"P" week

"P" week was a week of "P" foods at our house.  We made pancakes TWICE.  And, I let Gemma help both times.  Which is big.  I'm, um, not a huge fan of help in the kitchen.  At least not help of the four-year-old variety.  But it's good for her and good for me so here's to pancakes and "P" week.  We also had homemade pizza for dinner one night, and daddy made a punkie (pumpkin) pie for a special treat!!  Like I said, lots of yummy "P" food!!

To the right is Gemma with our Museum ABC book.  We use this book at Circle Time on Friday mornings for our weekly "art study".  I keep this pretty simple.  Each letter has a theme (P was for peacock, for instance) and then four famous works of art centered around that theme.  We compare and contrast each of the pictures, talk about colors, shapes, lines and textures, similarities and differences, and Gemma chooses which picture is her favorite and explains why.  I bought this book at the recommendation of a homeschool mom friend, and am so glad I did.  It really is a great addition to our Letter of the Week library.

We did a religion craft/activity for "P" week that I'm really excited about.  We made a prayer cube.  I got the idea from our Catholic Icing Preschool Curriculum book.  Instead of using a styrofoam cube and construction paper though (as the CI book suggested), I got a small wooden cube from Hobby Lobby for $.99.  Gemma helped me think of the title of prayers to write on each side of the cube (and I came up with some new ones for her to learn).  We ended up with Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Heart of Jesus, St. Michael prayer and Memorare.  Then Gemma colored each side of the cube with non-washable markers, and there you have it.  Now, each morning when we pray for our sponsor child from CFCA we roll the cube to see which prayer to pray.  I am also looking forward to using this during Lent when we pray our family intention each night after dinner.  This should be a great way to introduce some new prayers, as Gemma doesn't yet know the St. Michael prayer or Memorare.  I am contemplating making another one sometime with prayers like the Apostle's Creed and Acts of Faith, Hope and Love.

Some of our favorite "P" books were:

If You Give a Pig a Party

Puppies are Like That

A Pocket for Corduroy

If You Were a Penguin

Curious George and the Pizza

Curious George at the Parade

The Poky Little Puppy

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy's Parade  This book was so cool.  I think I could do an entire blog post just over it.  Suffice it to say if you are studying parades, or looking for a good book for Thanksgiving week, this is a gem.  It was informative enough that I'd recommend it for any preschool or grade school-age child.  Heck, I learned a lot.  The illustrations were fun and funky and it was just nice having something historical and true rather than just your run-of-the-mill picture book.

Birthday week 2012

With two January birthdays within five days of each other (closely following Christmas mind you), birthday week really is a big to do after a lot of other big to-do's at our house.  WHEW!  I am looking forward to a July baby and thus a July birthday.

But, without further ado...here you have Birthday Week 2012 in pictures (with *hopefully* limited commentary).

SUNDAY

We had a party to celebrate Gemma and Kolbe and their cousin Cooper's birthdays (yes, yet another January birthday) at my in-laws.

Cake.  It was nothing fancy or complicated, but it was easy to make and functional and the kids liked it.  

 The four-year-olds!!

 CANDLES!!

 Eating cake and ice cream.

WEDNESDAY

Gemma's actually birthday.  We had a spaghetti dinner party at my parents' with aunts and uncles and cousins to celebrate both kids' birthdays.

Birthday brownies for breakfast...daddy had been promising her these for months!!

My mom made some fun cupcakes for the kids to share!!  Gemma got to go shopping with her to help pick out the decorations and colors and such.

Cake time!

THUSRDAY

We had professional pictures taken.  I'll save those for another post though.

FRIDAY

Gemma's godmother came by to wish her a happy birthday.  No pics, but she got her some beads and string to make necklaces.  These have been very entertaining for Gemma.

SATURDAY

Aaron made sushi for dinner since this is one of Kolbe's favorite foods.  Gemma is not a huge sushi fan, but would stuff herself silly on edamame given the chance, so both kids definitely enjoyed the meal.

MONDAY

Kolbe's actual birthday.  He got an apple crisp for breakfast!  One of his favorite desserts.  

