Life is fun and learning

an amazing thing is happening at our house...

our kids are growing!

Clark is learning so much, and has become such a ... boy... a child... 

he's not a baby anymore

he's not a toddler

and sure, he's a preschooler, but he's.... learning so much!  

He can trace letters and write words when he does it. 

He can read the words

Clark

Iris

Mommy

Daddy

Buzz

Fly

Chapter

Stop

Dog

Cat

Yes

No

The kids LOVE it when Tom gets home from work. They climb all over him, and he doesn't disappoint. He picks them up, throws them around, lets Clark (and often BOTH) sit on his feet as he walks around the house.

They are constantly looking for physical challenges like climbing, balancing, hopping, jumping, hopping, and twirling (is that a challenge?) 

except, I don't like jumping off at the end! 

Being the best parents in the world, we let them jump on the bed - and climb on the head board - and often into the window frame to jump off of it onto the bed. 

One day, these monkeys will be bumping their heads, but so far, they've been pretty injury-free. 

Here's some more climbing. 

And on icky days, trapped indoors...

we learn in other ways. 

I recently went outside of my comfort zone and made a sensory bin. 

Its rice, and there are things hidden in the rice...

you can see a pile of hidden treasures in the middle bottom of the picture. 

They scooped, poured, and moved the rice around for hours one snowy afternoon. 

it is a wild ride... this parenting.. but these kids are simply awesome.  

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!

15 weeks and 2 - eek!

Iris is getting so big! She is 15 weeks old now. She can kind of early sit with assistance, she has rolled a few times from back to front, she's got great head control, she can grab an object with 2 hands, she smiles, coos, laughs, she loves holding her feet, and she works out by kicking and bicycling almost non-stop every day. She is awesome. Her fat skin is delicious, she has the most beautiful fat rolls and fat dimples. You can just see her healthy fat glow, and smell her incredible milky fatness when you nuzzle in close.

We are finally settling into having 2 children. For a while, it was somewhat overwhelming. Our beloved 2 year old is quite "2". He is a handful, and armful, a room full and a house full. He is pretty awesome, but still quite a lot of work. As an example, we thought he was "taking a nap" today in his room. We heard thunking around, but assumed it was him hauling trucks into his bed. When we finally went in there. This is what we found.


He had hauled his vacuum, a wipes container and a bottle of lotion into bed, opened the lotion, spread it all over himself and kept saying, "broken, broken" because he couldn't figure out how to get the blue nozzle part back into the bottle.
We thought it was pretty hilarious, but tried not to reinforce it. This kid LOVES it when he finds something funny that makes us laugh. We have to be careful with him!

The good news about Clark is that he is turning into a big helper. He loves to do the things that we are doing. Here he is helping me vacuum.
He also adores his sister. He seriously adores her. This is why we were so eager to make another little one so soon, Clark has SO much love to give. He LOVE, LOVE, LOVES her. He is always eager to rock her in the swing, show her his toys, and he will run to her when I have the camera out and say "cheese!". Here, he is showing you her ear.

He loves to read with her!
Green Eggs and Ham is one of his favorite books. He can "read" some of it with me. He is so cute when he reads the line, "Would you like them here or there" I say the first part, and he says "here or there" and he points left and right. He loves how it ends when Sam-I-am finally says, "try them, try them and you'll see" and the guy trys them and then the guy says "Thank you thank you Sam-I-Am." While it is a long bed time read compared to "Brown Bear" or one of the other kids books we have, reading it to him is such a pleasure.
Here is Clark cuddled up with Iris for a photo.And another one. Don't they look so much alike? It is pretty nuts!

Here's one from last month with Tom and the kids, they look so much like him too!
And to end your day with happy sunshine. Our little flower!