Archive for September, 2012

My two buddies

Sunday, September 9th, 2012 by Jen

Here’s two pics of the two of them, first is a few months old, the second two are pretty recent. They like to dress the same a lot recently. Well really Josie likes to dress the same, Celia mostly just goes along with it.

 

The tea party

Saturday, September 8th, 2012 by Jen

This morning we hosted an end of the summer tea party for the girls and a few of Josie’s friends. Nothing says girl like fancy dresses on 4 year olds. We were lucky to have Blake join us too, Bronwyn’s little brother in addition to Bronwyn, Sophie, Adelaide (her little brother Grant), and Lucy). These pictures are not up to my usual quality standards, I was just trying to get some snapshots where ever and whenever I could given that I was also hosting a party and had to watch my own kids as well. But it gives the timeline for what we did and all.

The party started as all do with the food! Yesterday we took some pound cake and cut out hearts, circles and squares and glazed them to make tiny petit-fours type things, they were popular. Plus my pumpkin muffins and some scones from the store, grapes, cheese as well as cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches. In our search for inspiration online, we found a lot of pictures of people doing alice in wonderland tea parties so while Josie doesn’t really know the story, she loved the ‘EAT ME’ signs. We had a few moments to spare this morning so she made some signs for our cakes as well. Saralynn brought us some yummy iced tea and I put it in a little tea pot the girls could pour from themselves.

After eating the sand table was a big draw. That worked for a while and then when it started to fall apart we enticed them to eat more and then got them onto the hammock.

Then we brought out the big entertainment, the bounce house.

Unfortunately because of the time of day it was super sunny on the house, and it was upwards of 85 degrees outside so it was a little tough to keep the girls happy. But it wasn’t meant to be a long morning, quick as anything it was noon, time for our guests to go home and time for our lunch! I hope everyone had a good time, Josie is already asking for another one! Maybe in the spring on a cooler day.

Josie at 4 and one third

Friday, September 7th, 2012 by Jen

Well I missed Josie at 4.25 because life was very busy right then and I hadn’t quite caught up, but things have slowed down now for a couple of days and so I can do what I can.

Josie is one huge basket of energy, emotions, and intensity these days. She’s acutely aware of the changes coming up with going to preschool but she’s obviously not sure of exactly how it will work (neither am I of course!) and I think it’s got her a bit revved up. She’s excited to spend some time away from me and Celia, but worried she’s going to miss out on what we’re doing while she’s gone. She has particularly directed me that we’re not to have any fun or do fun things like gymnastics classes while she’s in school. Sorry kiddo, Celia deserves some gymnastics lessons like you too.

One of my favorite things to do as a mom when she’s getting restless and whiney is to try to teach her new age appropriate things. This is how she’s learned new skills like unloading the dishwasher, setting the table and folding laundry. Her current responsibilities are putting away her own clothes, unloading the dishwasher, cleaning up her toys and bagging up the weekly recycling. She’s frustrated with the dishwasher chore right now so we may have made a new deal for her to do laundry or diaper folding instead and I’ll take back the dishwasher chore.

As I blogged about a few days ago Josie has learned how to ride her bike as well! She’s still learning the pedal brakes and how to avoid other people, so we won’t be going out on the road or even the local bike path soon but she’s very excited and proud of herself. I won’t be sad to see the cooler weather come and bring some covered elbows and knees to protect her better for those occasional accidents though.

Academically, Josie’s writing more and her handwriting is getting better and stronger. She wrote our an entire invitation to her upcoming little tea party by hand, about three sentences. That’s about her limit right now physically and normally her attention span is much shorter than that, but this was of particular interest to her. We try to spend a little time together every day writing and we do a lot of reading as well while Celia is napping. Every night we also read from a chapter book, currently we’re reading “More All Of A Kind Family.” We already read the first book.