We decided to just have a small little celebration with the four of us and give both kids their presents from us the night of Kolbe's birthday.  We had lasagna for dinner and then Gemma and Kolbe gave their gifts to each other (Gemma got Kolbe a ball, and Kolbe got Gemma more beads and string).  After that the kids opened their gifts from us.  Gemma got a SCOOTER!!! and Kolbe a "mote-mote" (remote control) car.  They were both very happy with their presents!

Kolbe really liked the car.  It is a nice simple model for a two-year-old, with just one button.  It doesn't go as well as I had hoped it would on our carpet, but he still seems to really like it so no biggie I guess.  And yes, in the bottom right picture, he is indeed driving it from the toilet.  Told you he liked it.

Gemma was super-thrilled with her scooter.  She has been riding a "pretend scooter" since last summer after seeing so many neighborhood kids on them (real ones, not pretend ones). She is very excited to have her very own now.  And yes, she is riding it in the living room.  HEY, it was dark and cold outside, what else were we supposed to do, give it to her and then make her wait 'til spring?!

If you've hung with us this far that about sums up birthday week I suppose.  Like I said, whew!  Hard to believe we've been parenting for a cumulative six years now.  Wow.  Happy birthday to our big four and two-year-olds!!

And for those of you still interested, I was excited to find a whole stack of really fun birthday books at the library.  Here were a few of our favorites!
Corduroy Makes a Cake
A Little House Birthday
Curious George and the Birthday Surprise
Birthday Zoo
C is for Cake
Birthday Cakes
Otis and Sydney and the Best Birthday Ever

Book review: Blessings Every Day

For Christmas, Gemma received the book Blessings Every Day: 365 Simple Devotions for the Very Young (Catholic Edition).  I was really excited when I found this book, I prayed it would be just what I was looking for...and it was!!  I love it when that happens.  We use this now every day with our Morning Prayers, and it works just perfectly.  It really is geared to the 3-5 year old crowd just perfectly.  I mean, really spot on.  I don't have to dilute anything for her; it's just perfect while not being too "fluffy" either.  Each day starts off with a verse from Scripture, then a devotion/meditation, and then it ends with a two-line poem that sums up the devotion.  It really is great!  The only thing I wish it had was a prayer to go along with each devotion, but it has been a good opportunity to start working on spontaneous prayer so I really can't even complain about that too much.  If you have a toddler or preschooler in your life, I would very highly recommend this book. And if you're not Catholic, there is a non-Catholic edition as well.  Check out my friend Mary Elizabeth's post on Family Prayer as well for some great book recommendations and ideas for incorporating prayer into your daily family life.

"O" week

 "O" is for octopus, owl, ox and ostrich!  We learned about several different animals during "O" week.  I picked up a set of flashcards at a consignment sale last summer (I think) that has fairly realistic pictures of animals on the front and a paragraph or two (geared toward probably a 5 year old) about the animal on the back.  They are very informative.  I just have them filed out in our letter folders, and am always happy to run across them.  

Gemma colored an octopus picture with her new twist crayons she got for Christmas, and we counted and numbered the legs together.  As good as her letter recognition is, I am finding that we probably need to work a little more on numbers. She can count and such quite well, but isn't great at recognizing numbers if they're not written in order.

We painted letter "O"s as well.  I have a file I made in Word with all the alphabet letters in a large font (one per page) and they can be colored or painted or whatever.  Leave your email address in the comments and I'd be happy to share if you're interested.  

Some of our favorite "O" books were:

On the Night you were Born (She got this for her birthday.  It is SUCH a beautiful story.)

Oh the Thinks you can Think  (The best Seuss book of all time - in my opinion of course.)

Over in the Meadow (We love this song around here.  We've checked out several versions of this, and this is the one we own illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats.)

My "O" Soundbox

A Garden of Opposites

Octopus Opposites (This gave us an opportunity to talk some about opposites this week as well.)

Wow said the Owl(A book about colors.) 

Otis and Sydney and the Best Birthday Ever (This one was leftover from birthday week - which I still need to blog about.  We found some great birthday books at the library though!!)

