Learning Through Playing

Here's a few pictures of the things we've been doing lately. Ivy has been painting every single day. She's really into it right now. She uses big brushes, little brushes, sponges, stamps, fingers. You name it! Sometimes we only put out one or two colors, and other times we put them all out.

I'm so impressed by how much she has grown these past six months. She can count to 20 with only one or two extra numbers thrown in for good measure. She can sing her ABC's and to my amazement, she knows them all. I was blown away. I owe that one to Sierra and her endless singing that she does loudly and offkey, despite my pleading with her to lower her voice just a tad. My bleeding ears were not in vain however, because now Ivy knows her ABC's!

Stringing beads is another activity that Ivy likes to do. While Mama makes hemp necklaces, Ivy makes her own too with jumbo wooden beads. She calls them her snakes. ;-)

She likes to sit down right next to my chair and make her snakes.

Oh! I also picked up a bunch of wooden food for her to play with, and she absolutely loves it! I have decided that I'm going to slowly start to weed out her electronic plastic toys, and replace them with wooden ones. Her imagination has soared since I've bought the few things I have.

Since we will be Unschooling the girls, I'd love to be able to get any many learning/exploring things as we can in the next few years. For Ivy's birthday next month we'll be getting her a wooden kitchen set. I really wish I could afford the solid pine handmade ones, but wow! They are $$$. If I had the money to spare I really would get them though. And the Haba website is a dream to shop at! I love looking at all the realistic wooden foods. I'll be getting her some more of those soon too.

Blessed be!

Ohmygosh

Ya, so its been a little while since I posted. I was lured to Myspace for awhile and started a page there. Its alright, but I much rather use this format for blogging. Feel free to check it out though! I will be moving my blog entries over to here because profiles get taken down all the time on Myspace. Heh. If you don't know what I mean, read my entry about the breastfeeding photos.

So, I haven't written here in a long time! THIS is our new addition! And the only baby that really looks like me. Piper really is a wonderful baby. I have absolutly no complaints. I'm not even losing any sleep! She sleeps at night almost straight through. She nurses like a champ and is, as of last week at her 4 month appointment on the 23rd, 15 lbs 8 oz. and 25 1/2" long. Head circumfrence is 42 cm. Yup. I'd say she's growing well. She's already in 6-9 month clothes as well. She's just sooo long.

These pictures were taken Memorial Day weekend at Rotery Park. The girls had the first swim of the season and were so thrilled! It was mighty cold, but the mud was so alluring at the waters edge that they played for hours. All that flooding we got in New England the past few weeks made the normally hard packed bankings of the river a real fun slip and slide for the kids here. Course, it smelled like dog doo, but who cares?! They didn't.

Things with the girls have been going extreemly well. Sierra is level 4 in her competitive gymnastics team now. (she just moved up!) She's doing well in school, but I have a feeling she's really looking forward to summer. Ivy has really matured in the past few months. She's gone from talking in some sentences, to.. well, there is no stopping her now! She knows her alphabet, she can count to 10, and sorta to 20 with some funny mistakes. lol She knows her colors but reverses a few occassionally. Overall her listening and comprehension has improved tenfold. She'll be three in 2 months so I'm glad to see this progression, but it really does come out of the blue doesn't it?! Potty-wise she is slowly learning to pee on it. She gets stickers when she does and a huge gianormous fanfare of dancing, singing, and clapping. Even Daddy gets involved! Pooping on the potty is still soemthing she wants NO part in. She prefers to put a pull up on and hide behind the bedroom door. lol Eventually she'll see the allure of the toilet but for now, she brings me a pull up and asks to be changed when she's done. Hey, its progress.

Medically both Chris and I have been plauged with a host of different ailments. I just had surgery for kidney stones about a month ago, and I'm awaiting to have a few of my teeth removed because they are causing me some immense pain. Chris has been battling unknown hip pain thats really been slowing him down. I know he is a bit scared as to what it could be. Xrays showed nothing abnormal so they're sending him to a specialist soon.

Soooo.. I hope to be back around these parts a bit more! I apologise for neglecting it, but ya know.. stuff comes up and whooops! I'm off to put Piper to sleep.
Later.