Archive for March, 2017

March 2017!!

Thursday, March 30th, 2017

Since electronics free month is coming up soon, I’m just going to do one post for March for all three kids.  If it’s not too gigantic maybe I’ll do it this way from now on!  We’ll see =)

 

Maia:

Our daffodils bloomed! All Maia’s gifts bloomed =)

3/30/17

Maia in March!  Maia’s days are filled with dress up lately.  She’ll go to my closet, find the tubs that she can recognize by the labels, and then come out dressed as an explorer, or a pirate, or a mermaid! It’s adorable!  I never know what I’ll see. =)  Right now she’s wearing a superhero cape and mask.  She’s SuperMaia!  Love love love.

She’s potty trained now, which is awesome.  She has a few habits that we’ll have to break before school starts, but right now I’m too happy that she’s doing the hard part herself that I am just rolling with the fact that when she needs to go, she strips wherever she happens to be and runs around with no panties until she finds me afterwards and I put them on for her.  She also needs me to flush and squirt her with soap.  The toilets are actually really hard to flush, but the soap thing is just one of her routines that make her happy.  Two squirts, one on each hand, and then she washes it.  Letting it go for awhile. =)

She can read!  Donovan brought in the little first readers set he has, the bob books.  They played some kind of complicated game, but a bunch of them ended up in her room, and she reads them to me now!  She sounds out words I don’t think she should recognize, and actually knows a bunch of sight words like and, these, and please, probably thinks to the endless reader app.  Or SuperWhy.  It’s fun!  So whenever there’s a word or sentence in a book we are reading I think she can figure out I let her do it.

She sings along in the car to Moana now.  I love the soundtrack, and it is even more adorable with her little voice singing all the words, even the ones in other languages.  =)  She has seen the movie once too, so she inserts various phrases she remembers too, like “I got something shiny for ya!”  and it never fails to make us laugh.

She’s playing more and more with Serenity and Donovan.  They were chasing her in circles playing tag the other day.  She would run from my room, around my closet, through the laundry room and kitchen, back to my room, over and over.  After ten minutes, the bigger kids started just lying in wait, DZ in my bathroom, Serenity in the hall, and you could hear her shrieks and giggles every time she passed them.  They love games that involve collecting and piling cushions and blankets, and things that involve jumping off stuff.

She has found a board game she likes!  Two actually!  She loves Obstacles, which sounds like “popstacles” when she says it.  It’s a game that you have a hand of cards with pictures on them, and you are supposed to think of creative solutions to get past obstacles.  She just loves telling me what her cards are, but sometimes she really does say how she would use them, which is fun.  She also loves the Paw Patrol beach clean up game, but she plays that by her own rules.  She does invite me to play it though which is nice. =)

Her other favorite toys right now include the train tracks, the huge puzzle foam mats, all our wooden puzzles that have about 12 pieces, uno moo, and her super sorting pie.  She still loves the little computer, we will see how she does for electronics free month which is coming up Saturday!!!

Sometimes after a day of chasing the kids around I just end up feeling so tired. It’s normal, of course it would be hard to keep up with them. I try to increase my odds by taking a natural health supplement. My kids have noticed my extra energy when we’re playing together, which I sorely needed, you can look here and find out more about it.

Another Maia Approved outfit =)

Maia loves Tilly the Turtle, made by her Great Grandma Bair!!!

Maia’s first lego set! She was too busy playing at Kiddlestix to choose toys, so I decided to try this. She loves playing with the big kids lego sets, which drives them crazy. She loves it! I built it for her, but she spent hours playing with the figures, putting oars in their hands, moving them around, and just enjoying having a set of her own! And she played with it for the whole week, until she started taking off Maui’s arms and abandoning it, so I put it away for awhile. But she maybe spent more time with it than DZ even!

She wanted to be a clown… and we don’t have a clown tub or clown costume! But we improvised pretty well =)

Fancy Fox Power =)

Grandma came to the botanical gardens with us!

SuperMaia!

Jumping games with DZ =)

 

Donovan:

New fancy hat =)

3/30/17

Donovan and Serenity have started a book club in his room.  After I finish reading to them, they troop along to his room, and Serenity has been reading Rainbow Magic Fairy chapter books to him.  Love it!!!!  And then he reads his I Can Read books to her.  Even more LOVE!!!!  It’s awesome.  He’s been doing a little bit of speech therapy, so he corrects his K’s and G’s a lot now.  It’s even easier to understand him, and his reading is improving a lot too!!!

