Learning to adjust

Two weeks into Preschool Lite, and I'm happy to report we're all surviving. Caleb is learning to put up with my efforts to introduce him to the wonders of crafting, Abby is learning to put up with my efforts to help her learn some patience, and I'm learning that sometimes my goals and my kids' strong wills do not mesh well. So we're all learning to adjust to our adventures in home-preschooling.

As promised, I added to our bulletin board the sign that will let Abby know which days are school days. Most other days read "play," and she's becoming very familiar with the words "school" and "play" as she runs to check the bulletin board each morning to see what we'll be up to later. I also added our letter of the week along with some sight words that we'll be reading in her BOB books that week as part of our pre-reading time.

I've picked out a few interesting people from the Bible for us to learn about this year, and this week was about Noah. I figured starting off with the guy who builds a giant floating zoo would be a good way to get Abby interested in learning about some Biblical characters. We read a couple different stories of Noah's Ark and I was pleased to hear Abby recounting the details of the story for Caleb as they played with their Little People Ark during free time.

"The people were very bad," I overheard her telling him, as she acted out the scenes with her plastic animals. "So God told Noah to build a huge boat. Noah obeyed God. And Noah and his family and all the animals got on the boat. And it rained and rained for forty days and forty nights. And then they crashed into a mountain. And all the animals got off the boat, and they saw a beautiful rainbow in the sky."

We also completed a pretty cool Noah's Ark craft for which I've been stashing away popsicle sticks all summer. I'm glad all those banana pops finally paid off. Later, we added Abby's craft to her Bible notebook, which she still thinks is the coolest thing she's ever made. As soon as we were done with craft time, she held up her ark and said, "Put it in my notebook, Mommy!"

I had planned to include a field trip to the zoo this week to go along with all our Noah's Ark talk. So Wednesday we convinced Abby's best friend and her family to join us and we spent the morning outside at the zoo, wondering how in the world Noah put up with that smell for all the time he was stuck on that boat. We fed deer, rode ponies, and got to to pet some bunnies (Caleb's favorite part), then finished up with a picnic lunch, a wagon ride and some quality time in the moon bounce. (By this point, Abby was fairly convinced that preschool might just be the greatest thing ever.) As a bonus, we got a surprise visit from Papa on Thursday, so I postponed our second day of preschool for the week and instead spent a day at the farm with one happy grandpa and two very excited kids.

On Friday it was too nice to be inside, so we took our preschool time outside and did a little crafting and letter a practice. We had prepped for learning to write the lowercase letter a earlier in the week, and Abby was extremely frustrated when her circles didn't look like the ones I showed her. Personally, I thought the little circles she was drawing (or trying to trace) looked great, but she's her own worst critic, and tends to give up when she doesn't accomplish something the way she wants to right away. So she practiced smearing glue onto a letter a I had cut out for her before sprinkling it with sand and black bean "ants," and she practiced drawing the lowercase a in a tray of rice, which proved much more fruitful than her paper-and-crayon attempts.

Later, we took our show on the road and headed to the library for a change of scenery and some more letter practice. Even after we found a cozy little spot all to ourselves next to a window in the children's book section, Abby's must-do-it-right-the-first-time personality won out. After a few minutes of frustration during which she would (a) only attempt to draw a circle with my help, (b) refuse to even try, or (c) draw an only slightly imperfect circle then frantically scribble it out because it wasn't just right, I decided to rethink this whole learning to write our letters thing.

So after retelling the tales of our letter-drawing-induced tantrums for Justin and doing some careful research, we've decided to make one more adjustment to our preschool plan for the year. Beginning next week, we'll be incorporating some Kumon inspiration into our letter learning, beginning with the letters that are easiest to write (straight lines) and moving on to more complicated letters (like that blasted letter a) once the more basic writing skills are established.

**Special thanks to my homeschooling friend Stephanie for pointing me to Raising Rock Stars Preschool, where I first read about this method.

A great source of fiber

I gave her cheerios for breakfast. She insisted she needed bran flakes (which, by the way, both my kids refer to as "chips").

I insisted she needed to finish her cheerios before we would discuss adding more food to her plate.

"But Mommy," she explained, "I need chips."

My inquiring mind wanted to know why.

She turned her plate toward me, knowing an illustration is the best way to drive a point home.

"So this little smiley face can smell," she explained.

