pull up and just come stand next to us if we're on the couch.  She does that a lot while I feed one of the babies.  Sometimes she wants to try to sneak a sip of the bottle she's no longer getting, and gives the most pathetic and dramatic lower lip when we tell her no.  Anna says she's a graduate of a bad actress school for babies.  It's so true.  Or maybe soap operas in her future?  Such overblown gestures and melodrama.  I can't help but laugh at her every time.

She's also getting into the stage where suddenly things are scary that never were before.  Highly suspicious of park swings, this one.

She's just full of life and love.  So happy.  I read an article somewhere on facebook (and of course now I can't find it anywhere) that talked about the shifting of balance in the way we talk to baby girls.  There's been that whole thing where you're not supposed to start off by telling them they're pretty because then they think that defines them, and how we should focus on what they DO and who they ARE, not what they look like.  All true.  However, this particular article focused on a study that was done with dads and their daughters.  It found that girls who had dads who regularly told them that they're beautiful ended up more confident in themselves and tended to believe it more.  Even if they roll their eyes and say, "Oh come on dad, you're the only one who thinks so", there's a sub-conscious connection there that does super good things for their brains and the way their self-image is shaped.

Maid Marian's daddy, every single morning without fail when he drops off, tells her "daddy loves so you much baby girl, you're so beautiful.  So beautiful."  She smiles like the sun every time she hears it and it makes me all gushy inside.  You can tell she's hearing it in her brain, not just her ears.  Daddy thinks she's beautiful, and so she is.  I love it so much.

Swings

This week the AC is out in the playroom.  I'm really REALLY hoping that tomorrow when the service tech comes, he will say it is an easy fix and that it won't take six weeks like last year.  That unit had to be replaced, and this is now just a year old, so fingers crossed on that.  Luckily this summer has been a bit cooler than last, and it's actually more comfortable to take the kids out in the mornings instead of trying to herd them in the living room all day.

My kids have friends here this week, so even though we're officially full numbers-wise, it's two eleven year olds, a seven year old, and a six year old along with the regular roster of infants and toddlers.  That makes life infinitely easier for walks!  The big kids are super helpful.  Anna stayed home with the three youngest while they napped, and the rest of us headed out.

I'm sure we look like quite the spectacle marching down the street.  At least today nobody stopped to ask me if all nine of them are mine.

We have to cross a wooden bridge over a little creek to get there, and we saw a mama duck with four ducklings.  I think listening to all the kids quack at the ducks was my favorite moment of the day.

The swings were largely a success.  There's just one baby swing at our park, but it's pretty wide and has leg holes in both sides, so I set two of them in there back to back and it worked nicely.

Vanellope cackled like a hyena the whole time.  I love when the wind gets in her hair.

Mr. Flynn enjoyed himself immensely too.

 Miss Olivia, somehow managing to still look shy even while laughing.

Mufasa! King of all he surveys.

And then.  Then there was Maid Marian.  I know that child loves her some swings.  I've seen facebook posts that her mama puts up with all kinds of smiles and swing loving.  That was not the case today.  She freaked out and acted like it was the worst and scariest thing that ever happened.  I even tried to sit on the big swing and hold her and go very slowly and she still was having none of it.

So we decided at that point it was time to head out.  On the way home it was hot and my kids ran Olivia and Vanellope through our neighbor's sprinkler.  They laughed so hard!  It was really fun to see.

Then we came home and Anna said we smelled like sunshine, which is her way of saying we've been outside and smell like stinky puppy dogs, but still, it's the nicest way I've heard to describe that particular smell.  Lots of fun!

Friday Focus: Miss Olivia Flaversham

I've been having a little trouble coming up with a good blog name for our summer sweetie.  I finally hit on Olivia from the Great Mouse Detective.  Then I wasn't sure if I should use it since the style doesn't really match- doesn't sound like a Disney name, and it's such a popular name right now that we might have an actual Olivia at some point.  But madness lies down the road of second guessing everything, and that little mouse girl is SO cute and I think her personality really matches so there you have it.  Olivia she is.

Olivia is extremely shy if she thinks you're looking at her performance or might be about to comment on it.  If you look right at her and say hi, she usually drops to the floor and hides her face, peeking out from between her fingers every now and then.  It took her over a week to get used to circle time, but now that she's got the routine down, she's right up in my lap with everybody else singing on our story glove.  It's pretty cute.

She's fairly petite, but eats like a truck driver who's been on the road three days straight.  It's comical.  I don't know where she puts it all.  I do know that I would dearly love to have her metabolism.

She's a great snuggler and spends lots of time in our laps.

And she has no problem giving us the serious face if she doesn't approve of our silliness.

Sad we only get her for the summer, but it's been so nice to have her!