Donovan has joined a baseball team!  They had their first game last Saturday, and Donovan got a run!  It’s progressive t-ball, which means they can have the first few pitches as coach pitch, and the last couple off a T if they miss the pitch.  He hit one pitch, and one off the T.  I was proud that he really did run to his bases, and he paid attention to the ball in the outfield and ran for it a few times.  He loves batting, and he gets to see his friends Hatcher and Trip from school so he’s been really excited about baseball!  Catching is a work in progress, the glove is new to him, but so far, so good!  Eric is assistant coaching, which is like herding cats of course.  He has to remind them to watch the ball so they don’t get hit.  But it’s an exciting thing!  We’ve only had the one game, but I was very happy with the parents on our team.  Everyone cheered every good play, no matter which team did it.  They cheered for good swings, for solid hits, for outfielders actually trying to collect the ball… it was a fun atmosphere, just right for 6 year old ball. =)

We went to Kiddlestix over Spring Break so the kids could get some new toys to play with.  We are doing a big trip this summer, so we didn’t go anywhere over Spring Break, and frankly, it was an awesome week.  The kids loved just relaxing around the house, most days they didn’t even want to go anywhere.  They played together, played on the computer, played in the yard, just had lazy fun days.  DZ got a new lego set, of course.  It was a big Star Wars one with Kylo Ren.  He wants to see the movie now =)

DZ is still my Perler Bead boy =) He made Greedo and Dooku over spring break =)

Baseball boys!

 

Serenity:

Serenity got a pair of leggings too! She was amazed how SOFT they are!

 

3/30/17

Serenity had her drama festival!  She was Loki, which made Eric and I totally geek out.  She was an awesome Loki, very expressive!  I got to have the fun of making her costume, and a couple pieces for a few other kids, raven hats and wings, a tunic and crown for the frost giant, that kind of thing.  And I made Mjolnir out of a Samoa boxes!!  It was such fun!  The play was so cute and the kids did great!  Serenity rehearsed at home so much that Maia even knew the lines.  She’d repeat over and over, “Did you find my hammer?”  And “Where’s my hammer!!!”  And Serenity would patiently respond “Chill Thor.” Over and over.  So sweet.  Although I was worried she’d do it during the performance and try to take the hammer.  It was fine. =)
Serenity is passing on her love of reading to DZ!  They’ve started their own book club in his room during quiet time.  She’s reading him chapter books, which he hasn’t even asked me for yet.  He tends to ask me to read his encyclopedia of lego characters, or skylanders, or some other manual like that.  I love that she’s getting him into longer stories!

We went to the botanical garden at the end of Spring Break.  It was cold!  But the tulips were SO beautiful, I’m so glad we didn’t miss them.  And the hyacinth!  I just love that smell.  It was a blast, especially for my nature girl.  She asked me to take pictures of her cartwheeling over the rock bridge.

Papa cut all these branches just for them to play with. At least that’s what they think =)

cartwheely

Serenity and I went to see Beauty and the Beast! We got the soundtrack and are obsessed. I love it!!! She took this pic with the Cherokee Princess Dogwood she gave me for my birthday =) It’s blooming!

 

More:

I got some new clothes from a LuLaRoe party that Jen hosted! These skirts are SO comfy! Expect to see me in them all summer =)

I also went slightly out on a limb and bought a pair of leggings with an actual pattern… not my usual style because nearly all my clothes are solid. Then when I tried it on, Maia went to the dress up box and got out her mermaid tail and the blue wig. So now they are my mermaid pants =) And I love them more =)

If you want to know what I’m up to… Agricola. On the ipad solo it is SO fun.

I don’t know how to take selfies =) But I went on a Mom’s night out planned by Ashley and it was SO much fun! I wore real clothes. And put stuff in my hair. lol

Daddy is still a jungle gym =)

Love the tulips!!!!

Coffee filter crafts =) Maia and I made the first 8, and then the big kids saw them and have been doing them ever since. Such fun!

Serenity in January and February

Sunday, March 5th, 2017

Serenity Year 9 2017

3/3/17

Serenity has been really busy with Girl Scouts the last two months.  It’s cookie season!  She wanted to sell 500 boxes so she could earn an adorable music box.  That was more than double what she sold last year, so I was hesitant.  I ordered enough for her to sell about 275, and she managed that  by doing two booths at Papa’s house, going door to door in our neighborhood once, and selling at Eric and Kyle’s work.  Plus, Papa is a big fan of the new S’more’s cookie, and so are his students, so he bought a bunch of those.  So she made it to 275, but I thought she was pretty much done after that.  She went to all the booths, partially because I had to go to take the cookies, and so she got about 80 more in sales.  So I told her, if she really wanted that music box, to sell all the leftover cookies, and if she did that then I’d get her more to keep going.  And she DID!  She sold out of Samoas and was down to 7 thin mints, so I got her two more cases, and she sold all those and all the boxes in our donation box to get more.  So I happily replaced those boxes and now we’re DONE with cookies for the year.  I’m so excited that she made it to her goal, and that she actually went out repeatedly until it was done.

