the morning

6:25 wake up to the sound of Emily fussing.
6:30 get up and nurse Emily
6:40 greet a groggy Claire as she stumbles out of her room
7:05 wake up Mark
7:10 make whole wheat oatmeal pancakes and eat them. Emily has just come to love pancakes and can't get enough of them quick enough and was also impatient to help make the batter.
8:00 Claire hops into the shower with her daddy
8:05 apply lotion to Claire and help her get her slightly damp body into her clothes.
8:10 costume change for Claire from green princess dress and leggings into a flowered swim suit.
8:30 Claire adds rain boots and a sweatshirt to her costume so we can go outside and see daddy off. We stay outside and play freeze tag, run races, throw the ball and pick a bouquet of lavender geraniums.
9:10 we come in and put the flowers in a vase and the girls look at books in Claire's room while I put the cats out and make myself a cup of coffee and blog.

(The photos are from the Saturday after Easter when we went to spend the day at Crystal Cove (between Newport and Laguna) I originally wanted to spend the weekend but I didn't book a cabin soon enough.)

woes

Well, we had a week of Claire being sick followed by a week of me being sick followed by a week of me not feeling like blogging. I can't get flickr to upload photos which
I've been trying off and on for the past week or so to do. I can't remember how to access our desktop computer from this laptop which is running some version of Linux called Ubuntu. Whatever flavor of Linux we had before, I liked better.
The girls are well Claire is at art class and Emily is napping so it's time to tackle sorting papers on the dining room table.

Easter Monday

Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. We are enjoying the Pascal season.

Science day. Today for preschool we read about tapirs and gorillas and talked about what they eat. We did a project from bathtub science and learned about cohesion "water is sticky." We also did our Spanish rhymes and counting and quiet time. We poked holes in the cup watered the carrot seeds she planted at the zoo.

We are most of the way through the first Laura Ingalls Wilder book. Claire loves it. It is doing wonders for her attention span. She listens so quietly. Thank you Katie for the suggestion.

pretend-o-bo

Jen: What do you like to pretend?
Claire: I like to pretend that my name is Charlie. (pause) Tell me a story about Charlie when he was a little boy.
Jen: Charlie liked to swim. He loved to dive to the bottom of the pond with no goggles to look for smooth stones. He would grab them and take them to shore and skip them across the pond.
Claire: Tell me the story about Charlie and the wolf.

Yesterday Emily said, "This is Mama's book." and, "That is my shoe." It is so fun and amazing to observe a child acquiring language.

pre-school activities

Emily's communications are getting more and more sophisticated. It is not uncommon for her to use 3 word phrases and she has been known to mimic 4 word sentences. The two word sentence is the most common ie: Sissy sad. Dolly sleeping. More bread. Mommy back (which means come back). Daddy work. Emily happy. Mommy dress. Big shoes. She and Claire have been playing together more and more lately. Claire likes to quiz her and tells her, "Say doctor, say spider, say monkey..." Emily is only too happy to repeat the requested words. Lately Claire has been heard to say to Emily, "Emily do you want to do couch time with sissy?" "Do you want to go swimming with sissy?"

Pre-school activities have mostly consisted of learning Spanish rhymes and numbers while jumping on the ball as well as counting by twos in English and working on counting 14-20 one of which always gets skipped. We also do an alphabet song in which she supplies a word beginning with each letter of the alphabet and we do rhyming. In addition we do dexterity work like sewing kits, puzzles, drawing with markers and chalk, or other craft projects. We also do a couple baking sessions--- She has recently become much more competent at stirring dough and she likes to name each of the ingredients when I ask her what I should get out in order to make muffins or scones. We sometimes do a card game or board game too. She is getting much better at taking turns, but sometimes dilly dallies when it is her turn We check out library books and read from our own collection including Bible stories and her Ladybug and High Five magazines. We also have a digital clock made from card stock which we talk about and she likes to manipulate the dials and aks waht time it is. We try to go to play group two days a week but she still doesn't play with the other kids very much. I think part of it is that she doesn't have the mental picture for some of the things they pretend since she doesn't watch TV. Friday they were pretending to be pegasus and unicorns or sometimes it's some specific Disney princess etc. At other times she is more interested in checking out their toys than playing with the kids. (Maybe we should start reading fairy tales.) The one thing we try to do 5 days a week is have a 45 minute quiet time while Emily is napping.
This makes it sound like we do a lot but we cover this in a two week time period.

We have had to change our rain gear for swim wear this week. I moved the inflateable pool outside and filled it with water after seeing that yesterday would turn into the third 80-90 degree day in a row. The girls had a blast splashing around yesterday. They had their swim shirts on and sunscreen but Claire got a little pink on her arm and it became itchy. After spending some time in the shade eating popsicles playing in the sand box and the bean box the pool was in shade and the went back to splashing. We finished up with an oatmeal bath and early to bed.

Today Claire is at the zoo with Linda. I took a nap when Emily napped. Then I got a few chores done. When Emily awoke, we dressed a bunch of dollies and stuffed toys. Right now she is collecting small items from various rooms and putting them into a Christmasy gift bag.

I am trying to teach Emily how to sit quietly and how to whisper. I wish I had started this sooner. Church has suddenly become increasingly difficult. Emily wants to be constantly talking and/or moving. Claire thinks she can be noisy because Emily is noisy. I think Mark and I are going to try the divide and conquer technique. Each of us sits with one of them in separate pews. Any other tips?