Sadly both our kids are pretty sick right now. Josie took two naps today, when she generally won’t even take one even with a long ride in the car. She’s had a fever and Celia is very congested. I even got a picture of her passed out on the couch.
We had a nice sunset today though, and so I grabbed the camera for a few shots before dinner.
Here’s a shot from earlier in the day with Javier and Celia hanging out on the bench with Simba nearby.
Celia has picked up some new tricks lately to get herself into trouble. She has learned how to climb into the learning tower and onto the dining room chairs. Thankfully she doesn’t do much with the chairs yet or else we’d have to figure out how to remove those too. I’ve already gotten rid of a footrest and the kid chairs.
She now likes to point, while shoving her hand front and back, to let you know what she wants. She expects you to follow her and do as she says.
Woe be unto you who does not do what she wants when she wants it. I have to make sure that there isn’t something hard behind her head when I have to give her bad news. She will just lay on the floor and cry. She’s having a very hard time learning that while she can influence the world, she does not in fact control it.
She really hates the car. Have I mentioned that? If I have to put her into it more than two times a day (out and then going home) I feel really bad because of how big a fit she makes. Our days have a lot of screaming lately sadly. She is a diva. If I’m eating something, she has to have some too. If Josie is playing with something, she has to have it. If I go into the bathroom or the tub she has to go too.
Kaya was enjoying the sun yesterday, sitting still while we had lunch, so I grabbed the camera.
As always, photos can be clicked on to see them bigger.
This afternoon Josie and I hosted a playdate for making some mini-gingerbread houses. This is the first time I’ve ever done this from scratch. I made the gingerbread and the royal icing, and I guess not from scratch the box and the candy 🙂 We did the gingerbread yesterday and made it to fit around a pint sized cream container so it would be steady for preschoolers to work with it instead of frustrating.
All in all I think it went well for the 3 year olds, the biggest challenge was keeping them from eating the candy. Celia tried a little, but she just wanted to lick the candy. I kept showing her how to put it on, and she’d put it on and then pull it back off. I eventually cobbled something together ‘with her’.
Josie on the other hand made a house after her mother’s own heart and covered it mostly with chocolate. She insisted on unwrapping all the kisses too, rather than let their pretty foil decorate the thing. She loves to unwrap. I had her unwrap all the rest of the candy while I made lunch and dinner and she couldn’t get enough of it.
Celia made a big mess.
It was so great taking a picture of something standing still, look how crystal clear it is! And Josie was not in a mood for pictures today, so this is her yesterday in front of the tree.
This year I wanted to try to impart more of the giving spirit onto Josie as I thought she might be able to understand more. So we gave Josie a set of three charities to pick from, Toys for Tots, Arlington Food Pantry, and Nursing Mothers Council. All worthy choices that might strike a chord with her. As I could have predicted, the toy one (Toys for Tots) won out quickly, she didn’t need to spend much time considering it at all. So I handily plopped her down on my lap to shop at Amazon and instructed her to find a toy that she would like to play with so we can give it to someone else. She picked out a fire chief costume.
She hemmed and hawed over why we would give it away, when we didn’t already have one of them while we waited for it. But it arrived and although she wanted to play with it she seemed to understand when I said we had to keep it ‘new’. We walked over to the donation bin and she dropped it right inside. She only wishes that she could get a note or see the ‘little girl when she opens it’.
I’ve been involving her more in our donations too, talking about how we’re giving away some of our stuff because we have so much and we can’t use it all. So we’re giving away our extra stuff to Goodwill. Nothing to do with the fact that our basement is stuffed to the gills! 🙂
No we didn’t go with that one.
This fall we went with a new gymnastics class for a few reasons. Her old one was a lot of time spent waiting for a turn and the teacher calling the non-cooperative kids back to class. Josie loved it, but one of the reasons she loved it was because of her friend Jordan who was also in the class. Jordan was 5 and so starting this fall she went to school and couldn’t do a Tuesday morning class anymore. Josie’s teacher also told me that she’s pretty talented and should take ‘real’ gymnastics classes. So off we went to a real gymnastics studio, but no big surprise, ‘real’ gymnastics aren’t that real at age 3, but they sure do cost more money. We did one 10 week session and Josie enjoyed it, Celia tolerated having to play in the background, but we’re done with it for now. We may go back to the other class and do both the baby and the big kid class so both of them can have fun in the new year.
