Fear factor

So maybe Caleb was a little intimidating. I mean, if a two foot tall shark walked up to your front door and demanded candy, wouldn't you be a wee bit frightened?

But mostly, the kiddos yet again managed to pull off really stinkin' adorable. Caleb did his part by marching around with his little beach bucket singing "baby sharkie, dooo dooo, dooo dooo..." ad nauseum. He even got the hang of saying "thank you" when the neighbors dropped stuff in his bucket. I love this kid.

Abby's Raggedy Ann ensemble came courtesy of my mom, who has been hanging on to the thing since I wore it for Halloween 25 years ago. She loved her bright red cheeks and nose, and simply adored the sparkley red wig, much to my surprise. Raggedy Abby was a big hit around the neighborhood, and didn't wander into anyone's house this year, which is an improvement over last year. She screamed "Happy Halloween!" at every neighbor who opened their door, and made sure to grab candy for Caleb when he couldn't make it up the steps in time.

The kids wasted no time dumping out and inspecting their loot when we got home, although I insisted they wait until a more opportune time (read: not right before bed) to start sampling. A few minutes later I caught Abby red-handed, sitting alone in the dark playroom licking a small sliver of a blow pop she had peeled the wrapper away from. She had a tiny meltdown when I took it away, insisting that she should have it back because her tongue needed more food.

Caleb took advantage of the fact that I was distracted to beg some Sweet Tarts off his dad. I'm pretty sure he only succeeded because Justin knew he wouldn't be able to tell his sister.

Well played, kiddos.

Bare necessities

Things you don't need in order to enjoy college game day:

• a big screen TV
• a comfy couch
• a decent sound system

Why go to all that trouble when you have three computer monitors, a makeshift TV antenna in the attic, espn3.com, and a comfy camping chair?

Once we factored in the picture-in-picture option, we were, at one point, watching four football games, one soccer match, and putting the finishing touches on little Jacob's birth announcements simultaneously.

We even broke our no-snacks-in-the-office rule. Turns out this not having TV stuff isn't that bad after all.

That's what it's all about

I'll admit it....the office supply-loving, should-have-been-a-teacher side of me really loves this home preschool stuff. I love opening up my big three-ring notebook and planning our preschool days. I love my spreadsheets of sight words and craft ideas and memory verses. And I love reminding myself why I'm doing this: to spend time with my kids, to pour into them in ways that someone other than their parents simply can't, to teach them how to think and not what to think, and to make sure they get to enjoy this stage of life as much as possible.

And with that in mind, we read a bunch of stories about the changing of seasons and then headed outside to do what these kids do best. They explored, they observed, they asked questions, and they took turns leading the way on our favorite nature trail, completely overwhelmed by how much it has changed since the last time we were there. Caleb is quickly turning into my more adventurous one, or perhaps Abby was just moving more slowly because she was taking it all in. But while her brother forged ahead, I had the opportunity give her little mind a framework for understanding the world around her as we talked about the creative God that made all these colors, all these leaves, all these trees, and every funny sounding bird or bug that passed us by. She pointed out how beautiful everything was, and I reminded her that the same God who made all these things made her as well.

"And you are one of the best things God made," I told her, for perhaps the billionth time. Because it's true. And when this year of preschool is over, it won't matter if she can write her name or read a simple story. If she understands a little bit more about the character of God and how deeply He loves her, I'll know I've done my job.

