Spring Things - a list of children stuff

My kiddies sharing a snack and waiting by the window for daddy to come home.

Iris can now say:
Hi
Hey
Bye (and bye with waving)
Ma, MaMa
Da
Ot (hot)
ashide (outside)
duck! (duck)
ack (quack)
ah-gie (doggie)
ah-le (dolly)
she eats with a big "ahhhmmmm" noise, the one you make when you are trying to get them to open wide. 
she can accurately nod "yes" or "no" to adult questions.
she tones a very high pitched "eeehh" when she objects to something you are doing, or making her do (like stay in your arms, or not climb out of the pew and crawl around the aisles at church)
she says many things that sound like sentences, which aren't in English but communicate desires none the less. She will eagerly point at something and say a bunch of goobley gook which means, "look at that cool thing" or "oohh! That's fuzzy and I want it! Its cute!"
She continues to do what she wants and eat what she wants. She's resistant to discipline. I don't remember if Clark was, but we also spent more time setting him on the right path prior to him getting into things that we didn't want him in.

Iris lays the smack down on Clark.

Iris can walk and runs around corners with a flourish. She totters around like a drunk man. Its adorable.
She loves to climb on things and is quite ambitious. She can climb off of our bed - something Clark just learned to do.  She can go up and down the stairs with no problem - although she did fall down them once.

We just built a sandbox and both kids are loving it!

Clark making sandballs

Iris objecting to us telling her that she isn't allowed to throw sand out of the sand box.

The Fam in the Box. It looks good doesn't it? Don't we?

Clark frequently asks for me to tell him stories. I am working on my memory of child's stories, but I find that many of them are pretty horrible, with animals or bad parents or bad witches eating children, really.  He loves the 3 pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. I made a modified story of Hansel and Gretel which cuts out some of the badness of the parents and witch, and quickly frees the children from her clutches.
I have been reading to him from chapter books. We've read Little House in the Big Woods, Little House on the Prairie, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.  Right now we are reading James and the Giant Peach .

Clark is really interested in puzzles right now, and can do 12 piece ones, and kind of do 24 piece ones. Its amazing to see our wild boy sit at the table for an hour and do puzzle after puzzle.

Clark loves outside, talking walks, reading stories, digging in the sandbox, singing songs, and cooking with me.

We are taking a music class at our parish called Making Music Praying Twice. It is mostly modeled after Music Together classes, but incorporates some church songs too, like the Ave Maria, Angus Dei, and Chaplet of Divine Mercy. It was cool to see him singing along with the Angus Dei during Holy Week.  The kids get to play with musical instruments, shakey eggs, scarves, and a parachute. We do songs with hand motions and learn tonalities too. Overall, it is awesome.

Today we took a class at our Nature Center. It was about turtles. The first 30 minutes is "free stations", with parents, the kids go to various stations: books, art, blocks, turtle shells, and pretending to be turtles. Then there is a group story time, craft (finger puppet turtle), and then we go on a hike. Today we hunted for turtles but didn't find any.

In the past we've taken other classes including insects (turning over logs and rocks to find whats underneath), woodpeckers (listening to pecking, and finding holey trees), animal homes (looking for nests), and animal detectives (looking for scat and tracks).  A few months ago, the whole family went to a class on Maple Sugaring. We're having a lot of fun at our nature centers!

We also continue to do our little co-op preschool Here are some photos from Costume Day.  The kids are Owen, Clark and Emily. 

Poo, Dragon, Unicorn

Dragon, Belly Dancer, Astronaut

Rasta Man, Astronaut

 And here are some photos from Easter. We had a beautiful weekend and are looking forward to what the rest of Spring brings!