Hard to argue with that one.

Precious moments

There are only a few things in his life that Caleb will drop everything for. Food is one. So is his Sharkie. But he also finds time alone with his Daddy and choo-choo trains pretty irresistible. So when those two things combine in the form of story time with Dad while big sister is still napping, you've got a recipe for a picture perfect moment.

I scored this awesome original Thomas the Tank Engine book at our library's used book sale a few months back. It's turned out to be quite a treasure, as the stories and illustrations are fabulous compared to the Thomas books that are printed for kids nowadays. It also fits in nicely with our improved twaddle-free kids library. Since starting preschool with Abby last week (which involved more than doubling the number of books we used to read on some days), I've already noticed an improvement in Caleb's tolerance for "meatier" and less flashy kids' books.

In other news, Caleb made the switch a few weeks ago at the beach from saying "Dada" to "Daddy," and it melts my heart to hear him squeal "Dad-deeeee!" at the top of his lungs any time Justin walks into the room. "Mama" was the next to go, and I'm thrilled to officially be "Mommy" to both my kids now. (It might have something to do with the fact that your face easily turns into a smile when you say a word ends in a "Y" sound. And this kid's got a smile that can light up a room.)

When he's not playing with trains and trucks or following Daddy around the house, Caleb's busy talking up a storm these days. Under his sister's tutelage (read: incessant chatting), his vocabulary is increasing by leaps and bounds, and he's even started forming some basic sentences. ("More milk, please" sounds more like "Muh mick peas." But you get the idea.)

Next on Caleb's agenda: unlearning the awful habits I've let him get into with holding his forks and crayons incorrectly, and teaching this cute little lefty how to hold a utensil the right way. I'm hoping maybe if he could hold onto a fork or spoon properly there might be less careless food slinging in our future. A girl can dream, can't she?

Off to a good start

Considering I had pretty much no idea what I was getting myself into, I'd say Week One of Preschool Lite was a huge success. I've set aside some designated "school time" two days a week and introduced some special "preschool books" that we save for that time in an effort to help Abby understand that we're doing something special. At the end of Day One she asked when we could do preschool again, so I told her we'll make a special sign for her bulletin board that lets her know which days are "school days."

We accomplished exactly what I hoped to accomplish this week during our preschool time. We began reading through some great books from the Sonlight preschool curriculum, including 101 Favorite Stories from the Bible, which includes simple questions at the end of each story to help kids focus on the major points. Abby was frustrated by the questions on Day One, but when we read through two more of the stories on Day Two, she knew what was coming and seemed excited when she knew the right answers at the end.

After reading Crictor, a tale about a green boa constrictor who can wiggle into the shapes of letters and numbers, Abby suggested we play with play doh and make some snakes and letters of our own. While Caleb stamped out sharks, I took the opportunity to review the uppercase alphabet with Abby and was happy to discover she recognized and could sound out every letter.

I tried to incorporate all the fun things that a kid at preschool would enjoy into our preschool time. We had snack time and practiced counting goldfish crackers, and after the kids helped me vacuum up their crumbs, it was time for crafts.

In an effort to help Abby start to understand the basic structure of the Bible (that it's a big book full of lots of little books, and contains tons of different stories that are all part of a bigger story), we're going to spend the year working on her very own Bible notebook. On Day One, she used watercolors to paint a cover for her notebook, and on Day Two I introduced the concept by showing her the notebook I had prepared for her, complete with 66 tabs labeling all the books of the Bible. We reviewed her scripture memory verses from Community Bible Study last year (she still remembered all of them...yay!) and she got to put them in her Bible notebook. This, she told me later, was her favorite activity. I think she likes the giant "button" that opens and closes the three rings of the binder, and the chomping sound it makes when she closes it back. Throughout the year, we'll add worksheets, crafts and memory verses that she does at Community Bible Study or in Sunday School to her notebook so she can start to get a feel for where things happen in the Bible.