Little Owl's Night

Owl Babies  (A very sweet story that addresses separation anxiety.)

New dipes for Kolbe

I know I've talked several times over the past 4-6 months about Kolbe's potty progress.  He's plateaued out at pooping (pretty much) exclusively on the toilet ("Melmo" as he calls it...his new big-boy potty seat has Sesame Street characters, including Elmo, on it) and pottying on the toilet maybe 1-3 times a day, just depends on the day.  It works, I'm very pleased with where he is.  It will be nice if he learns to use the potty full-time (or at least during the day) by the time baby arrives (he'll be 2.5 then) but we'll see.  I'm not going to push him, but I may "encourage" a little more actively come this spring/early summer.  Since he started using the toilet on a more regular basis, I switched him to bumGenius diapers.  So much easier on and off than a prefold and cover.  I had a decent amount of bG's already that I'd gotten as seconds or on sale over the past few years, but with using them exclusively I decided it would be nice to have a few more, just to ease the wear and tear they go through being worn and laundered so regularly.  I've tried a few other kinds of AIO's (a very few) and I've always had good luck with the bG's so I decided to just stick with that brand.  But then, I tend to be a comfort zone type person.  ;-D  A few days before Christmas, Cotton Babies offered a special sale on bG 4.0's in a few prints they were discontinuing.  I'd had my eyes on the Artist Series prints before, and was thrilled to get three brand-new, first quality diapers (with snap enclosures!! ...I think I'm converting to snaps...) and inserts for just under $12 a piece.  Aren't they handsome on my handsome little guy?

And speaking of diapering a toddler, before I discovered my affinity for the AIO on my toddlers, I purchased about a dozen and a half toddler size Green Mountain Prefolds that I thought I would use and I'm just not.  I never have.  They are pre-washed (in Rockin' Green) but have never been worn.  If you're interested I am looking to sell them for $3 a piece, or if you want them all I'd sell all 18 for $50.  Let me know!

"N" week

We jumped back into our Letter of the Week activities after the new year.  I've scaled things back a little bit.  We still have our circle time every morning, and I'm going to try to have one craft-type activity and/or one religious craft or activity for each week.  Plus maybe a little enrichment stuff here and there.  I'm just going to be a little more relaxed about the day we do things and such though, whereas the first half of the alpha I kept things pretty structured with a planned activity each day.  Just trying to keep things realistic, fun and educational.  I also like the idea of trying to incorporate some foods and snacks into our weekly themes here and there, and definitely getting outdoors for more nature activities once spring comes (come on, come on, come on...) 

For "N" week our main activity was this Holy Name of Jesus poster we made for our kitchen (January is the month of the Holy Name).  Gemma had fun gluing the buttons and beads.

Some "N" books we enjoyed were: 

My "N" Book

A Stormy Ride on Noah's Ark (while not incredibly Biblical per se, this was very cute I thought)

A Nest Full of Eggs (This book was so educational, I would highly recommend it and hope to check more out from this series in the future.  Gemma really liked it as well, I think we read it every day.)

Night in the Country

Wine bottle holder

I made this wine bottle holder (it's holding a bottle of Castle Rock Pinot Noir if you're curious...very tasty) for a friend for Christmas, and was very pleased with how it turned out.  I got the directions from my One Yard Wonders book.  If you have basic sewing skills, and at least a limited ability to follow directions (and believe me, my sewing skills are still pretty basic, and my ability to follow written directions is just plain awful), this would be a book I would highly recommend owning.  I got it from a friend of my mom's when she moved, and I thought it looked kind of gimmicky until I actually started flipping through it.  This is the third or fourth project I've made from this book, and they've all been equally simple, minimally time consuming, and I've gotten great results.

Small successes XLIV

Heavens, has it really been almost three months since I linked up to Small Successes?  Ah well, quarterly is better than not at all, right?!