Since their love of being outside ranks as high as their love of crafts, and since I had planned a particularly messy one this week, we took our alphabet craft to the backyard this week and created these awesome letter f's out of feathers that I stocked up on during an overzealous moment at the craft store last year. True to form, Abby was meticulous about color choice and feather placement, while Caleb was content to smear glue as far as he could get away with and then drop handfuls of feathers from great heights for maximum speed and coverage.
Caleb's been counting to two lately, usually when we're on the road and he sees "one, two busses!" or "one, two big big trucks!" go by. He spots pairs in the unlikeliest of places, pointing out two helicopters flying overhead as easily as two pieces of fuzz on his socks. So I figured I'd capitalize on his fascination with vehicles and see if I could turn it into teaching him to count to three, and identify and verbalize some colors and shapes as well. I printed up these little dump trucks in three different colors, then tasked Justin with cutting out matching shapes for each. The hard work paid off. Caleb (and Abby, for that matter) loved his truck game and happily matched the shapes to their appropriate colored trucks. We worked on counting to three out loud as he would put shapes on top of the trucks, and something apparently stuck. Later, Justin told me Caleb correctly counted "one, two, three ducks" that they were looking at together.
We managed to squeeze in an impromptu lesson on proper espresso-making techniques, and coupled it with a lesson on serving others as I walked Abby through the steps necessary for preparing and delivering a delicious Caffè Americano for her dad, and a yummy mocha for her mom. I find that being properly caffeinated seriously improves my mothering.
And because I didn't want to let all those pumpkin seeds from our three tiny pumpkins go to waste, and because I wanted to do one more craft, and because it's been forever since I let the kids paint, we spent a lot of time working on this little project that involved painting way too many tiny pumpkin seeds orange.
Thankfully I'd had the foresight to enlist Justin's help in preparing some orange seeds the night before. The kids slopped so much paint on theirs that there's no way they would have been dry in time for us to do the second part of this cool craft, which required them to affix those tiny orange seeds to a pumpkin drawn on a piece of paper and drenched in glue.
Week seven at the School of Mommy got an A+ in their book, and in mine. Have I mentioned how much I love my job?

Waitin' on Jacob: Week 38

38 week summary:

Still 140 pounds.

Still 41 inches around.

Fatigued. Sore. And still not in labor.

Overall disposition: generally grumpy

If your belly kept bumping into things and you hadn't seen your toes in a while, you'd feel the same way.

Also, the "What'd you do, swallow a pumpkin?" joke is not funny. Just in case you were wondering.

Something for everyone

It was a fun-filled week six here at the School of Mommy, and I continue to be amazed by this whole Preschool Lite thing. I'm amazed that after six weeks, we're still going strong. I'm amazed that I manage to find time to plan and prepare for our preschool days. I'm amazed at how much the kids enjoy it. I'm amazed at how much they're learning and growing, right before my very eyes. And I'm amazed that I have the privilege to do this with them.

I'm also amazed at moments like this, when I have time to sit back and watch my kids doing something they love together, coloring without realizing they're learning at the same time, peacefully sharing crayons and carrying on toddler conversations about what they're working on.

Abby: What are you coloring, Caleb?

Caleb: Trucks!

Abby: That's not a truck...that's a letter J, Caleb.

Caleb: Gween (green) J, Abby.

Abby: Yeah, Caleb, that's a green J. I'm drawing a red J.

I think I might have a future teacher on my hands here.
And while I still can't figure out what it is about this teddy bear game that they love so much, I'm just going to take advantage of it and do my best to figure out ways to make our teddy bear game time a learning opportunity as well. This week I worked with Caleb on making matches and naming colors, which he did great at. He can't name a lot of colors yet, but he consistently found the right bear when I asked for a specific color. His vocal skills have grown by leaps and bounds over the past few weeks, and we're finding it easier and easier to communicate and even carry on simple conversations with him. These usually center around his favorite topics, which include sharks, trucks, trains, snacks, and lately, his cast.

Continuing on with our letter writing exercises, we introduced the letter j this week and reviewed the other letters we've worked on so far. Abby loves to practice writing her letters in the car on her Magna Doodle, and her diligence is definitely paying off. Her sight words are still a big hit, and I can see her getting gradually more interested in what things say and more excited when she recognizes a word that she knows. I put a few of her sight words up on our bulletin board, including some that she reads quite confidently and a few that she's been struggling with. By the end of the week, she could point to and tell me what each word said when asked. She's finally over her fear of the letter b, and loves to write her name, especially on the pictures that she draws and colors for Daddy to keep in his office.

But the highlight of our week was a field trip that I've been planning for some time. We see this trolley driving all over town, and Caleb goes nuts every time he spots it, pointing and yelling "choo-choo!" at the top of his lungs until it's out of sight. So this week we incorporated a bunch of stories about trains into our reading time, and on Friday I called up a friend and surprised the kids with a 45-minute ride on public transit. Abby spent the first five minutes of our ride yelling "This is so fun, Mommy!" in what was definitely not her inside voice, and Caleb just couldn't stop staring out the window and chanting, "Big big big big choo-choo! Big choo-choo train, Mommy!" Both kids were devastated when our ride came to an end, and I'm sure the other passengers were entertained by the pregnant lady pulling a whimpering 3-year-old and a 1-year-old in a cast off the trolley. It took a solid three minutes after the thing pulled away for me to convince the kids our field trip was really over. I only managed to coax them away from the bus stop by promising we'd do it again some time.