Josie’s favorite art right now is painting. She’s just finished a big phase of solid color paintings where each page is just one bright bright color. A few weeks ago she watched Ethan make a painting of a seascape and outer space so she’s been a bit more focused on painting a particular object. The last couple of paintings have featured the letter ‘R’. She’ll start with an ‘R’ and then add on more and more things.

She still enjoys helping me bake in the kitchen and talks almost constantly. Right now we’re have to work on her manner of speech and actual words to be rephrased more politely, but I have a feeling once she settles into school that will settle too. I have no doubt she’ll do well at school and have lots of fun. We’ve had three playdates so far with kids at her school so she’ll see some familiar faces and will have somewhere to start.

We’ve had a quiet last month and a half, no lessons since swimming in July. Josie did two weeks of every weekday lessons at the Arlington reservoir. She loved the lessons and was very enthusiastic for the teachers, but not for us when we asked her to do the same things. Either way it reduced her fear of the water and lets her get her face and hair a bit wet. Perhaps this winter we’ll start some more lessons again but I want to take things easy right now. We’ll start up dance again in October, a combination ballet and tap class.

She’s generally very sweet to Celia, now she likes to teach her things and explain what’s going on. She’s gotten much better about using her words and not shoving Celia out of the way. She’s also gotten to learn how frustrating it is when you say something to someone repeatedly and they just totally ignore you. One year olds are not known for their listening skills. They have regular cuddles in the morning. Josie will occasionally read to Celia, I hope they pick up more of that now that Celia will actually listen to books with more than a few words on each page. She’s very interested in learning about her world as well, wanting real details about animals and other things in her world. She loves our homeschool preschool and is very active in driving the lesson planning of topics. I think we may be done with it for now as my co-teacher is pregnant with her third child and with Josie in school we won’t have a whole lot of time to do it but we’ll still be able to get together for play-dates.

  • Size/weight: size 5 and some longer 4 clothes
  • Favorite foods: pasta, ice cream, bagels, breastmilk
  • Favorite toy: dress up, bike, paint
  • Favorite book: Lots of variety, doesn’t keep going back to the same ones, we burn up that library card
  • Favorite activity: playing pretend
  • Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up between 6 and 7
  • New skill: riding her bike by herself!
  • Teeth: holding steady at 20
  • Vocalizations: still working a bit on telling jokes and controlling her voice as her emotions run high and low

Mio, age 11

Thursday, September 6th, 2012 by Jen

I also cannot believe that Mio turned 11 last month. Here’s a few playful shots of him!

More cape cod

Wednesday, September 5th, 2012 by Jen

Did I say I was done posting pictures of cape cod? No, apparently I’m not.

They’re watching Jordi fly his kite on the beach.

This is the skyline late one morning right before a huge storm rolled in on us. We went to the beach for an hour anyway.

I handed over the camera to Jordi so I could get in a few shots with my girls.

This was taken just shortly after the other picture of my dad flying the kite, what a difference the settings make for what kind of image and emotion you get!

Celia only fell into the pool once, while trying to catch a ball. She was pretty dexterous otherwise since she mostly just wanted to play along side the pool rather than in it.

Phew and now that’s the end of the cape cod pictures.

More pictures from the white mountains

Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 by Jen

The scenery up around storyland is just lovely, big mountains, blue skies and lovely trees. I took some more pictures around the condo site and on our trip on the way home up high in the mountains. Josie enjoyed it, but Celia just lay on the ground and cried, she was not into having her picture taken, she just wanted to eat her weight in goldfish.

Yes indeed in the name of pictures (because that’s where the good light was) I told my children to stand in the road. But I was there too, and this was the back roads of the condo place, so no one came by.

Girls on bikes

Monday, September 3rd, 2012 by Jen

Josie and Celia have taken like wildfire in the last two weeks to their bikes. Josie is going all around, even the narrow sidewalks. Celia is gliding on the balance bike and keeping up with the big kids as best she can. I have some video, but my dad got this one posted and uploaded so I’ll just piggyback on his! We’re still working on Josie using her brakes more and not her feet so much.

