A story about Rosie, Jimmy, and Isa!
It’s so great when the weather is warm on the weekend in March. We went to the park and played in the backyard. Lots of fun! The day felt so free and easy and the time went by very quickly!
Wanna race?
flowers sprouting!
Everything about today was great except for one thing, someone stole Isa’s bike. I guess someone will be getting a new bike for her birthday!
Rosie makes magic happen!
Who’s she calling?
I can’t talk now my mom’s in the room…taking pictures no less.
We celebrated Agatha and Al’s fourth birthday!
At one point everyone was in the kitchen celebrating…well almost everyone.
Then we went out and celebrated Emily and Rob’s birthday. Not the best photo, but the night was perfect.
It was a good day!
Today we went to the library to return some books we had checked out and because I needed a specific book for Jimmy’s literacy homework this week, The Napping House by Audrey Wood (in case you were wondering…sight words there and who). Jimmy has 46 words down…just a fact…not trying to brag…too much! Any-who, the North branch library is great because it’s small and even if Jimmy and Rosie go in opposite directions, I feel kinda OK with that. I normally don’t stay too long though. On one end of the library there are two bathrooms and the doors are always open so that means I have to keep an eye out because Rosie and Jimmy will play with the toilet water if they wander that way or at the other end of the library is the exit and outside of the exit is the street which is dangerous, clearly! So, that kind of makes me nervous too but all in all it’s manageable for 20 or 30 minutes with just a few ounces of sweat. :)
Today at the library only one kid strayed at a time while the other stayed pretty close to me and the librarians only had to re-shelve about 25 books. That’s not the cool part though. The coolest thing that happened today at the library was that while I was running after the two little ones, Isa started to read a book to herself, by herself, with no prompting or anything and it was a book she had never seen before. It was a GREAT thing to see. She has always loved books but has relied on the pictures and her imagination and her memory when the book couldn’t be read to her. It was a Mo Willems book which are great books for beginners. I think I can safely call Isa a reader! She has a lot to learn but I think trying by yourself is all it takes. Way to go, ISA! I want to thank, Janet, the Queen of Harrisonville, for posting how miss O became an amazing reader. I knew I would go back to that post someday and did a few weeks ago. Since then, Isa has become more confident as we practice her flashcards nearly everyday. We are working on this list in particular and have almost gone through all of them.
Rosie is learning some great stuff too…like how to talk. Her vocabulary grows exponentially everyday. I love how she pronounces water, wa—de. She can say pretty much any word that she can sign and her signing is much more intelligible too. Today she talked about Papa and Daddy and differentiated the two by her signs and words. It was fabulous.
Although Rosie is great at learning new things, her strength still lies in falling down. That’s how she got her black eye. She fell off a chair. She does that nearly every day. I know we shouldn’t let her climb on the chairs, but it’s an impossible thing to stop. We did have all the dining room chairs in my bedroom for a few weeks but eventually they needed to come back out, and Rosie needed to learn how not to fall. She just walks off the chair while she’s looking at something on the table and forgets that the chair is only so wide.
She loves markers and drawing.
Back off, these cookies are mine!
Years ago, when Isa was 9 months old, I started going to the Family Room. It’s a drop in play center that used to be at the Chandler Newberger center in Evanston and then they got their own building. Recently, the Family Room lost a lot of their funding and it’s closing this week. It was a great place and one of the special things they did was sing Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see by Bill Martin and Eric Carle at the end of every playtime. That is how we read every Martin/Carle book that has a similar format like Polar Bear, Baby Bear, Panda Bear etc. I have noticed that all of the books that have singing in it are Jimmy’s favorites.
Jimmy was sitting with daddy but he moved closer as soon as they brought out Brown Bear! He knows them all by heart.
Isa took this picture of Marc! Marc got a new job at a new law firm. It’s pretty much the same has his last job but the new firm has a free soda fountain and a fancy coffee machine with crazy flavors like cookies and crème. He’s just as happy as he used to be!
Jimmy finished making his ABC book so now he is making a word book. A word for each letter of the alphabet!
Here he is pointing to each word and even reading them. Jimmy is kind of like the Northwestern football team…stay with me…they have a great football team but they compete against huge schools so it’s harder for them to win. But when they do, it’s incredible and you remember those games for a long long time. Watching Jimmy learn is like watching Northwestern win!
Jimmy looking at a new sight word!
The Gumball Ocean by Isa I absolutely LOVE the Y in BY Isa.
Once upon a time there was a huge gumball machine. One day a girl went to the ocean of the gumball and she didn’t know that gumballs were in there. She put her fishing pole into the gumball ocean. Then she felt something on her fishing pole so she took it out and she saw a purple gumball. Then she went to Lake Michigan and she didn’t know that gumball ocean was attached to it and she caught another purple gumball. Then she went to another ocean that was connected and caught a green gumball. And she said, “Oh my goodness, why do I keep catching gumballs?” She fished in a puddle where she thought there were fish but she got a black gumball. Then she looked up and realized she was under a giant gumball machine!
Isa, the mermaid!
Puzzle time with Daddy! Yay!
I actually had a lot more to say. Till next time (if I remember)!
I have been toying with the idea of making a chalkboard for the basement and this helped me make up my mind.
Isa went downstairs a kid and came upstairs a movie star. She explained that if she had stilts she would look bigger and would be a real movie star.
She added the pink ribbon belt. She is a belt enthusiast. She’s got the no smile cool look down.
The smile detection on my camera really works!
This rarely happens but Marc took this to demonstrate that I put Rosie’s snack on the ground. Extreme times call for extreme measures.
Mug shots in the castle!
Rosie at work.
No ice cream?!
Can we talk about this?
OK, let’s start over, we got off to a rocky start.
Jimmy likes to play with knives…not sure where to go from here.
Leppy stayed at our house this week. He made lots of mischief. I’m glad he will not be staying over any longer!
Love, Love, Love (the kids not leppy)!
