Thursday, June 30, 2011

Graduation

Well, it is official now...we have a kindergartener! On June 20th, Sophia graduated from Preschool with much pomp and circumstance. Her class sang three songs, wore and threw felt mortar boards, and got little diplomas and gifts. There was a very nice slideshow of pictures from over the year...if that won't tear a mama up, I don't know what will. It was amazing to watch the progression in the kids from the beginning of the year to the end. It was also awesome to watch how well the kids got along and how important those friendships are to them. Not all of the classmates will be together in Kindergarten, but the memories are there and so are the phone numbers for play dates....

I am going to get David to edit down one of the videos of the kids singing...it's over four minutes long and takes up a lot of space. But here's one of the kids throwing their hats...

YouTube Video

Glad they used soft hats...






Getting her diploma




Sophia and her best friend Freyja. Up that's Sophia's graduation picture in the background. I will pst those soon.




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Just for Fun




Sophia and Dora...Sophie was the Etoile de Semaine again before the end of school, and did the requisite picture with the Dora doll to share with her classmates







Dressed up in her Fancy Nancy dress...dress up is a favorite past time around here.



The bottles were empty, and rinsed out...really, and truly....the kids just loved playing with them. We do love our kids.....






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Preschool try out

For the last year, Jacob has accompanied me and Sophia to preschool, three times a week. As the year went on, he showed more and more interest in the classroom and the teachers, spending time with the kids and the Madames. He seemed to really like it, after all they had little dinosaurs he could play with!

So, David and I decided that it was time for Jacob to start thinking about going to school in the fall. He is registered to start in September, right before his third birthday. Thankfully, he is comfortable in the class and with the teachers, as they always talk to him when he comes with Sophia. He has also been on a couple of field trips with them.

Part if his being a new student, Jacob was invited to a preschool open house. Jake and spent an hour together there, just being in the class. He spent time playing with the cars, the dinosaurs, the listening center, the computer, and then he found the water table. Well this was a great new thing. Thankfully, Madame M managed to convince Jacob to wear a waterproof smock to keep dry. Here's the only problem, the smock and the table are made for regularly sized three year olds. Jacob meet tall table...good luck.




I can just get over the edge....



Okay, so the smock is more like a dress on Jacob, and the arms are rolled up to the seams, but it's on.



Standing on tippy toes. For comparison, there is another new student standing at the table...no tippy toes. All I can say, is I am proud of Jacob for not being halted or scared by things that are bigger than he is....He just sees the challenge and takes it on. I am hoping he does the same when he ventures off to school next year. I just pray that my heart is ready for it when he does. I get weepy thinking about it....


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Science Time

While David was away at Conference Annual meeting for the United Church here in Sask, Diane came and stayed with me so I wouldn't have to wrangle the kids on my own for four days. One of the things we did to pass the time was head over to the Sask Science Center for some educational fun.




Learning about probability...if you grab one sock out of the dryer, what is the probability that you will grab the matching one on the next reach in. Also, learning a little bit about the baffling phenomenon of the disappearing sock.




The owl, who has taken the place of the ferrets. Not eaten the ferrets, they have a new home elsewhere in the center. it's true...I saw them. Really, I did.




in the container is the top part of a denture. The idea here is to predict if it will land teeth up or teeth down when you push the button to launch it. I think Sophia was mostly baffled by the idea of fake teeth.




There is a little area about road rules and environmental care etc...and part of that is to build your own little wearable car so that you can "drive" around and check things out. Jacob decided that the car parts were for stacking not driving. This stack is essentially taller than he is, but he persists. It did fall over, eventually, but he just started again.


YouTube Video

Sophia loves the science shows... and often is eager to participate but doesn't get chosen. This time she got picked. She and several bigger boys got to step on an air pump to launch a rocket in to the air. I can't entirely remember what the show was about, but she loved participating. She's a superstar.

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popsicle joy

So, when he does decide to eat, Jacob has interesting methods for getting the food in his mouth...

YouTube Video


This is from Mother's Day. We had a lovely dinner together, and finished up with Raspberry popsicles. It wasn't quite warm enough to be outside with out something warmer on, but we still ate outside.

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Clean yer plate

Some of you know about our constant battles with getting Jacob to eat. He doesn't seem to understand the connection between eating and growing. It is regular battle to get him to eat, even when he should be starving...like in the morning, after not eating for 12 hours. Anyway, this empty plate was a cause for great celebration! It is very rare thing to find something that Jacob will eat all of, leaving the plate completely empty. Not something that a lot of kids have to worry about, but for us is a minor victory.



