A Sentence Only a Mother Could Love

The girls have been pre-reading for a very long time.  Of course I'm speaking in mommy terms...I'm not educated in the science of teaching reading...but that's how I would best describe their skill set.  

They've known all their letters since they were just more than two, and it wasn't very long after that they learned the sounds all the letters make.

They have been able to write their letters since they were just more than three, and they love-love-love to ask how to spell words so they can write them down.

They have memorized a decent list of how to spell certain words, including their names, the names of our immediate family and our cats, and a handful of other words that are important to them, like love and cat and pizza.  [That they know how to spell pizza cracks me up.]

If they ask how to spell something, I can sound it out very carefully, and they can write it down with a decent degree of accuracy.

The girls have a lot of fun with all these skills, and I've continued to let them lead their learning.  Of course I am anxious for them to fully learn to read...but I hope it's just a matter of time.

This week I was so very surprised when B came to show me the note she wrote.  The girls had been playing with Post-It notes for quite a while, writing little notes back and forth to each other and to me.  Most of them said something like, "[Baby A] loves Mommy so much!" or "[Baby B] and [Baby A] love Sasha."

At first I thought B had just scribbled a bunch of letters...until she read it to me.  It says, "I am only available between two to twelve."

I'd been on the phone for a while that morning, trying to schedule a service appointment for our microwave.  She'd heard me say that I would be available after two, so that's what drove the content of the note, I'm sure.

I most love the spelling of "available" as EVEBUL.  I thought that was pretty good!!!

This may just be chicken scratch to the average person, but to this mama, this is a pretty amazing sentence.

SUPER Stuff on a Sunday!

So much silly, SUPER stuff at our house this week!

1)      Baby A came running up to me: “Mommy!  ‘Gulp’ has four letters!”  The girls are on the verge of sounding out words, and I thought that was pretty awesome!

2)      One sweet little memory I don’t want to forget is how excited the girls get to watch the chickens cooking on the rotisserie when we go to Sam’s.  They’ll stand there and wave, “Hey, chickens!”  Hahaha!

3)      At Sam’s, they have most of their prices displayed in really big signs (at least in comparison to regular grocery stores).  Baby A read almost every sign to me…correctly!  “Mommy, that costs fifteen dollars and eighty-seven cents!  Mommy, that costs five dollars and twenty-four cents!”  She solicited quite a few laughs from people shopping near us.

4)      On Wednesday, we’d planned to meet a friend at the park.  She had to reschedule, but the girls and I went ahead with a hike, a little bit of play time, and then a picnic lunch.  It was so incredibly pleasant, and it just made this mama’s heart smile!  The girls were full of pep on the 1.25-mile hike, even up the hills!  They played nicely for a few minutes on the playground, and didn’t protest or drag their feet when it was time to leave the playground.  We found a nice picnic table for our lunch.  I opened their containers, and they ate every morsel, with no spills and no requests for help.  WOW!

5)      On Friday morning the girls and I went to Panera for a mid-morning snack.  We’d been in the habit of doing that last school year, before doing our weekly grocery shopping, but we haven’t done it much over the last few months.  It was so nice to be back in familiar surroundings with my babies!

6)      We hadn’t been out for breakfast in a while, either, so we hit our favorite country-cooking restaurant on Saturday.  The girls ate French toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and they didn’t leave a morsel on their plates!

7)      When we got home from breakfast, we decided on a family walk in the neighborhood.  The girls asked to go in their jogging stroller.  :)  Daddy and I took turns pushing them, and it was such a sweet throw-back to when they were smaller.  In fact, it was almost exactly four years ago we got that stroller…it’s served us well!

8)      On Saturday we needed to be at the new house to accept delivery on some appliances.  The house was cleaned a couple of days ago, so for the first time we got to relax a bit.  I took one of the girls’ storybooks, and we made official use of the reading room.  I loved seeing them lounging on the carpet, taking it all in!

My dream WINDOW SEAT is behind the girls!

9)      One morning I told B that she was a funny girl. "Yes," she said, "the funniest I've ever seen." She's humble, too.

10) And I overheard the girls playing…B said to A, "Sissy, do you want to go on a hunt for Christmas trees and dinosaur babies?" I love their imaginations (even if they do have their time periods a bit confused).

So thankful for this SUPER stuff!

Super Stuff Catch-up

I’ve only done it a handful of times, but I just KICK MYSELF when I miss one of my weekly highlight posts.  Ugh!!!  Thank goodness I’ve been keeping some notes, though, so for the past couple of weeks…here ‘goes!

