News beds, "new" room, fun times!

A few months before Kolbe was born, we moved Gemma to her "big girl" room with a queen bed and she has been there ever since.  It was a nice arrangement as Aaron or I could easily and comfortably "co-sleep" with her in her own bed if she needed us.  This fall we converted Kolbe's crib to a toddler bed and he has been sleeping there part of the night and with us in our bed the rest of the night since then.  We knew that with the impending arrival of our newest wee-one the sleeping situation would probably have to change a bit.  After realizing that Gemma and Kolbe sharing a bed was not in the cards (believe me. NOT an option.) we decided to get bunk beds and assemble them as two twins.  It was actually cheaper than buying two twin beds, mattresses, box springs etc., and this will give us the option for bunk beds in the future if that ever becomes necessary.  Our beds came last week and we got them assembled (in "Gemma's" room) and have been working on transitioning the kids to the same room and transitioning Kolbe out of our bed.  It has surprisingly been going pretty well.  Gemma -- our oh-great-resistant-to-change one (no idea where she gets it) -- has handled it fairly well all things considered.  She's a bit needier than usual at bedtime but she likes her new "owl bed" a lot and I know she'll be fine once she gets in the groove of the new routine.  And Kolbe has been a champ; he's so proud of his "ball-ball" bed, it's adorable.  He's still waking up some during the night, but instead of coming in bed with us I just go in and lay with him until he goes back to sleep which works, and he's actually slept through the night the past few nights!!!  The main issue is Kolbe usually gets restless around 6:45am (their typical wake-up time is around 8:00).  If I'm able to settle him back in and Gemma doesn't get "too" awake, it works.  If they're both up early, that makes for a, how shall we say, quite grumpy interesting morning.  Oh well.  We'll weather this change just like we'll weather all the other changes on the horizon for our family.  And a funny story to share...Gemma tells me (very emphatically) after their first night in the same room, "Mommy, Kolbe got OUT of his bed for one minute!!" (This coming from the girl who will not leave her bed until you physically go in her room and tell her it's time to get up.)  I asked her what she did and she replied, "I told him to get back in bed and then counted to three and he did."  Kolbe's so lucky to have such a bossy good big sister. (haha!)  Here are a few pics of the "new" room.

Gemma and Kolbe's beds

"ART" they made for their wall together

 BEDTIME!!

"S" is for Sunflowers

As I mentioned, we've mostly been taking a hiatus from our letters during Lent, but I did decide to do letter "S" in conjunction with Spring/seeds, etc., since we were ready for "S" anyways.  So we've spent the past couple weeks doing various letter "S" activities.  One thing we ended up doing -- and it was one of those completely random, unplanned things that are sometimes the ones that turn out the best -- was "S" is for Sunflowers.  Gemma wanted to paint something, so I said, "how about some sunflowers since we're on letter 'S'," and showed her how and got her started.  At that point I remembered that I had checked out a copy of Camille and the Sunflowers -- a wonderful picture book that I would highly recommend about Vincent van Gogh -- so I ran and grabbed that and we read it (several times, Gemma really liked it) and it just ended up being a really cool activity that we both enjoyed.  My hubby has a reproduction of van Gogh's "Sunflowers" at his office that he got when he was in Vietnam, so that made it extra special since it was a painting with which Gemma was at least a little familiar.  This definitely made me excited to jump back in full-swing with our letters after Easter.

Valentines 2012

The kids had fun painting/stickering/writing their own Valentines for those we love this year (and quite a many for our fridge as well).  We also used some of these (and more here) from Catholic Icing which I just thought were so SUPER-duper cool.  I mean, seriously, how great.  We printed ours black and white on tag-board and painted them (with watercolors) but if you printed them in color they would really look very "professional" I think, and the Scripture verses just make them so wonderful.

Gemma made a Valentine for me that said "H V T" on the front, "for Happy ValenTines," she told me.  I was so proud of her.

Hope everyone had a nice, love-filled Valentines day.

Art class

While Gemma is not attending formal preschool, I still like the idea of her having some organized activities with other children her age.  This year one of things we are doing is a once-a-month art class at our local Art Museum.  We had our first class (parents stay and help out) last week and it was wonderful.  Gemma was very hesitant at first...she flipped out at having to wear a name-tag, she wanted me to be in touching distance at every moment...but about 15 minutes into the class (it lasted about an hour-and-a-half) she was doing great and by the time story time rolled around I was sitting half a room away from her and she didn't seem to notice or care.  I think this will be very good for her and we are both looking forward to the next class.  I am hoping to do some of the organized activities at the library with both children in the coming months, and would love for Gemma to start Catechesis of the Good Shepherd next school year (when she is four-and-a-half).

