Is It Naptime Yet

On Sunday Lilah saw a flyer and asked what is was for. I told her it was for the Stake Fourth of July breakfast and she said she just had to go. I told her it started before she got up and that she’d have to wake up really early. She said I could wake her up.  So we went, even though I wasn’t planning on going. (She even would ask me during the week what day it was. Then on Friday she woke up by herself and was so impressed with herself. )

Some old friends were in town from Texas so it was fun to see them at the breakfast. Other than that the line was  pretty long for food and the girls only ate part of their plates of food. It was a beautiful morning and didn’t get too hot until we left.

We hung out at home for most of the day and then had a birthday party to attend for my niece Katy. Eden did not take a nap because she was too excited for the party.

There was swimming at the party, but the pool was pretty cold since the sun was low in the sky. Lilah had fun floating around and Eden had fun putting cold water on Mommy. Luckily there was a big step  for Eden to play in so I didn’t have to go in.

After cake, ice cream, and hitting the pinata we headed over to my parents house to enjoy fireworks.

The girls did OK for the most part. They sat on laps with their ears covered for a period of time, then they sat in Carolyn’s car and Lilah went inside for the last 15 minutes or so, until sparklers. Lilah really enjoyed the sparklers since they didn’t make any noise. She was weary at first, but once she realized they wouldn’t hurt her she did well and could hardly wait for them to be lit for her once one was finished.
We saw a lot if aerial/ illegal fireworks on the way up to my parents and while we were there. We also had a good view of the Henderson City Hall, which launched fireworks off the top of the building.

It was a fun night and we got home around 11 pm. (Jon came home after the party to make sure our house didn’t burn down from aerial/illegal fireworks going off in the neighborhood. I’m happy to say our house did not catch fire.)

Saturday we went and saw WALL-E. We all enjoyed the movie thoroughly and Jon said that Pixar’s created a robot more lovable than R2 D2. It really has a great message and is wonderful. I almost cried at one part. Pixar is able to do that to me though. (Sometimes I cry during Cars too. )

Lilah had her hands over her ears for the first half hour or so of the movie until she realized it wasn’t too loud. Eden had her hands over her ears for the most part, though she would relax and remove them for short periods during the movie.

My children are very strange when it comes to loud noises. At least they don’t cover their ears with our own toilet anymore.

Britta and Lilah are best friends. Britta calls Lilah her special friend and they exchange gifts all the time. When we dropped off a thank you for Sam Lilah made a gift for Britta, which included a rainbow crayon that she had.

Earlier this week Lilah got an e-mail from her friend Britta. It had pictures that she had chosen for Lilah to see.

In return  Lilah thought we should share pictures with Britta.  So I took  one of each girl and then went through what we had.

So here are the pictures for Britta and some that I needed to share anyways.

Lilah’s hand in a bandage.

Her little pinkie finger was hurting her all day, especially when the nail was touched. I thought she had just banged it sometime during the night since it wasn’t hurting till Monday morning. I finally took a look at her nail that night and noticed something under the nail. She had gotten a sliver under her nail and that’s what was causing the excruciating pain for her during the day. Once removed her finger felt fine.

 

Eden with Lilah’s Doodle Bear. (It has been colored on and washed so the marker doesn’t stain or become hard to remove. )

 

 Lilah with our 7 or 8 foot sunflower.

 

The girls with sunflower.

 

A close up of the Sunflower.

A close up of the tiny bee on the sunflower.

So I don’t plan on Lilah having to be the smartest five year old, but I think she is.

The other day looking at a United States place mat she told us which direction was North, South, East and West by pointing at the compass with just the N, S, E, W. I’m just impressed she remembered since I’ve only told her once.

Then today I had four eggs in the pan for boiling and she said 4 is 2 squared! (Jon gave her a lesson in squares the other day with grapes.)

Kids learn the darnedest things at very strange times.

Yesterday was a fun filled day. A very fun filled day in very hot weather.