We read through a section called "What Happens to Your Food?" in The Usborne Flip-Flap Body Book and I was blown away by just how intrigued Abby was by the concept of the "food tube" and where all the food goes as it travels through her body. We spent a half an hour reading through six pages of everything from which types of food are good for helping you grow, to why we wash germs off our food before we eat it, to the ways our teeth smash our food before it goes down our throats, to how poop is made after the food travels through the large intestine. I learned a lot, and Abby was full of questions the entire time I was reading. Later I gave her some free time to read by herself, and she choose that same book. I couldn't help but smile when I heard her reciting back much of what we had talked about as she turned the pages.
After reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, I let the kids make some cookies of their own. This was the first time I've really let Caleb "help" with a cooking project, so things got a little crazy at times. But Abby enjoyed showing him how to do things like hold down the button on the food processor and roll the dough into balls, and they both enjoyed the part at the end where snack time included fresh baked cookies straight from the oven.
Part of my preschool plan for this year includes teaching Abby to write the letters of the alphabet, so we spent part of our time coloring a worksheet that helped her practice the concept of drawing straight lines and drawing from left to right. And (after I let her simply scribble whatever she wanted for a while) my headstrong daughter, who typically balks at doing anything for the first time that isn't her idea, amazed me once again with her willingness to follow my directions, her patience in letting me show her how to trace the lines, and her excitement when she realized she'd done a great job at it. I had to remind myself not to praise her too much. She tends to get overwhelmed and give up more easily when she realizes we're proud of her, preferring to revel quietly in her own personal success. So I watched silently with pleasure as the smile on her face got bigger and bigger as she traced each of the four lines on the page, realizing that somehow this activity meant something to her, which gives me hope for doing more like it in the future.
In addition to all the coloring, baking, reading and painting, we went on an early morning walk around the neighborhood, played dress up like the Emperor after reading The Emperor's New Clothes, sang songs and talked about what all the "fancy words" in some of Abby's favorite hymns mean, decorated pages with stickers for Daddy's office and figured out how to build a playground for our stuffed animals out of our cool new set of wooden blocks.

So after a few hours of home-preschooling, I'm going to go ahead and admit I love this. The kids had a blast doing all of our preschool activities, and I can already see the benefit of involving Caleb in what we're doing in how his attention span for things like storytime and crafting has increased over the past week. Abby told me she loves preschool and was a little concerned at lunch when I told her we were done for the day. I promised there would be more preschool in her future, and she perked right back up.

An unlikely homeschooler

Abby starts preschool tomorrow. Sort of.

I'm calling it Preschool Lite. Also known as the School of Mommy, Abby's preschool this year will take place under my wing. So I guess you could call it homeschooling, though a homeschooling mom was not something I ever wanted to be.

God has shown me a lot this year. I've learned a great deal about my parenting, my children, my role in my family, humility and what it really means to want and do what's best for my kids. I've come to understand more clearly that making these decisions for our kids and our family is deeply personal, and specific not just to each individual family, but to each child within that family.

Back in January, when all my other mommy friends with kids Abby's age were beginning their preschool research, I jumped on the bandwagon and followed suit. It was a little like applying to college again. I did a tour, I downloaded curriculum plans and yearly goals on their websites, I weighed the pros and cons of a classical versus a more artsy fartsy school.

This was important, I insisted to my patient husband. We had to have our daughter registered by February if we wanted to have any kind of say in the program she would be in. This is the foundation of her formal education, I argued. He nodded, listened as I rattled off all the coolest features of my top choice school, and asked the same question over and over again: "Why does she need to go to preschool?"

Well, I thought, we all went to preschool. All her friends are going to preschool. And besides, there are some really cool things they can do with her at preschool that I'm just not as qualified to do.

What will she learn at preschool, he asked? You already taught her all her letters, he reminded me. You taught her to speak, I'm sure you could teach her to read, he continued. You taught her to count, I'm sure you could teach her some basic math, he insisted. She knows her shapes, her colors...you taught her all that, he went on.

He had a point. But I loved the idea of preschool and everything she would get to experience there. And, to be honest, I was looking forward the idea of a few hours to myself with Caleb a week.

And then, in an instant, everything changed. In the midst of our preschool debate, the excitement of finding out we had a new baby on the way, followed quickly by the devastating news that we had lost that baby, turned my heart and my life upside down. And apparently, that's just the way God needed for me to see things. In the days and weeks that followed the miscarriage, God was my only strength and comfort. And among the many things He showed me in that time of suffering as I drew nearer to Him was that sending my daughter away to school for a few hours a week simply wasn't right for our family, or for her. He gave me a new understanding of just how fleeting my time (and influence) with my children really is, and how valuable that time could be when spent on purposeful parenting.