1)      The girls were such good helpers making banana bread!  They mashed the bananas for me, measured and added the ingredients, and stirred in the nuts.  I melted the butter and greased and floured the pans, but they did the majority of the work!

2)      One night at bedtime, Baby A asked B to read the night-night story.  B happily obliged.  She picked a book she knows backwards and forwards, “Vicki the Vet”.  While that’s not a traditional bedtime story in our house, I LOVED seeing B “read”…and I LOVED that Baby A asked her to do it.

3)      The next night, Baby A wanted to “read”.  She needed a little more prompting on the book she chose, but I was SO proud that she wanted to try, and I was SO proud that B sat back and let A have the floor.

4)      We met some new friends at the bouncy house a couple of weeks ago.  I loved seeing my friend C’s girls together with mine, and it was extra-nice to be able to all go out to lunch.

5)      As I was taking the girls to the zoo a few weeks ago, Baby A asked how much longer until we got off the interstate (which seems to be her question of choice).  I told her we had about 15 minutes left, and she said, “15…5-5-5!”  Wow!!!

6)      For their preschool closing ceremony, I put B in a yellow dress, and A in a white dress with blue plaid and yellow trim.  The girls were ecstatic when Daddy came down with a navy plaid shirt with a tiny yellow stripe in it.  Baby A noticed it first, “Daddy!  Your shirt matches my dress!”

7)      One day in the car, Baby A said, out of the blue, “I have the sweetest Daddy in the whole wide world and I love him.”

8)      The girls have long said they want to be vets.  They started working through the details together one day – of their own accord – and here’s what they came up with…Baby A said she would be a vet in the morning and a Mommy in the afternoon…and then B said she would be a Mommy in the morning and the vet in the afternoon…and some days they could switch up.  B said, “If you can’t find me, you can go to A, and if you can’t find A, you can come to me.”  I think it sounds like an awesome set-up!

9)      Since the girls declared that “helping Mommy in the kitchen” was their favorite part of Christmas this past year, I’ve been trying to get them more involved in cooking.  One day they helped me make juvec (which I describe as Hungarian jambalaya).  I taught them to pull the stems from the mushrooms, and they did a fantastic job!  They added all the ingredients and helped me stir the pot.  They were such good helpers!

10)   On Memorial Day, I had my heart set on grilling, and then making S’mores for dessert…what would be the girls’ first introduction.  We had a malfunction with the grill, so we had to do our burgers indoors.  The girls didn’t get the full experience of roasting marshmallows over the grill…but they were enthralled watching the marshmallows expand in the microwave.  And of course they LOVED the ooey-gooey-chocolatey mess!

11)   For their upcoming tumbling class, the girls will need leotards.  They were SO excited to shop for them a couple of weeks ago.  Even more exciting, I learned, though, was finding “exercise shorts” to wear over their leotards.  I hadn’t thought about how often they see their daddy and me in Umbros or Adidas shorts, and they were ecstatic to find shorts like Mommy and Daddy’s!

12)   One day the girls were sitting at the table, coloring.  I couldn’t help but smile as I listened to them “yes, ma’am”-ing each other.  Hee hee!

13)   We were working on a little thank-you project for the girls’ preschool teachers, involving all their classmates.  One of my friends got a kick out of hearing my girls ask straight away, “Mommy, is this washable ink?”  I was reminded of that when I heard the girls playing in the bathtub, “Would you like some hand sanitizer?”  “Yes, thank you!  Would you?”  Hahaha!

14)   And then, a few days later, I asked B to tell me a story…"Once upon a time, Lily [her doll] wanted to change the garbage." And then what happened? "She changed it." [pause] "But she had these little gloves on her hands to keep them from getting dirty." I hope I'm not creating two little [germophobic] monsters!!!

15)   The girls have been pretty focused on my food lately.  Once, out of the blue, Baby A turned to me at supper and said, “I love this, Mommy,” as serious as she could be.  HA!

16)   I overheard Baby B, correcting her sister: "No, Sissy...it's 'I WAS', not 'I were'. You can say, "IF I were a ladybug, I would have black spots,' but otherwise, you say, 'I was.'"

17)   And Baby B again… "Mommy I just wrote it on my calendar. I'm going to behave well today." Learning early, what gets measured, gets done!

18)   Baby A proclaimed one day, in a fit of giggles, "Mommy, I'm as smart as a door!”  I have always heard what they say about doorknobs…but I guess doors themselves are pretty smart.  Who knew???

19)   Baby B’s wisdom…"Unfortunately, mosquitoes are very smart, and they know I am a sweet baby girl."