We dropped off cinnamon rolls, returned something to JoAnn’s, had lunch with Anna and met up with a local unschooling group.

It was so hot outside.

The unschooling group met up at a local park to have fun and do the mentos experiment.
I felt a little odd at first. There was a woman with dreadlocks, a vegan and what appeared to be another very health conscious organic mom.

Even though the yahoo group description said they accepted everyone, I was worried that I might be too normal and not eccentric enough to fit in.

Plus all the kids seemed to be mostly boys and  at least seven years old and older.

They pointed me to another mom who had young kids later after I was there. Julia is her name, she has a five year old son and a 16 month old daughter. She also appeared to be more average, or not eccentric. We chatted a little and she lives on my side of town. She also had a homeschooling group that is dissolving so she was wanting to find another group for her son to hang out with.

We chatted a little then it was time for the mentos experiment. The girls liked it and the other kids had lots of fun too.

This is when I was really able to chat with all the moms. They were really nice and very open minded. They said I was the anomaly to have a husband supporting homeschooling, let alone the unschooling technique.

Side note: Unschooling is the least formal type of homeschooling. You basically live life and let your children learn all they want about a subject. It’s motivated by what the child wants to learn and not by what you want to teach them.  You can find definitions for different homeschooling techniques here.

It seems that most of the fathers worried about whether their children were actually learning enough. So telling them about Jon and his support, really homeschooling is the only option in his mind, made them like him before they’ve ever met him.

We also discussed Montessori schools in the valley. One of the mom’s, Rachel was her name I believe, two children have decided they wanted to go to school so they researched and Montessori is they path they’ve decided. It was interesting because Darlene, another mom mentioned how unschooling is about letting your child make the decisions and letting them go to school if they desire is also apart of unschooling.

Our differences seemed less as I got to know them and discuss.

I met only a handful of the group, but it was still fun. I do worry that Lilah may never formally interact too much with kids since they’re all just at the park playing and doing their own thing, but hopefully over time she’ll recognize the families and get to know the children better.

When I joined the yahoo group I mentioned my concern for how to teach Lilah reading and writing. Reading is a part of life, but writing, that takes practice so it’s not something you can just learn through life, I guess you can try to write letters to people or something.
The facilitator of the group mentioned how I could discuss that at the activities and get input from other moms. She also mentioned once she let go of the idea of having her son be the smartest five year old homeschooling got a lot easier. (Compared to fighting one another on what to learn and not having fun. )

So, I’m going to try to let go and let Lilah learn. I will still have some more traditional techniques, but she doesn’t need to be the smartest five year old. I know she won’t be learning the same things as as her peers in school but I know she’ll be learning, growing and having fun along the way.

My morning went pretty well for the first part.

I got Eden to poop in the potty! This was the first time and hopefully not the last.
I was setting the timer and putting her on the toilet every 15 to 20 minutes during her normal poop time, or after 10 o’clock,   and the second time she went poop in the potty.

Wahoo!

Now sometimes she poops once a day, sometimes 4 times and some days not at all. I didn’t want to be putting her on the potty all day long, since I still like to let her take the initiative and I just remind her at key times of the day. (When she wakes up, mid morning, before and after her nap. )

So I let her go on her merry way for the rest of the morning.

Around 11:30 I started washing dishes. Towards the end Lilah comes over to me holding a powdered sugar bag. I look over to see that she had spilled about 1-2 cups of powdered sugar on the floor. I was nearly done  washing dishes so I made her wait, and while she waited she created a pile of powdered sugar.

Then as I’m doing the very last dishes I hear Eden in the bathroom calling for help. I made her wait till I was finished also.

Then I heard Eden say something about poop.
Had she pooped in the potty again?

No.

She had pooped in her pull-up and then tried to get it to the potty and in the mean time was cleaning it up using wipes and getting it everywhere at the same time.

There was poop on the floor, toilet, step stool, her, and her hands. It was gross. Really, really gross.