 

Storyland on Saturday

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012 by Jen

Saturday morning we got up early, had a quick breakfast and the girls humored me with some pictures outside in the nice light since we couldn’t go to the park till 9am anyway. I’ll show those later with some other pics though. We headed out to he car and go to the park before they even opened the gate! We got into a decently long line, but it moved fast once it was 9am and we were off to the races. Most importantly on Josie’s list was meeting up with Cinderella so we wanted to do that early on in the day so we wouldn’t miss her. We walked up to her castle and got the required meet and greet.

Somehow her castle is extremely dark, with no windows, so its super hot too. Poor girl is taking tons of sips of water and standing in front of a giant fan most of the time, not exactly the best set up for pictures, but it’s what we get!

On the way back from the castle, Josie and Jordi got to ride in Cinderalla’s coach that actually moves! Celia and I got to walk down the hill. Celia was very into the rides herself, loving the carousel.

By this point she had gotten used to the idea that we’d get off one ride and get to go on another, so she didn’t put up too much of a stink every time we switched rides. She was afraid of a lot of the rides though, refusing to get in Cinderella’s coach, or even the flying shoes. She did try the whales and actually she even went on the turtles which is one of the most intense rides in Storyland, but she didn’t want to do that one again. Next year will be a bit more fun as she will be able to go on everything, and maybe she’ll want to do it too.

We were there with the two other families, but our kids had divergent interests so it was tough to stay together. The boys mostly wanted to go on the water rides, and Josie does not enjoy being sprayed in the face with water at all. We all had lunch together and eventually went on this safari ride together, riding in the cage up front! They were all pretty hot and tired by then.

We also did some ‘home-style’ face painting as last years face painting caused many tears as we tried to get it off. It doesn’t look nearly as good as the real thing, but it was fun nevertheless.

This is just a pretty picture I like of Celia from the hot air balloon ride!

We revived in the afternoon with some ice cream. I think Celia’s favorite ride may have been the train. Towards the end of the second day Josie started to get much more brave and went on the biggest roller coaster and the bamboo shoots water splash ride. For the last ride of the day Josie went with me on the water raft ride which has lots of surprise sprays all over and mostly enjoyed it. Celia also enjoyed the ball room which has random vacuums and holes to shove balls into and then it pops them back out later with the push of a button or a timer.

I got to do a lot of the rides with the girls as Jordi has a much lower limit for spinny rides than I do, and they’re mostly spinny since they can’t do gigantic coasters or anything. We stayed until the very end, enjoying some funnel cake too, although neither girl really seemed to like it. We went back to our condo and had tacos together with the whole group for dinner before the kids totally melted down and we put them to bed. The trip home the next day was not fun, they were not good travelers and I think we are greatly considering driving home on Saturday night so we don’t have that trip home with a bunch of fun-hungover kids, if we manage to go at all.

Raspberry season!

Saturday, September 1st, 2012 by Jen

[Apparently this post got lost somewhere along the line and was never published.]

Last week we went raspberry picking, me and the girls, on Wednesday just to have something fun to do. We went to a nearby farm in Winchester, they had lots of berries fairly low and high and some chickens which was enough to fill a good part of our morning. We picked berries for a bit, Josie did a great job keeping hers in the bucket. Celia picked them, dropped it in the bucket, and then picked them all out and ate them a la Blueberries for Sal. We also got to pick the rotten berries, I got to carry that bucket. At the end we gave the rotten berries to the chickens which everyone enjoyed.

Celia obviously loves raspberries, but Josie isn’t such a huge fan and while we didn’t bring home tons, it was more than we’d be able to eat. So I looked up a quick jam recipe and found this one. Easiest thing ever, only two ingredients. The girls enjoyed mashing the berries and eating the results. I even took it a step further and jarred up some of the jelly by boiling them and everything to really seal it. Turns out it wasn’t really necessary as we’ve already eaten through most of it within the week. We’ll have to do this again next summer.