Summary Snippets

• Friday Focus has gotten away from me once again.  I have the best of intentions but life gets in the way.
• Miss Merida is gone.  They did a two week trial at her new school, just to make sure she was old enough to run with the big kids and the new schedule.  I knew she'd have no problem, and I didn't really WANT her to have problems, but I was still really hoping she'd come back at the end of the trial.  But of course she's gone for good.  Makes me happy she's doing well but I'm still sad.
• Merryweather is even more sad.  She's the only one up some mornings now and she kind of wanders around looking for a playmate.  We're working on trying to do some more big kid stuff for her but so far she's not super interested to do it by herself.
• We have some sweet new friends!  I need names for them still, but we have a new teeny one and a one year old who's dropped in before but is now full time.  They are settling in nicely.
•  



• Bernard's last day is today.  He's off to join his big brother at that school now that he's turned one.  I can't believe how fast the time with him went by!
• The parents of the new little one use an app called Baby Connect to keep track of what's going on with her and they added us to the account.  Instead of writing on the whiteboard, I log her activity on the ipad and they can check it from work and see how her day is going.  I wasn't sure if I would like it, but it turns out that I really love it.  It's fun to already know how she slept, and see when mom pumps so I can work on getting her to eat near the same schedule.  Mom and Dad like being able to see how her day is going in real time.  It's got places to add as much or as little as you want- you can track moods and activities and food and poop and sleep.  I am surprised by how much I'm enjoying it. 

• We've got two more new ones waiting to join us- one in August and one in January.  We got to meet our August arrival this week.  She's just a couple weeks old right now and is so snuggly and cute!
• Anna and I are seriously thinking about celebrating half Christmas next Wednesday, just for something fun and different to do.  If you come in and the decorations are up and the music is playing, just roll with it.  :)

Friday Focus: Mufasa

Ah, Mr. Mufasa... such a character.  This kid is going places in a hurry.  He's amazingly strong and has a crazy tight grip.  He loves to try to help me do dishes and when I attempt to scoot him back, he can lift the entire bottom rack and pull it onto the floor with him.  I don't think I've ever had anyone pull the whole thing off before.  Legendary persistence, this one.  It's terrible when it comes to pinching though- he leaves marks that stay on the back of my arm for days.  Must channel strength into productive avenues!

But seriously, when he's this cheerful, how can you be annoyed about a little pinch?  Usually it's only me or Anna who gets it- not the other kids.  He just motors around being happy.

He, Bernard, and Flynn are pretty much like the three musketeers these days.  It's fun to watch them discover new skills and be alternately annoyed and delighted with each other.  They take turns leading the mischief and like to travel in a pack.

As hard as he plays, that follows into his sleep.  He's happy to crash out anywhere, and doesn't mind if you transfer him from a car seat into your arms and into bed.  I'm super jealous of that ability, as neither of my kids would do it. 

He couldn't make it home from school- we went and had lunch with O'Malley the other day, where the attendance secretary fell completely in love with him.  She's always sad when I don't bring him with me.  Oh, where's my smily boy?  she says.  :)

All that charm is hard work.  He almost always sleeps all the way home. 

Merida is learning to say his name and I love the way she does it.  He has a three syllable name and she takes the middle.  Using Mufasa, it would be like she calls him fa-fa.  So cute.  I call him that half the time now too.

This just happened now: yesterday I sent him home with no pants on, just a onesie.  By the end of the day neither his dad, Anna, or I could remember what pants he'd been wearing or where they had gone.  About thirty minutes ago O'Malley came home from school and I noticed he was wearing them.  As shorts.  He's so skinny they fit and he just thought I must have bought him new shorts and stuck them in his room.  You know, because I always throw his new clothes on the floor... crazy man.  He's SO mortified.  18 month pants.  All day at school.  He rocked them.  Guess I'll be washing those and returning them!  Mystery solved.  :)

Caterpillar on the Wall

We've started The Very Hungry Caterpillar again. This is one of my very favorite units to do, and I don't think we've ever done it with a group who's overall as young as this one. (Here's an old post with some of the things we do with older kids.) There's definitely a lot of modification and repetition, but they're enjoying it.

Sometimes I read them the actual book, but most of them are still at the super grabby stage.  Since the book has so many holes cut in it, I'm afraid it will get ripped during a group reading session.  More often, we use the pointer and the class set of pictures that I have on the wall.  (or off the wall, since my sticky stuff is dying and the stapler won't work on that kind of wall.)  Merida and Merryweather go running over there as soon as I pick up my pointer, and they can show me the moon and the egg.  Every time I say "he was STILL!  HUNGRY!" we make silly faces and they laugh.  It's fun.

So far the only things I've sent home are the little paintings, but we have done a couple other crafty items.  Here's the class caterpillar, who currently resides on our wall:





Each kiddo colored a body section and then we attached legs. They had a good time coloring!

Merryweather, taking the job very seriously.

Mufasa and Flynn were both a little shocked that I actually let them touch the crayons, I think.  Look how proud Flynn looks.  I had to sit right there and make sure they didn't taste them, of course, and their finished product doesn't have a lot of real coloring on it, but they really enjoyed the process!