School Girl

Here's a tired Harper and Daddy spooning on the couch for her late nap after Chloe's birthday party. The girl loves her Daddy! We get to take home her school journals every few weeks and last time, about 5 of the pages were drawings of her with (just) her Daddy!


Harper was especially proud of her work here, so I snapped a shot. The three hearts were all cut out by her without anyone's help. The red one was done with the usual fold in half method. The pink was not. (Both of those were done at school.) Harper's showing so much improvement with her cutting that Dad was in disbelief. I traced the pink one on black paper and she cut it out for him at home so he could see his girl do it. We were all impressed and pleased. I know her teachers have really worked on this with girl. She happily pasted the hearts on her "painting" that she'd just finished. Harper kept stepping back to admire her work. It is quite pretty, don't ya think?

Talking Up a Storm

This is Jack's pick-me-up-Mama look. He's saying his usual, "Mama-- hug!" I had to snap a shot and post the picture because Jack does this a few times a day. I find the hug requests sweet and always pick him up and hug him, except when it's being used as a transparent attempt to avoid eating vegetables. In that case, I squeeze his little shoulders and lay my head on his for a moment (cause who can not-hug a kid who wants a hug?) but then I hand him a loaded fork.


Here's Jack having his "morning milk" with "sister". I warm two sippys of whole milk up and hand Jack both. He walks over and hands Harper's to her, then climbs up to sit next to her. They suck away. Jack also has a cup last thing at night (to replace his night night nursing). Yep, he's down to just one breastfeeding a day now-- just before nap. He's definitely noticed the change... it took him over a week to go to sleep as peacefully. He even asked about his "ninnies" and we've told my ninnies "night night" several times to help him understand they weren't coming out. I don't look forward to the final weaning though... knowing he's my last one makes it tough. I'm trying to just enjoy his baby-ness while it's still here.

Here are the kids after re-coloring their posters from the library's storytime. They'd colored them once there, but wanted to add to them tonight after dinner so I pulled out the markers and we sat on the tile a while to color. Jack's really digging the markers and crayons these days and is getting into coloring. He knows his shapes like nobody's business, and in this picture you can see he's tried to actually color them (i.e. scribbles centered on the square, etc.). As he did so, he'd say "green square" or whatever-- calling out the colors he was choosing. He also recognizes about 10 letters by sight, including the ones you can see on this poster. I was asking him "What letter is this?" as I added them to his poster and he was correctly identifying them, even telling me the
'M' is for 'Mama', 'D' for 'Dada', 'H' for 'Harper' and 'J' for 'Jack'. He remains a smartie and strangers often stop and ask me his age (stores, doctor's office) because he talks so much. His sentences are lengthening and he's got a few books memorized.

Here he is by the alphabet I just put up in the kids room. I hung it tonight since he seems a promising student. So far, he's more into telling me the colors than finding the L, but once he learns a few more, he'll feel more successful and it'll get more fun.
Here's his "cheeeeeeeeeese" smile. Whenever he sees the camera, the boy says, "Cheese!"


And here he is kissing A goodnight.

I just love that sweet talker!