1. Survived the first trimester!  
2. We made it through the holidays and they really were quite enjoyable and relaxing (to an extent).  We're wrapping up birthday week around here now (yes, both kids, five days apart...I'm excited for my July baby).  We have Baptism Anniversaries to celebrate next week and THEN things should slow down considerably in the "celebration" department.  It's about time, we've been at it since the Feast of St. Nicholas.  Whew!
3. Got professional pics of the kids done today.  Check out the sidebar for a preview, they turned out pretty good if I do say so myself.
4. Am wrapping up a yearlong plus project I've been working on and the end is fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally in sight.  I couldn't be more grateful.
5. Did lots of reorganizing around the house.  Things feel good.  Sometimes after Christmas it gets a little, um, stressful with all the new items (namely toys), but after sorting, purging, packing and reorganizing, I think we're good.  For now.

I guess that's about it this go around.  Maybe I'll try to be better about linking up again here in the near future.  To share in the successes, visit Sherry at Chocolate For Your Brain.

Another nerdy organization post

For Christmas my sweet parents got me this awesome nine-cube organizer and some baskets to go along with it!  I've had my eye on this (and been practically drooling over it) for quite some time now, so I was so excited to finally get it!  It was one of those things we didn't really "need", so I could never really justify buying it...but holy cow now I don't know how we ever lived without it!!  Its induction into our basement caused a whole slew of reorganizing throughout the house (tell me you know how that works) and I'm really happy with how things have ended up.  Here's the chain of events.  

Put nine-cube organizer in basement = very de-cluttered play-space, YAY! 

Move three-drawer plastic organizer from basement (it used to house our toy kitchen things and some other items) upstairs to kitchen. It is now the new home for the children's craft supplies (the ones I let them access at will) which has led to a much less-cluttered "junk" drawer for me; it also houses some of their learning toys (puzzles, beads, matching cards, dominoes, etc.), which emptied out the side-server (formerly the "learning cabinet") considerably.  

With the extra space in the side-server, I decided I really didn't need the organizer I was using for our homeschool preschool anymore.  It was really handy for keeping me organized and on-track the first semester when I was still finding my way with our schedule and activities, but now that we've settled into a nice routine with our school activities it just seemed a little overkill, and was really taking up a lot of space in the front closet.  So now we have space back for hanging our coats and putting the vacuum and such, and all our school stuff is neatly organized on two shelves in the now-emptied side-server.

WHEW!  I am pretty happy with the results, and now you have yet another glimpse into my absolute and complete nerdiness when it comes to all things organization.

Christmas 2011

Gosh, I have been very slack at updating the blog lately.  Take pregnancy and the holidays though, and that's what you get.  I thought I'd post some pics from our Christmas though, we had a very nice, relaxing holiday season.  Our celebrating started on Christmas eve at my in-laws'.  We had a nice evening with most of the family together, lots of good food and fun watching the kids open presents.

Cousins in their matching jammies from grandma.

Christmas day started off at our house with Mass.  We have established the tradition with the kids that we wake up and get all dressed up and go to Mass, and then Santa "comes" and leaves his presents while we are at Mass.  This works out really well, and I like how it places the first emphasis of the day on the true meaning of the season.

So after Mass the kids had fun opening their gifts.  They each get three gifts (just like Jesus did from the Magi), one toy, one religious gift and one educational gift.  This year we kept things very simple.  We are so blessed by the generosity of family and friends that it just (for the most part) seems silly to get the kids big, extravagant gifts.  Gemma got a wooden play-food cookie set, the book Blessings Every Day and an ink pad and some stamps.  Kolbe got a wooden tool set, a crucifix for his room and the book Bear and Ball.  They were very happy with their presents.

We spent Christmas afternoon and evening with my parents and family and had so much fun!  Seven children five and under!!

For Christmas this year Gemma and Kolbe made photo-frame magnets for their grandparents and godparents.

Our holiday celebrations ended with a day trip (about 6 hours in the car total, the kids did GREAT!) to visit my husband's extended family on New Years Day.  We had a lot of fun and saw a lot of people, but I forgot the camera, so no pics from that adventure.

We'll wrap up the official Christmas season by celebrating the Epiphany today, but I'll save that for another blog-post.

A blessed and wonderful 2012 to everyone!