Stuntman

Apparently someone forgot to tell Spike he has two broken bones in his arm. There's no stopping this kid. Our little southpaw has overcome his lack of left-handedness with ease and is perfectly content to eat, color, build and drive tiny vehicles with his right hand. He's also learned to use his big blue cast as a pivot point to help him up onto the furniture, and as a sort of bulldozer to sling toys out of the way when he's playing on the floor.

We have a fuzzy sock I've altered to fit over his fingers that he wears during meal times to keep the cast clean (and to prevent him from shoving food down inside of it). He calls it his "cast blankie" (which I happen to think is adorable to hear him say) and refuses to eat without it. At night time, the poor guy is forced to sleep with one of his sister's thick pink legwarmers over his arm to keep him from scratching himself during his sleep with the cast and to thwart the appearance of big blue dents on the inside of the crib or the wall next to his bed.

Caleb's gotten so used to his amended appendage that he often forgets the cast is even there. This is dangerous when he (a) runs toward you full speed for a snuggle pounce/bear hug or (b) angrily flaps his arms when his sister takes something from him. Being struck with the casted arm of a 21-month-old is a little like being hit in the face with a brick.

In honor of his first skydiving experience, and at his Papa's urging, I purchased this "I do my own stunts" shirt for him featuring a picture of Stickman flying off of a motorcycle. He loves it, and regularly asks for his "bike shirt, peas [please], Mommy" when we get dressed in the morning.

I bought it a little too big. The way things are going, I figure we might need it again before he grows out of 3T.

The simple things in life

Dear Santa,

We don't really need any more toys. The trucks and blocks in all those toy catalogs we've been getting are fun to look at, but we really only want one thing this Christmas.

When you're done with all those boxes that those toys have to be packed in, can you drop them down our chimney, please? 'Cause really, we could play in a cardboard box for hours and never get bored.

Mom and Dad are totally cool with this idea.

Sincerely,

The kids

Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride

What better way to spend your first full day in a cast than going down enormous hay slides and running around like a crazy man at the local pumpkin festival with Papa?

This is one tough kid. He's not letting two broken bones slow him down one bit.

Parkour

Dear Caleb,

Here's an idea. Next time I put you in your crib and tell you night-night, how about you don't climb out and leap over the side? How about you snuggle up with your Sharkie and your blankie and get a good night's sleep, just like you have every night for the past 21 months?

Because when you leap out like you did Monday night, crazy things can happen. You could get rushed to the pediatrician and have your shoulder x-rayed. We could think everything's fine, pump you full of ibuprofen, and move on with life. Two days later, when you're still refusing to use your left arm for anything, we could rush to the orthopedist for more x-rays. He might tell us something crazy, like both bones in your arm are broken. They might put you in a bright blue cast up to your bicep. You might scream. A lot.

But hey, if you're not going to heed my advice, at least work on your timing. Because wondering whether or not I'll be in labor the day you're supposed to get your cast off in three weeks is stressing me out a little.

In the meantime, I'll help you come up with a good cover story so you'll have something to tell the other kids while they're autographing your cast. Maybe we'll tell them it was a skydiving accident. That's not so far off from the truth now, is it?

Sincerely,

Your mom

PS - Thanks for teaching me what being a mom of boys feels like.

Waitin' on Jacob: Week 36

Last time I weighed in at 140 pounds and boasted a 41-inch girth, I was just days away from delivering a baby. According to my doctor, I've still got about four weeks of cook time left on this current bun in the oven, so I'm thinking I shouldn't get my hopes up.

Jacob and I are still packing on the pounds and waiting for the big day to arrive. I'm hoping for a good chunky 8.5-pounder. If he comes out fat and happy I won't feel so bad about all the discomfort I've had to endure of late as he adds things like compressing my spine, making my legs go numb, kicking me in the ribs (that one hurt), and causing me to outgrow my maternity clothes to his list of favorite activities.