Here are some pictures from Gemma's first art class.  They made hand-print puzzles.

Recent weekly themes

Here are some of the weekly things Gemma has been up to lately.

ANIMALS
The first week in October we talked about animals and St. Francis (the patron saint of animals). The lacing cards are still a bit beyond her, but she is starting to have more patience for them. She had a particularly fun time "reading" the yellow picture-book with the butterfly on the front to Kolbe. It was very sweet hearing her tell him about the different animals and what they each said. She wanted so badly for him to repeat her. Soon...
NUMBERS
Last week we talked all about numbers. Gemma has taken a particular interest in counting lately, and has even learned how to find her favorite songs on her CD's by reading the numbers on the CD player, so I thought it would be a good time to do "number week". I first saw Teddy Bear Counting in a scholastic book order about a month ago. I was particularly intrigued as I thought it would go so well with our counting bears. I decided to check it out from the library first to see if it would be a good fit, and I think this may be one we'll buy. It was great! Gemma had fun with it, mainly matching her colored bears to the ones on the pages and doing a bit of counting. Plus the whole story was all rhyme-y and just cute. But it went into pretty good depth about adding, subtracting and grouping (I'd say up to Kdg/1st grade concepts) so I think this will definitely be one we'd get some use out of over the next several years.
Countdown to Fall (another library book) talked about the different kinds of leaves found in the fall. We did a painting project to go along with this book. I painted the trunk and branches and Gemma used red, yellow and orange to paint the leaves. It was fun. It's exciting that she is getting old enough to do projects like this. (And as an aside, I am totally excited about this little magnetic photo-sleeve I found to display fridge-art! Very handy, and keeps pictures from getting bent or wet!)
I made these counting cards for her with some old stickers I had sitting around the house, and then had them laminated at FedEx/Kinkos. I was SO excited with how they turned out, and she really caught on to pointing to the "buggies" and counting them. This has been something new she has started to do, and it's fun seeing her begin to conceptualize the idea of counting and numbers.
These foam numbers are actually from a bath toy set, but they work well in our "numbers" box.
PUMPKINS
This week we are talking about pumpkins and Halloween!
I found the little wooden pumpkins on sale for $.12 a piece at Joann's, and painted them, then put the letter stickers on to spell her name. I figure since she's getting so good at recognizing and recalling numbers, then maybe she can start identifying/spelling the letters in her name as well. As an added surprise, they also have some sparkles and glow-in-the-dark paint on them! All kinds of cool! (And I'll admit, I really had a fun time making these too. Like, pathetically fun. ;-D).
I think we will paint paper-plate pumpkins together this week, and daddy has a special pumpkin surprise planned for Gemma this weekend, so you'll have to be sure to check back!!

Celebrating the angels

This past week we celebrated the Feast of the Archangels (Sept. 29)
and the Feast of the Guardian Angels (October 2).
I thought it would be fun just to kind of make an angel theme of the whole week, and it worked out well. I know as the years go by activities like this will mean more and more to Gemma, but I think she enjoyed the small things we did and learned from them. We checked out several Angel books from the library, including an over-size one with lots of angel art. It was just beautiful, and wonderful to be able to see so many famous works of art that we will likely never see in person. I also put a small angel statue with her things on the fireplace. Here she is with our items for the week (and the diaper pail in the background ;-D). She has taken a HUGE liking to the song "Angels Watchin' Over Me" the past several weeks (it's on one of her CD's) so I was excited to find a book by the same title at the library. It was sort of cute, but nothing special. I was kind of disappointed but oh well. The story of Pasucal and the Kitchen Angels is sweet, honestly I don't think you can ever go wrong with Tomie dePaola.
Our main activity for the week was making angel cookies. This was a lot of fun, Gemma really enjoyed it. And she reallllllly enjoyed eating the cookies too of course! They were very special to her since they were something she helped make and they made fun snacks and desserts several days in a row. We also shared a few with the neighbor-girls, since "Jesus wants us to share." (ooooohhhhhh such a tough lesson to learn, especially when you have a baby brother who is becoming more mobile as each day goes by. But that's a whole other post in and of itself...) I was so excited with the recipe too. Usually when I bake things they turn out OK. These were fabulous!

What cookies are complete without sprinkles?
She was very proud of her work.
May the angels always help to light, guard, rule and guide our bodies and our souls!

Crown molding

We recently had crown molding installed in our master bedroom. It was a neat process, and we were very pleased with how it turned out.
A close-up
We also hung our Christ and Theotokos icons above the bed . They were an anniversary present last summer. Any tips on how they should be placed? We currently have Christ on the left (His own right) but an Orthodox friend mentioned he thought they should be the other way. I did some digging and can't really find information one way or the other. Anyone know??