I argued with my heavenly Father, the same way I had argued with my husband, about why sending Abby to preschool was the right thing to do. But He used the encouraging words of the man I married to show me I could do it myself. And He used the experience of other moms who had made the decision to keep their kids home to show me how I could do it.

So here I am, months later, excited about the prospect of teaching my kids at home, and ready to kick off our first year of Preschool Lite right here under my own roof (and in my own backyard, which is where I intend to spend a lot of our "school time" while the weather is perfect).

She's only three, and has years ahead of her to sit behind a desk. So this year, my goals are to let my kids have fun, to experience and enjoy God's creation as a family, to teach Abby to read, to teach Caleb the alphabet, to memorize some scripture and some classic hymns, and to read, read, read to my children as much as possible. I've got some fun crafts planned that both the kids can participate in. I have a few field trips in mind that I know they'll love. And week one includes baking cookies, which should get things off to a pretty good start.

So here goes homeschooling.

Now there's something I never thought I'd write.

Fancy at the fishing hole

Abby's birthday party day suited our girl perfectly. Abby's one request for her party was that it be fancy, so our morning began at the nail salon for pedicures with her two best friends. (She actually has three, she told me, but I had to explain that Georgia is simply too far away for Neely to be able to join us.) The girls were quite the hit at the salon, sitting mesmerized in their fanciest attire as their tiny toes were painted in hues of pink and purple and dotted with dainty white flowers.

When their polish was dry, we headed home for a little fancy craft time. Because nothing goes better with fancy toe nails than fancy flip flops.

Afterward, we enjoyed a brunch of fancy pink flower-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches (I baked a special loaf of pink bread the night before in preparation for the party), fruit salad, festive pink punch served in a fancy punch bowl, and some super fancy pink cupcakes with sparkley candles and pearlized sprinkles.

To say it was a little girly at our house would be an understatement. Even Caleb seemed to understand how important it was to be fancy for this special occasion.
After unwrapping presents and a great deal of running around, the inevitable sugar crash hit hard and the fun had to come to an end.
A three-hour nap was just what our birthday girl needed to prepare her for the second half of her birthday party day, which was largely planned and executed by the man in her life. And so, sliding her perfectly manicured toes into her sparkley flip flops, she followed her dad down to the lake, armed with a tub of worms and a glittery pink fishing pole. She was sorely disappointed when she realized we would not be bringing her catch home for dinner that night. But I think all the stomping around in the muddy creek and crawfish catching helped her get over it.

It was a very good day.

Three glittery candles

I did it again.

I blinked.

And in that instant, my little girl turned three.

It didn't hit me until we woke up this morning. The alarm went off at 6, just three years and 12 minutes after Abby made her big debut. I leaned over and whispered to Justin, "We have a three year old..."

"I know," came the groggy reply. "Crazy, isn't it?"

"Ya know what's crazier?" I asked. "In ten years, we'll wake up and say 'We have a 13 year old.'"

As soon as the words were out of my mouth I regretted them. I'm trying not to think too much about how she's growing and learning and getting more independent every day. I'm trying to cherish these moments, and my daughter, and remind myself that my job with her is to put myself out of work one day. And so I'll continue to pray daily for the strength and perseverance it takes to keep up with this rambunctious, exuberant, adorable child that God has given us, and that He'll use my feeble attempts at parenting to reach her heart and mind with the truths of His word.

At three, she's turning into exactly the ball of fire we thought she'd be. She's got a mind of her own, and the vocabulary to tell you all about what's in it. From sun up to sun down, she's talking, exploring, learning, climbing, talking, creating, wondering, asking, following, talking, helping, leading, playing, and soaking in the world around her. Thankfully, for three hours each afternoon, she'll still rest in her bed, though I have my doubts about how much of that time is spent actually napping.

She's mostly obedient, extremely helpful, highly observant, generally impatient, kind to her brother, and still just as un-cuddly as ever. (Except for bedtime, when the urge to snuggle suddenly strikes with a vengeance. She knows I'm a sucker for cuddling, and I'm more than happy to cave in to her manipulation each night. We've compromised at singing three rounds of "Jesus Loves Me" together as I curl up next to her, being ever-so-careful not to touch her blankie. That's a no-no.)

