Learning and growing

I think I've talked before about how much fun it is to watch our kids grow and learn in all aspects of their lives, and it's just as exciting for us as they get older and learn more complex ideas and activities.  I wanted to share (and have a personal record) of some of the more fun things that the girls are doing these days.

First Kate ... all summer long she refused to color.  My theory is that she saw how well Anna would color and write (at least in comparison), didn't think she could do as well and thus didn't want to try.  Then sometime in August she decided that she wanted to scribble.  For about a week straight, she would grab a piece of paper and a handful of markers, and proceed to color the entire page.  I think she went through about 50 pieces of paper and used up a whole box of markers that week.  Once she got the strength and control of her little fingers, she's enjoyed doing all kinds of experimentation with letters and also likes to color pictures for others.  Here's a couple of examples of Kate's "work".  In the first one, she did all of the letters on her own except for the "K".  You can tell who's important in her life :)

This card she gave me yesterday.  In her words, it says "Dear Mom, I love you.  You are the very best mom in the world."  :)

Kate is also learning how to skip and is very good at jumping off the couch into a pillow pile :)

She has a very sensitive side, however, when it comes to books or stories in which a character gets left alone.  For example, there was a book Anna brought home from school a few weeks back in which the final picture of the book shows a kitten by itself.  Well, we hadn't even read the book yet, but Kate found it, paged through it, and ended up on her bed in tears because she thought the kitten didn't have any friends.  Then yesterday at story time the librarian showed a short video of a boy  who befriends a dinosaur at a museum.  The two travel around together for the day and then the dinosaur says good-bye to the boy at the end because he has to go back to the museum.  Kate was in tears at that point.  Poor kid :(

Now for Anna.  Since starting school she's really begun experimenting with spelling.  It's been fun to see the kinds of creative ways she uses to spell words.  We've also realized again how crazy the English language is!  One of my favorites is how she spelled Lukas' name ... "Lookis" :)

Anna hasn't come home with a lot of homework (and we are completely comfortable with this for kindergarten), but we've had a lot of fun with the few activities she has had.  The most recent assignment was to come up with a disguise for a turkey that didn't want to get eaten on Thanksgiving.  The first part of the assignment for our household was to really understand the word disguise.  After several examples, both girls will now confidently come up and ask "Do you like my disguise?" with an appropriate disguise.  Anyway, we went through some different ideas of how she could disguise her turkey.  Then Anna suggested dressing him up as the President because "no one would want to eat the president!"  True enough.  Matt and I hesitated slightly simply because the assignment was due the day before the election and we didn't want to give any political impressions to her teacher.  So we told Anna that it would be a great idea, but we'd probably send a note along with the turkey to make sure Mrs. Mosso understood that it was Anna's idea :)

I think that turned Anna off to dressing up her turkey as Barak Obama, so then she suggested disguising it as Aaron Rodgers.  I guided her through how it might work and helped her find pictures on the computer, but the actual idea and work was all her doing.  (Finding our appropriate role when guiding and helping with these assignments is going to be hard, especially when they are fun assignments!)  Not bad, huh?

As for our third child, he's definitely growing, and making his mama more and more tired.  I had another check-up this week and my doctor, thankfully, gave me a prescription for Ambien so that I can at least get a little bit of restful sleep at night.  Last night was the first time I took it and it worked wonders!

Finally, we were able to have a family day this past Friday since Anna didn't have school and Matt still has a few more Fridays off of work.  We headed over to Milwaukee for the day to take Matt to Discovery World.  I checked out a few exhibits, but was mostly able to sit while the girls took Matt all over the museum.  That was probably our last family field trip before Baby Boy arrives so I'm glad we were all able to enjoy it together.

Because of Matt's fall Fridays, he's been able to get virtually everything done to prepare our home and yard for winter.  The garden is completely done and tilled up, the leaves are collected, the firewood is in the house, and all of the other little things that make our home the way it is have also been done.  Hooray!