Family News

Well that was a total shot in the dark.
Our girls have been staying awake more than an hour after being put to bed. Whenever they are put to bed.
Granted, we haven’t put them down before 8 p.m. (and one book I have says you have to have littles down by 7:30 or they [...]

Dude. I am going with Option 1. (PDF)
Talk about simplifying my life.
I found some more teaching materials yesterday (reference and textbooks were half-off at Forget-Me-Not this week). Just went through that and what I’ve already collected, organizing them into an Excel sheet so I can find and keep track of what I’ve [...]

Natasha wrote her first Thank-you notes today.
She and I practiced the letters in “THANK YOU” (She only wanted to do caps) until I felt they were recognizable, then I drew a straight line in a blank card and she wrote her thank-you on it. Then she decorated all the rest of the inside with [...]

So, mainly from recognizing the influence that goals had on me as a foster parent, I’ve decided I need to set goals for my own kids. And these are going to be basic, realistic goals here.
“Independently using the potty” is too big a goal for Melody just now. We’re going to start with [...]

She combed out her own hair after a shower, and use the ‘Y’ in yellow for the first time.
In the “Cinderella dressed in Yella” rhyme.  Only, when the girls do it it’s a non-distorted “true” word.
They were still asking for “The Sound of Muquis” (sounds almost like mucus) instead of The Sound of Music just [...]

Like I mentioned earlier, I spent most of January 1st working on books.
The girls and I traded bookshelves in our bedrooms. These pictures are the girls washing their “new” kid-sized bookshelf.

And then I saw Elisha in his little rocking chair, sitting with “Where the Wild Things Are” [...]

Natasha [whispered to me]: Daddy’s being a good daddy: he’s changing the sheets.
~
She’s been playing one of Jay’s Everquest characters this morning, too, and I heard her run to Jay and shout, delighted, “I collected a striped blue butterfly!”  Which is doubly adorable because she only knows that because of the print that came up [...]

Isn’t this sad?
The girls didn’t even know what cauliflower is.  Shopping yesterday I bought some, and the girls’ reactions were great.
“What’s that?” (distrustful) “What do you do with it?”
I explained it by saying you can do anything with it you do with broccoli. One of the girls gushed, “You can make soup with it!”
So that’s [...]

The girls have developed an attachment to The Sound of Music and we were watching it this morning.
How would you explain Maria’s leaving after her dance with the Captain?  To a 3- and 4-year-old?  I did okay, I guess, but I’ve not had an answer before today (and they have asked).
Today I said Maria thought [...]

Well, it’s been a while so I wanted to write something
We spent a lovely week up North with Jim and Teena, half of it also with Aaron and Autumn, allowing me the rare opportunity to talk with them and especially to get to know Autumn better. Very special.
If I haven’t said so [...]