She's excited and curious about the arrival of her new little brother and my expanding middle. Most of her quiet playtime in her room is spent babying her stuffed animals, tucking them into her bed and singing them lullabies. Some of my favorite pregnancy-related questions include:

• "Can I sit on your laps, mommy?" (that's laps, with an S...)
• "What's that big bump called?" ("It's called a womb, Abby. It's a special place for the baby to grow inside mommy." She looks puzzled, then lifts her shirt to check out her belly: "Do I have a womb?")
• "When the baby comes out, can I share my pretzels with him?"

She's recently become a big fan of Beatrix Potter and the Peter Rabbit tales, and often interjects phrases from the books into her everyday conversation. "Let's hurry and go to the park, Mommy. Lippity, lippity, not too fast!" she told me one day. And later, while playing chase with Caleb around the furniture in the living room, "I'm running all about the room!" I also blame Beatrix Potter for the addition of words like particular, perhaps, suddenly and puzzled to her vocabulary. More than one person has told me that my daughter talks like an elderly British woman.

At three, she can write her first name, count to thirty, set the table with supervision, dress herself, and leap tall towers of Mega Blocks in a single bound. She loves to pretend, play dress up, and help me in the kitchen. She's a budding teacher, and spends a lot of time correcting Caleb's speech and trying to teach him new words and skills. She likes to get things right the first time, and two of our biggest challenges right now are in teaching her to fail gracefully and to ask for help when she's frustrated with a task. She knows her left from her right and has asked me to put an "L" and an "R" in each of her shoes so that she can put them on the correct feet by herself.

She loves to play in the dirt, and she loves anything with glitter on it. She'll drive trains and trucks with her brother for hours, then insist he come upstairs and play dress-up with her. She still loves to pore through her books and delights in storytime. She has an amazing memory and excellent pitch, and listening to her sing old hymns like "Nothing But the Blood" and "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is impressive, indeed.

I'm enthralled by her (in case you couldn't tell). So it stands to reason that I wanted her birthday to be absolutely delightful for her. She has, after all, been looking forward to it since March. So on her special day, her dad and I did what we could to make things as celebratory as possible. The birthday breakfast date with Daddy at Starbucks, the morning at the park with her best friends, the lunch at her favorite pizza place, the made-to-order rotini dinner, the girly pink cake with chocolate chips and sprinkles, and the birthday bubble bath were our way of trying to make the day memorable for our big girl.

Happy Birthday, Abby. We love you more than you can imagine.

Twice the manpower

It's amazing how much longer it takes to cut the grass when Daddy has a little helper. But it sure does drive the cuteness factor up.

I'll give you one guess as to who this kid's favorite parent is. (Hint: when was the last time you saw a picture of him helping mommy clean up breakfast?)

Biggest sandbox ever

Our week at the beach could not have been more perfect. The kids were more than a little excited to have a giant sandbox at their disposal all day, every day, for an entire week. They built drip castles, drove trucks, constructed roads and tunnels, and ran until they ran out of energy. And when they tired of the sand, there was that great big ocean full of waves and sea shells and more water than they'd ever seen before.

Caleb was positively giddy with the comings and goings of the waves. He'd stand at the water line and chase the foamy edges of the waves up onto the shore and back in the ocean for what seemed like forever. And once he worked up the nerve to go in up to his waist, there was no going back. He'd stand there staring out into the deep blue sea yelling, "Whoa! Wa-wer!" and bracing whenever a wave would crash around him. His weight and girth worked to his advantage, and only once or twice was he knocked back by a wave that proved stronger than him.

Abby was her typical crazy self, plunging into the ocean with gusto and running out until she was up to her armpits in sea water. I can't count how many times I had to yell for her to "Come back! It's too deep," only to have her turn and yell back, "Why is it too deep, Mommy?" She loved riding the waves in on the little blow up boat we bought her, and only got scared when she was pitched into the ocean by a particularly violent wave and had to be plucked out by her feet.

We spent the week with dear friends, and the kids loved having playmates around. We brought home a box full of sea shells, over 1000 pictures and quite a bit of sand in our shoes.

I've already started counting down until next year.

Underwater adventures

I'll admit, it's an unlikely attachment. But my 18-month-old has such an affinity for sharks that sharing the joys of Shark Week with him was sort of a no-brainer. So there we were each afternoon during this, the greatest week of the year to watch television, seated at the bar in the kitchen, watching Air Jaws and the like on the Discovery Channel online.

I think Shark Week just became Caleb's new favorite holiday.