So Lilah was still making a powdered sugar “castle” while I got Eden cleaned up and then the bathroom poop free. I’m glad she made the effort, to get the poop into the potty even if it was a little late, but I hope that next time it gets in the potty or stays in the pull-up.

Then I had to sweep up the powdered sugar. I swept while Lilah got her feet and hands washed off. Then she had to come clean my floor because apparently powdered sugar on my floor is like those pink tablets you chew to find plaque on your teeth as a kid. Powdered sugar sticks to anything on your floor including spots where a little girl walked while “cleaning’ up the powdered sugar. I had Lilah wipe the floor down with a rag while I supervised.

I was pretty upset between the two accidents and Lilah got the brunt of it since I was trying to be calm for Eden. For whatever reason I’m having a really hard time keeping my temper lately.  Plus, my girls rarely make messes like these. Spilled water or juice every once in a while is the worst.

It was a rough morning.

Lilah still sucks her thumb, but possibly not anymore.

I thought last year she might be on the verge of quitting thumb sucking, but I guess she just wasn’t ready and she still continued to self comfort, and I think she did it a little more frequently too.

Tuesday night something had happened to her right thumb. There was some sore on it, no doubt from thumb sucking, and the other thumb just wasn’t ‘comfortable’ and it was very frustrating for her. To help calm her and get her to sleep, it was around 10 o’clock because of the play we went to, I got out a Hello Kitty Band-Aid that had been a part of a birthday present and put it on the sore. This helped and she went to sleep without too much whining. The next day she was set on keeping her band-aid nice and it was kinda funny, except when she wouldn’t do things for fear of bending the band-aid. We took it off later that day and she has avoided sucking her thumb due to the sore.

Just a few moments ago she told me she wasn’t going to suck her thumb anymore. I asked her why she had made the decision. If she just didn’t want to or if she was getting too big? She replied she just didn’t want to and then expanded that “I’m getting big and big people don’t suck thumbs.” (Earlier today she was wanting pacifier but I said she was too big for a pacifier and we joked a little. She was saying she wanted something to comfort her.)

I’m mostly OK with her sucking her thumb, but I do admit I like the times she’s unable to because I hope she forgets that she wants to suck her thumb and I hope she’ll stop. I try not to say things but I do try to prevent the girls from sucking their thumbs when in public, but mostly for sanitary reasons.

Only time will tell if this is the end of thumb sucking for her, and I’m OK if it’s not.

I feel like it’s Saturday, but since I’m just getting started on my lesson for Sunday I’m happy that it’s Thursday.

Jon’s home. He took two days off with only one to recover and tomorrow he goes back to work. He has to drive the Subaru, or our manual car, oppose to my nice automatic car, because of the parking permit he needs and I don’t have. You gotta love working on a campus where you have to pay for your own parking and they’re stickers that can’t be easily removed.

Today we went to a community pool with the mommy/ preschool group. It was the last hurray. The girls had lots of fun and it was a nice, clean and quiet pool. It’s kind of off the road and you don’t see the pool easily. My friend Emilie says it’s never been too busy during the week for her, but Saturdays can get busier.  It’s $3 for adults and $2 for children three and older so I will probably try to go one or two times before Eden officially turns three. I think I’ll also have to hit Sweet Tomatoe’s one more time till I have to pay for her.

It’s a nice pool with less stuff than the one we went to last summer with my sister in Henderson, which is good. My girls don’t like water in their eyes so to have less made it easier to avoid and thus better.  It had a slide that had water coming from different areas and just one mushroom with water. I don’t know how to describe it except as a mushroom with water coming out of the top to make a water wall around it. The girls really enjoyed it, though Eden had to warm up to it but once she was comfortable I couldn’t keep them with me. They wanted to go in different directions so I just sat and watched them at one point since it was open and not too busy. I did lose Eden when she tried to go onto the slide with her life jacket. (I thought she was just walking around it and waited a moment to see her come out from behind it, but she decided to climb up to the slide.)  The life guard got there right as I got there, so it wasn’t that long that I lost site of her, and she was sad that she had to get down, but she didn’t want the life jacket off or water in her eyes from the slide.