20)   Baby B’s recap of a shopping trip…”And since we had only a few things today, we went through the self-checkout, because it was much more expeditious than the regular checkout."  I love the commentary...and the vocabulary!

21)   And I could hardly contain myself when the girls were playing with their kitchen and their stuffed animals.  I overheard, "Look, Chicks! Scrambled eggs!!!" and all I could think was, “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?”!!!

Hoping to get back on track...SOON!  I don't want to miss a moment with my sweet baby girls!!!

Super Stuff on a Monday / Tuesday

We have had a busy-but-fun week…thankfully full of super!

1)      Over supper one day, B asked me what “stressful” meant.  As I was forming my response, Baby A piped up, “It means when you have a tough day.”  It was so cool to see how she rephrased something so well!

2)      After sustaining a bump on the face on Tuesday evening, I was worried that B had hit her front tooth.  I got her in to see the dentist on Wednesday morning.  The girls have been SO excited to see the dentist on our last couple of trips, but sweet little B was pretty emotional.  She was so brave, though!  She sat in my lap for her x-ray, but following that she was all smiles.  (And I was all smiles, too, after hearing everything was OK.)

3)      After our trip to the dentist Wednesday morning, and a haircut a couple of hours later, the girls and I rewarded ourselves with lunch out.  They chose our favorite Mexican place, and we had a great meal.  I still sometimes marvel…a year ago, I was still nervous about taking the girls out to eat by myself…but now – dare I say? – it’s almost relaxing for all of us!

4)      If the girls get their toys cleaned up after supper in a timely fashion, their reward is that we have time to play a game before bed.  They were super fast one day, while Daddy and I were still worked to get the kitchen clean.  They decided to move forward with a game of dominoes by themselves…a first.  They were doing so well, working together.  We got a big laugh when Hubby went over to check on them, though.  They had all the dominoes turned over, even in the “boneyard”.  They’d just pick which one they needed!  After Hubby called them on it, they would pretend to cover their eyes as they drew the exact domino they wanted.  HA!

5)      The girls and I dyed Easter eggs for the first time ever this year.  They were so very excited when I told them of our plans.  Baby A went running upstairs to get an Easter book, saying it would be a good “reference”…HA!  The girls were so intent to watch and help, ever-so-carefully, in getting the eggs in and out of the cups.  After we did blue, yellow, and pink eggs (the only dye tablets we had), we experimented with a couple of mixes.  They were absolutely delighted when I put the blue egg in the yellow dye…and it turned GREEN!!!

6)      I saw a notice on Facebook on Saturday morning for the Kids’ Club at the local craft store.  On a whim, I decided to take the girls there to make an Easter egg / chick craft.  They were SO excited!!!  Among other things, Baby A exclaimed, “I haven’t worn my new shoes to Michael’s yet!” which just made me laugh.  The girls followed directions so well, and they waited patiently on our turn, too.  After our craft, I had a little shopping to do there, and the girls always love pulling the little rolling carts.  It was such a fun morning, all the way around!

7)      For Christmas I got the girls some magnetic foam blocks.  They haven’t played with them very much…until this week.  I happened upon the little insert that came with the blocks that shows how to build different figures.  The girls were so intent on building each and every figure…and I was amazed at how well they could translate from paper to blocks.  So cool!

8)      The girls got a surprise package in the mail from Uncle Tommy and Aunt Janet.  They squealed, almost in unison, “WATCH!!!!!!!!”

9)      For supper on Sunday night, I asked the girls if they wanted to peel the eggs that we dyed on Friday.  They were super excited, and they worked so hard.  It had been a while since they last peeled eggs, but they still had the touch!  The funny thing was that they only wanted to eat the white, not the yolk.  They loved stuffed eggs, but apparently they need their onion and mayo to like the middle.

10)   Baby A saw me making a grocery list.  She came up and said, “Crayons!”  And then she started sounding out the word for me to write it down…”Cr...cr...cr...”  She was serious about that addition to the list!

11)   And my Baby A quote of the week?  Upon seeing everything her sister had strewn out on the floor, she stated, “This is a big mess...bigger than ever...I think it's time to pick up, Sissy."

12)   And B had a few quotable quotes…

"Mommy, can you help situate my animals?"

Pretending:  "Mommy, I see a camel on the ceiling. He is purple, and he speaks Serbian, English, Spanish, and Russian. His favorite foods are beets, tomatoes, and cucumbers."

"I'm going to draw a bumblebee sipping nectar."  And then, she did!

So thankful for another week of super highlights from my baby girls!