In other news, I finally finished the kids' big/little sibling t-shirts for that classic family photo we'll attempt in the hospital. Since this third child of ours isn't getting a room or a crib of his own anytime soon, this is pretty much the extent of my nesting. So the completion of this t-shirt project means we're officially ready for little Jacob's arrival. Who needs a place to sleep when you've got a cool custom t-shirt?

You can take the kids out of the South...

We're not sure why, but things tend to get a little rednecky in our family whenever I find myself really knocked up. ("Really knocked up" is the official redneck term for any pregnancy greater than 32 weeks or so.)

Abby and Caleb have both had the benefit of front row seats in utero for the official Fisher Family BB Gun Backyard Marksmanship Competition, and Jacob has participated in his fair share of barefoot fishing in the creek near our house or in Nana and G-Daddy's cove.

But I think we may have outdone ourselves this time. We're not sure what the neighbors think of Justin's homemade squirrel trap or the catch-and-release going on in our backyard, but we also don't care. Hopefully they're just rolling their eyes and reminding themselves that we're that family from Georgia.

The kids are loving it, and that's what counts.

Hard work pays off

It was a big week here at the School of Mommy. We continued work on our sight words, which produced a huge payoff by the end of the week (more on that at the end), we played our little hearts out outside because the weather has been absolutely perfect, we introduced some counting and number recognition activities that were a big hit with both kiddos, and because it was cooking week here at Preschool Lite, we baked our first pumpkin pie of the season.

I've tried to loosely structure our weekly activities around some things that I want my kids to grow to appreciate, including cooking (I supervise while they measure, scoop and mix), field trips (they get to help with packing and planning), nature (nature walks, outdoor scavenger hunts, etc.), and hospitality (cooking meals for other people, bringing homemade gifts to Sunday School/CBS teachers). Daddy did his part to show the kids just how important cooking is by eating as much of this pie as possible.
I made some flash cards and worksheets for Abby to start fine tuning her counting skills and number recognition. I totally underestimated how long counting cheerios out on a piece of cardstock could keep her occupied, but she absolutely loved this activity. My plan is to transition the use of these little counting cards into some basic math concepts later on (adding the cheerios on the number 2 card to the cheerios on the number 1 card to see if they fit on the number 3 card, for example). For now, we're just counting and playing with the cards. Abby gets pretty antagonistic if she catches on to the fact that you're trying to teach her something, so I'm hoping that if we play with these long enough, I can make her think the upcoming math games are her idea. Shhhh....don't tell.
Even Caleb loved my little worksheets. He enjoyed filling in all the circles, cramming all ten cheerios into his mouth, then showing me the blank page and requesting "More chee-wos, Mommy!"
And, as is our standard practice when the weather is pleasant, we headed into the backyard. Having only one of these little ride-in cars provided the perfect environment for a productive lesson on sharing, turn-taking and kindness. Abby sang her memory verse song "Be Kind to Each Other" for me, but has changed the words to "Be kind to your brother..." because apparently that's what comes out of my mouth all the time.
We added some more sight words to our repertoire this week. It was letter i week, so we worked on reading the words is, it, in, and I. Abby was getting really good at recognizing and sounding out the word is in particular by the end of the week. She has long recognized her name, so I spent some time on Friday (while we were waiting on our appetizer at our favorite pizza place) reviewing her t words from last week, and then put together a simple sentence for her to see what would happen. To my delight, my little girl read her first sentence this week: Abby is three. She's "read along" with books in the past that she has memorized (not so much reading as repetition), but this marked the first time I've shown her a random combination of words and asked her to read it. I'll admit, there have been times over the last five weeks that I've had my doubts about my reading goals for her this year, but this big milestone was just the encouragement I needed.

Don't laugh. I know I'm not the only mom out there that thinks her three-year-old is a genius. It's just that I have the YouTube video to prove it.

Moving pictures

Abby started gymnastics three weeks ago, and this is the best picture I have of her participation. Because you know what's hard to get a picture of? A three-year-old doing gymnastics. Unless, of course, you're using a video camera.