Besides cookies, her girl scout troop finished their Home Scientist badge, thanks in part to Science Saturday, their Household Elf badge(making natural air freshener, reusable bags, saving water and electricity, and other helpful things around the house), and their Water Journey(Love Water, Save Water, Share Water).  They finished the Water Journey by making reusable grocery bags with slogans that urge people to save water.  Hopefully it starts lots of conversations so they can talk about what they learned on their journey.  They also decided to spend some of their cookie profits helping an orphanage in Tanzania with their water needs.  Lillyan voiced the idea that they should help an orphanage, and the girls unanimously agreed.  So sweet =)    They also earned their World Thinking Day badge.  That was a fun one.  A few girls came to my house and helped me cook some Tanzanian food, coconut rice, fried plantains, and chai tea.  We listened to African music and did a craft project designing Kanga fabric. So fun!

Besides Girl Scouts, Serenity is learning to play piano!  She had lessons in the fall, but didn’t practice often enough to get to continue them.  I told her if she practiced enough on her own, she could have the lessons back, so I’ve been teaching her the little bit I know.  She’s been playing scales and learning to play Do a Deer from her Sound of Music piano book.  It is sounding really good!  She plays mostly the right hand, and I try to do the left.  I need more practice too.

Serenity spends about half her playtime upside down these days, doing cartwheels.  It’s so cute and fun, at least until she kicks someone in the head.

She still loves reading. We checked out the whole Sisters 8 series again so she could reread it.  =)

Ann and John came for a visit, and Serenity is learning card games!  She asked to learn bridge, but we are starting with Spades.  She also learned Own Trump.  She went on lots of walks with Vanaema.  She’s fascinated by her fitbit, and she loves being in nature.

We are gearing up for the Drama Festival.  Serenity is Loki!  Eric and I both geeked out over that.  I got to make her a costume =)  And I made a few other props and costumes.  Two ravens, a Frost Giant, a belt, and Mjolnir.  Thor’s Hammer was so much fun to construct!  Thanks to all the Samoa boxes in my garage from cookie sales it was a breeze.  One Samoa box filled with floral foam for the middle, two more ends of boxes angled to add some dimension to either end of the hammer, a cardboard tube wrapped with duct tape and leather for the handle.  Some black paint covered with silver paint, and some runes on the circle on top of the hammer.  Easy and fun!  Hopefully it stands up to some abuse as they rehearse.

Hovercraft from Science Saturday

Diorama from Esperanza Rising. It was a long and complicated book, and very emotional, but she loved it so much I read it too!

Serenity loves this little fox she named Lyra. She sleeps with her often! It’s soo sweet. She got it because she wanted to donate to save foxes this year.

Cirque!

Water Journey

Card games!

Little Hikers at the Book Fair

Maia in January and February

Sunday, March 5th, 2017

Maia Year 4 2017

3/3/17

Recently, in response to someone asking how she is, Maia responded “I am Strong and Powerful!!”  I’ve heard her say it several other times since, and it’s true, she really is!  She also responded “I’m adorable” which is true too.  =)  She wants to organize things her way for sure.  She loves to snuggle, and is still obsessed with elbows.  Which I’m sure we’ll look back on as an adorable stage, but right now it just makes me laugh as she adjusts my arm to make my elbow in the most interesting position.

She is dressing up to the extreme these days.  She got a Sophia crown and amulet for her birthday, which she wears with her “purple princess dress” which is technically Fancy Nancy.  It’s adorable!  She still loves wearing her Paw Patrol Skye hat with her purple fancy shoes, wings, and her pumpkin bucket.  She also loves dressing up as a dinosaur, especially when dancing to her newest Laurie Berkner cd.  There’s a superhero song on that CD, so she’s worn a superhero cape to music class a few times.  I love it!

She loves Paw Patrol, and was thrilled when we went to Paw Patrol Live!  Once the show started she was enthralled.  And when she saw a Paw Patrol book at the book fair with a handle like a suitcase, her jaw literally dropped!  Along with the other book in her hand because she just had to hold the Paw Patrol book.  =)  She can read a surprising number of words, and often calls out words she sees on signs.  We were parked in the line at school, and she kept repeating “far book, it says, far book!”  I had no idea what she meant, until I saw the book fair sign!  =)

She’s doing more crafts these days, especially painting and play-doh.  She still likes stickers sometimes, but definitely not as much.

It’s been a fun winter, but we are thrilled to see the daffodils we planted in the fall begin to bloom!  Maia’s “gifts” are so beautiful!

I don’t know if I’ve written this phrase down anywhere yet, but it’s one of my favorites.  “oopsie daisy me!”  She says that when she falls, or makes a mess.  So cute =)

Fox Power and Flamingo Power! I love that Maia really plays with her siblings now! They are so cute together!!!

Ninja and his pirate sister =)

Maia got to play lots of tea party with Vanaema!

She sleeps with a pile of Super Readers most nights =)

Polar Bear Power!