It was nice and we stayed for just two hours, which was definitely long enough. I have pink areas where I didn’t get a lot of sun screen on me, like the middle of my nose and my right shoulder, which faced the sun most of the time anyways.
I think the girls are OK and not too pink anywhere.

After coming home I got Eden down for a nap then me. Then while getting dinner started I totally thought it was Saturday. Luckily I have two more days till my lesson, even though I’m looking forward to next week. Monday will be cleaning day. Tuesday making cinnamon rolls day. Wednesday delivering cinnamon rolls to those I need to thank for letting us use their house for Lilah’s party day and lunch with Anna. It’s been over a month since I saw her and it will be nice to visit.

Plus I think we might go see Wall-E this or next Saturday and I can’t wait.

I’ve figured out a way to get Google video to work so now I have the four videos I’ve wanted to post for your viewing pleasure.

The first is the piñata hitting– order of the kids: Lilah, Britta, Aurora, Eden, Aaron, Isaak, Katy, Howie, Adrienne and Howie again.  Side note: At the end Eden is the child under the table and she always laughs about being under the table.

The second is the of singing Happy Birthday to Lilah.

The third is of Lilah kicking around the pool and other people in the pool.

The fourth is the video I made to celebrate Lilah’s birthday.

For Lilah’s birthday we all woke up and had a late start to the day. I showed Lilah the video I made for her, which I will have to add another time and she loved it and watched it twice.

We had a very late breakfast and then got ready to get Lilah’s present.

She thought she was getting swimming goggles because she’s been asking for some, but after much research we decided to get her a pet Betta fish. They’re relatively easy to take care of and can live for a few years.

Meet Blueberry, Lilah’s new pet.

Lilah thought of his name all on her own. She had asked for suggestions so I gave her many names along the Bob and Fred area and even told  her we could name him Blue or Bluey. Once at home she thought of Blueberry and it has turned out to be a perfect name for our new addition. He is also a similar color the the fruit. We made a little name sign and decorated it with some stickers she had gotten for her birthday.
He’s the perfect pet for our family and oddly enough I already feel attached to him. He will come and look at you if you go to his tank and he just seems aware of his surroundings. We really like Blueberry.

After we got Blueberry Lilah and I picked out flowers for her birthday. The night before she mentioned getting flowers in a box, like I had from Jon on our anniversary. I had completely forgotten she had wanted flowers delivered to her on her birthday. She still seemed happy to pick out her own and she choose the Crazy Daisy bouquet.

We then had lunch and tried to get Eden down for a nap. Eden was too excited because we were going to go to Applebee’s and she did not sleep.

We went to Applebee’s for dinner. Lilah had chosen it earlier this month. The girls ate very little of there food that night. They really don’t eat a lot when we’re out. Lilah was too cold and thus unable to eat very much according to her reasoning. It’s funny because our bill with tip was around the same amount we paid for the ten pizza’s we bought for Lilah’s party. I was also reminded that you should never buy a steak unless you’re at a steak house because there is no comparison to the expensive steak I had on my anniversary at Austin’s Steakhouse.

It was a fun family day. Lilah had invited Britta, unannounced to us, so she was sad the her friend could not be at Applebee’s with us, but I think she still had fun.

This morning I asked Lilah what the letter and number of the day were on Sesame Street. She couldn’t remember what they were and said:
“It must have been a letter in the Alphabet.”

I think it must have been one of the 26 letters.

Then she started counting and saying it had to be one of those numbers.

Jon stayed home for Lilah’s birthday. We had been up very late the night before. (I was working on a video for Lilah til 3 am that I can’t get loaded on Google. Arg, Google video right now.) Eden was in our room playing and I made the comment that Mommy and Daddy were still trying to rest so could she go to the living room? Her reply.

“But it’s morning. It’s time to get up.”

I really wish you could have heard how she said it because that’s what made it really cute.