As is the trend with most of her activities, Abby is again the tallest and youngest in her 3-5-year-old class at the gym. I had to gently remind the teachers that she just turned three, since they seem to throw her in with the 5-year-olds for many of the activities. Unfortunately, her 3-year-old brain doesn't respond to their commands as quickly as those of her kindergarten classmates, which was causing a wee bit of frustration for my little perfectionist.

So far the tumbling, jumping, climbing, swinging and bouncing are a huge hit. Ballet was great, but gymnastics is right up her alley. It seems standing in a line and twirling doesn't hold a candle to jumping on a trampoline or leaping into the giant pit of foam. Go figure.

Special thanks to her dear friend Neely for the adorable leotards. Those suckers aren't cheap.

Self-portrait

Our budding artist likes to entertain herself with this cheap Magna Doodle whenever we're in the car. She's turned out a number of masterpieces, each of which gets erased as soon as everyone in the vehicle has had a chance to admire it and tell her just how talented she is.

This morning, she drew us a little Abby with a bow in her hair, grinning from ear to ear. Or in this case, armpit to armpit.

Full of surprises

Have I mentioned that my kids love crafts? I started getting crafty with Abby when she was two months shy of her second birthday. Caleb's been indoctrinated a little earlier, and I'm pleasantly amazed at his growing affection for glue and construction paper. It sure makes the crafting portion of our preschool days a lot more fun when both kids will join in. I wasn't sure how that would go when we got started, but Caleb's proved a willing participant. I may need to pace myself....we're running out of room on our craft wall now that we're turning out double the projects each week. And on that note, special thanks to the chick at No Time For Flashcards for inspiring this week's letter t craft for my choo-choo-loving little man and his sister (and to Michael's, for having these super cool Thomas the Tank Engine alphabet stickers in stock).
We started working in our Kumon lowercase letter workbook this week. I honestly wondered, when I placed my order, if it wasn't going to be a little gimmicky. But it was only six bucks, so I decided to give it a chance. The letter-writing methods in the workbook seem so obvious and simple, and Abby absolutely loves doing her letter worksheets now. This is a huge change from the borderline tantrums I was dealing with when we first started. Whatever the gimmick is, it's working on my 3-year-old, and I'm not complaining. She's intense and meticulous when she's trying to write her letters now, and I'm learning not to interrupt or encourage her while she's concentrating. She's a self-motivator, and my praise only seems to get in the way. Since Caleb will still let me talk to him when he's coloring, I printed out some alphabet coloring pages that he can scribble on during our coloring/letter-learning time, though I'll admit he prefers his coloring book full of pictures of cars and trucks. I don't blame him.
My preschool package from Sonlight came with this teddy bear matching game, and I wasn't really sure what to do with it. So this week I just gave the kids some pieces and a little bit of direction to see if maybe they had better ideas than me. Turns out, they do. Abby invented her own memory game with four pairs of bears, and even thought to distract Caleb from stealing them by giving him his own matching set of bears to play with. When Caleb started hiding his bears in the living room, Abby decided hide-and-seek was a great idea, so she handed over the remainder of her precious bears for Caleb to hide, then together they went back and found all of them. (And, at my urging, made some matches. So there...I helped.) Now Abby regularly asks to play her teddy bear game, and I've had to hide the box to keep them from taking it out all the time and losing the pieces everywhere.
We're continuing to work on our sight words, which is going really well. Abby had familiarized herself with her four new words by the end of the week, and even picks them out in books now as we read together. She hates the pressure of being asked to identify a word though, so I have to get creative with how I "quiz" her to see which ones she knows. We also introduced some basic math concepts this week and did some simple addition/subtraction exercises involving balls of cookie dough and goldfish. She seemed pretty excited about the whole addition thing, but when I started taking cookies away, she made it clear subtraction was not her favorite part of math time.In summary, our fourth week of Preschool Lite was full of pleasant surprises. I'm still constantly surprised by how much I love this process, and how much my kids enjoy it. I'm surprised at how much this little girl is capable of figuring out and achieving. And I'm surprised at how time flies on our preschool days, and how sad the kids are when we pack up our supplies until next time. The best compliment came Thursday night, as I was tucking Abby in. I told her to get some good rest so that we could do something fun when she woke up.

"Are we going to do preschool tomorrow?" she asked excitedly. Good to know she's having as much fun as I am.