Here's to more empty plates.


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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Guess who's going to kindergarten???







It's a little surreal to think about, but my little girl is heading to kindergarten in the fall. She is all registered up for afternoon french immersion. We've had a couple of orientation meetings, including a one hour kindergarten class just to get used to the class room and one of the teachers. That hour class was capped off with a 15 minute bus ride (which Jacob still talks about --I had to be on the bus with Sophia and Jacob just isn't old enough to stay at home by himself yet!) so that the kids could learn the bus ride rules. Sophia won't be riding to school as we are too close and will walk each day. The only issue we have is weaning our little girl off her afternoon naps, as school starts at 12:45, which is smack dab in the middle of normal nap time. Oh well, we will work it out. Needless to say this marks a big moment in our little girl's life!



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Sunny yellow flowers

Who can resist a field of sunny yellow dandelions?
















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Just a little mosquito bite

Really big reaction....







Yup, super sensitive response to a mosquito bite on his forehead. This swelling started in his forehead (imagine the forehead of a cro-magnon man) and with the help of gravity over night the swelling migrated into his eye. This is better then when he first woke up...he couldn't even open his eye first thing. Nevertheless, the swelling meant that we had a quick trip to the ER to make sure nothing else was going on. The ER doctor that saw us was one that had tended to us before, and remembered us. She was moments away from admitting us for eye infection. Thankfully she called Jacob's pediatrician, who said not to as it was an over reaction of the immune system to the bite. Whew. I was not looking forward to keeping him there.

Now he gets covered in bug spray every time he goes out. Poor guy.





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Bless you....

This is what happens when you let Jacob use your iPhone for entertainment.

YouTube Video


I really got to wash my phone more often....



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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Language

Jacob's language is finally taking off, and in a big way. We kind of knew this would happen - it is apparently a fairly typical pattern. He's a boy, and a second child, and both of those things contribute to later language development. Most folks we talked to with some experience in this area (grandparents, other parents etc) said that when he starts to talk he'll REALLY talk, and that is what is happening.

He had been stuck on two-word sentences for a while, but now he is firmly in the multiple word domain. It was a couple of weeks ago when we first started to realize that his language was exploding.

Jacob and I were hanging out in his room getting ready for bed and he was playing with his cars (he is always playing with cars, by the way. Whenever we see a display or an ad or a new branded toy relating to the upcoming "Cars 2" movie, he dives into a rant about cars. Mostly unintelligible, but "CARSH" is always heard multiple times). Anyway, we were playing with his cars, and he picks up a fire truck, shows it to me, and says:

"Engine! Fire truck! one more..." (picks up an identical fire truck) "same, see? see? Same!"

so thats like three-and-a-half 2-word sentences in a row, but he's putting them together in larger constructs. You might say it's a paragraph of two word sentences.

He's really big on matching things up these days too. "Same", "match", "pair" are coming out at regular intervals, and he is really concerned with knowing that you know that he knows. so "See? see?" is happening a lot too,

Just the other day, he came out with this gem:

"mama eye" (pointing to Tricia's eye), "me eye" (pointing to his own eye), "body eye" (meaning "everybody eye", meaning "everyone has eyes!").

This should be significant to anyone familiar with my own language development, because apparently "everybody have noses" was the first three-word sentence I uttered as a child.

And just today, he said what amounts to a true three-word sentence: "I ripping, mommy!" used to show how he was disassembling a hot dog bun. I think this may be a bit generous to call it a three word sentence, since its really just "I ripping" with a "mommy" tagged on (which has the same effect as the above-mentioned "see? see?" but he is getting there).

The main point is that his vocabulary is indeed exploding every day. He points to things and we name them, and the he has the name in his vocabulary. He's like a sponge, and its amazing to see how he can start to make himself understood. From time to time he will have a large important concept he needs to get across and he'll try but eventually he loses to frustration and just blurts out a complete sentence full of nonsense gibberish, which is hilarious.

On and one more thing. He's got almost all of the letter sounds, but he's still working on "s" and has been for some time. Sophia is still "Fee-a", but he hasn't been able to completely avoid using "s", and there was a significant chunk of time where he would substitute "sh" for "s". Anything he pluralizes is still occasionally subject to this replacement, so "Cars", which he is still crazy excited about, becomes "Carsh" as you saw above. Other words that get this treatment include BUhSH (for bus), TREESH, etc etc.

And so, as you might expect, we call him mooch.