They did a good job of keeping the kids active by moving them in a circuit, but there wasn’t much teaching or learning going on per say, just more ‘ok walk here and jump here’. A little bit of gymnastics skills with walking on the beam or hanging from a bar, but I was surprised at the lack of instruction. Perhaps the kids are just too little, this isn’t Russia or China screening for olympians. But the class was almost 20 minutes drive away (celia hates the car still) and overlapped with Celia’s preferred nap. So bye bye to that class, but she had fun. We got to take some pictures in the last session, but it was too dark in there to do anything great.
In the last class they had each kid run a circuit independently while the parents sat in and watched. My mom came to help with Celia, ended up sitting with her sleeping in the car the entire time. Josie ran through her circuit without stopping and flipped over at the bar instead of just hanging from it (landed on her feet just fine) and then tackled her teacher. Guess the audience made her a little nervous.
Tonight at dinner we were having chic-n nuggets (it was a bad day) at dinner and Celia started to rub the nugget in her hair and I told her ‘food goes in your mouth.’ She looks at me and then puts the nugget on top of her head. Puts her hands down, balancing the nugget and smiles and says to me ‘HAT!’
I tried really hard not to laugh.
Well ok now Josie is 3 and 7 months old… as I’m behind in the blog. As we head into December expect to see me enjoying reminiscing about last summer.
Josie is a full on talking-walking-bike riding person these days. She talks all day from morning to night and never seems to run out of something to say. She has a lot of complaints as well, we’re working on those manners. She often does say please and thank you though. She has a lot of opinions but also changes her mind frequently. I never can tell what she’ll eat some of these days, something was great one day and suddenly it’s no good the next.
With Celia being a little more work to keep track of and keep safe as she gets into everything, Josie is getting more time independently with her friends like Ethan and Zach or Bronwyn. It’s interesting to hear what she has to say when she comes back from talking to them as they are clearly having some more indepth conversations other than just running and playing games. For instance she’ll tell us about upcoming birthday parties and what’s planned. She also hosted Ethan without his mom for the first time as a playdate, I feel like she and her friends are old enough that I can handle them easily while also entertaining Celia.
She’s pretty trustworthy but if she gets too excited or tired she tends to loose a little control and play rough. Not unusual for her age. She’s a sensitive girl though and has entered into the rough world of childhood play where not everyone is always nice. I’ll find myself being told to ‘go away’ when I try to play with her because someone else said that to her earlier. I wish these things wouldn’t happen to her, but learning to deal with them is part of being a kid. Not everyone is nice in the world!
She’s started to try riding a regular bicycle, I’ll get the video up sometime. She’s been using the neighbors bike and just has to learn to pedal. With some practice I’m sure she could get it but I’m not eager to get her started quite yet as I’d like to wait until spring at least to get a little more common sense to be included with her good balance and strength.
For activities she’s been doing weekly ballet and gymnastics. Gymnastics has ended but ballet has been something she looks forward to each week. She’s made some nice new friends and does a good job listening to the teacher mostly. She’s developed a case of the sillies a few weeks where she’ll throw herself on the floor like she fell down, both in gymnastics and ballet.
She’s a good big sister and getting better about both telling Celia to stop hitting her with her words, and not pushing her over as much. She also has been experimenting with picking Celia up. As long as they both agree and no one gets hurt, I really try not to get involved in what they choose to play together.
Josie has started to make the foray into the world of jokes and humor too. I try to explain jokes to her and she likes them, but doesn’t always get the timing quite right when she tries to do them to you. Ask her about the interrupting cow, hers is too polite sometimes.
Josie has been getting herself dressed now for a long time. She has her own opinion on what matches, stripes and stripes match right? no matter the color. Pink plus pink plus pink match even if they’re all different shades. So long as she is weather appropriate, I just go with it. She often tries to make me pick stuff though, and then picks the opposite. So I mostly decline the offer to choose unless she goes with what I pick because I don’t need oppositional teenage behavior yet!
In the last few months she’s really gotten into art projects as well. Art was previously a short activity until recently as she’s drawing more and painting and cutting and gluing. We’ve made some great stuff together and I really enjoy getting to work on it with her. I’m not a great artist in the drawing, painting, cutting, gluing world… so I look forward to the day when she surpasses me.
As for her numbers and letters and reading, she’s identifying most letters and small numbers and can write some of them unprompted. She’ll ask a lot of questions about signs and is starting to understand that letters can be written in cursive as well.
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