We survived the week without Steve here. Miss A didn't react too much when he didn't come home from work each day. But now her attachment to him is stronger. :) I'm okay with that.
I can hardly believe that we've been here for 9 months already. Look back always makes time go by faster. And having something to look forward to. We're setting off for summer vacation in 35 days! We'll spend a week with Steve parent's who are in Frankfurt serving a mission there. It's nice that senior missionaries have less strict rules. We can visit them, they can take a week off to spend time with us. They can skype. Then it's off to the good old USA. We arrived on July 4th before the fireworks, so if we haven't passed out already, we'll do some small fireworks. Sparklers anyone? I'm so excited to start the summer. I think the next 5 weeks might be a bit boring in comparison to what we have to look forward too.
Big E and Miss A have grown so much in the last 9 months. Big E has started to pretend in his play. Often he'll say, "Mom, pretend you're the mom horse, and I'm the baby horse and, we're picking fruit and snickers off our tree because snickers are your favorite." (And yes, he knows what candy bar is my favorite, and not because I eat them all the time. He also knows and remembers that pumpkin pie is my favorite kind of pie, even though we haven't had it since Christmas. Sometimes in our play he'll hand me a pretend easter egg and say, "Here's an Easter egg for you. It has half a pumpkin pie in it." Yumm!) He's really into baby animals right now. He's always the baby horse. If I'm not told to be the Mom horse, then I'm the baby sheep. There's a ball that came with some stacking cups. He's always called that "baby ball". Big E's attention span has increased enough that I noticed. We put together the train track and then built houses in the center and bridges over the train track using the building blocks. He requested that we leave it up and then went back to it after a little while. He's never done that before. He's always moved on once he's left something.
I am learning how to play pretend. It doesn't come easily to me and I'll admit that I get bored. But I'm working on it, and hopefully Big E won't notice my boredom.
Big E loves to be outside running around. It's hot outside now (95 right now at 2:10pm, but it's already been up to 100 a number of times). So outside play is limited to after dinner when the sun is almost down. He's beginning to like swimming, though won't wear any kind of life vest. He'll use a tube and hold on to that. He usually won't go near the deep end. And at the main club house, the kiddie pool is separated by a wall from the main pool so he can't just walk over. He's grown taller too. His head is completely out of the water in the kiddie pool now.
When I bake, Big E is the first to come and help. He loves to help me make bread and watch the stand mixer mix. He'll even show with his finger how it does planetary motion. When he's excited about something, he jumps up, but it's more like a hop on one leg, I guess. It's kinda hard to explain how he does it.
Big E doesn't often sit down to read on his own, but still loves me to read stories to him. He's usually willing, though, to take turns reading pages.
We've been practicing writing a few numbers. He likes to write on the white board. So I'll make dashed numbers that his has to trace. He thinks that's great fun.
Miss A gets paper and washable markers while we practice writing. One day, by the time I had made the letters for Big E to trace,
Miss A looked like this:
Miss A is a little fireball. She still screeches a lot. And not always because she's mad. She's learning words, finally. She says, "baby", "up"(though not frequently), "psss" (please), "uh oh", "moo", "wa sis" (meaning "what's this?" she'll point to things or pictures in books and say it), "maaa" (it's kinda like a cat's meow, she'll say it while she crawls around on the floor. And I'm counting it as a word because it's associated with something specific.) and one of my favorites "wow!" (when she says it, she raises the pitch of her voice as she moves through the "o"and then goes back down. Many times when she says it, he eyes light up and she's truly excited. And sometimes she'll put her hand on her cheeks.). There are others, but at the moment, I can't think of them. She watches her big brother and loves to try to do what he does. She has started pretending much earlier than Big E, probably because she has someone to watch. Big E didn't start pretending to be an animal until we moved here. Miss A is frequently a cat. She also likes to carry around a stuffed Woody that my mom gave to Big E, and a little doll. If she doesn't have either or both of those in her arms, she likes to carry a cloth bucket that we have. She'll put some treasure in it and put it on her arm or shoulder like a purse or hand bag, and then walk around in it showing the contents to me and then walk away. She'll come back and do it again.
She knows what she wants still. If she wants to color, she'll get a coloring book out and take it to her seat at the table. And then get my attention to get the crayons out and get her up in the chair. (The chairs are a bit too high for her to climb up onto the chair with her booster seat on it. But she can climb onto the chairs and from there the table.)
Miss A's attention span has also increased noticeably. She's much more willing to sit and listen to stories now. Before nap or bed time is a good time to read to her. She'll sit, relaxed in my lap and listen to stories. I love it. She's also bringing me books and handing them to me when she wants me to read them to her. She's has also sat for 20 minutes with me and we read every book that was in the basket in the dining/living room. Big E was outside playing as so I could skip around and shorten stories as needed for her and if she didn't want to finish, she could just close the book and put it aside. I love that she's to this stage now. Reading books to my kids is one of my favorite things to do. We are fortunate to be able to use the library at Steve's work. The selection in english isn't huge, but it does add some variety to our collection.
Miss A likes to play in the dirt in one of the house plants. And only one. She leaves all the others alone. One evening I caught her with both hands and one foot in the pot, attempting to get the other foot in as well. I wish I had taken a picture before removing her. She'll come to me know and show me her hands and say "uh oh" when she's been playing in the dirt.
And yet, she's girly enough to want to wear a head band, though this is how she put it on herself:
As I mentioned at the beginning, Miss A's attachment to Steve has only increased since he's been back from Spain. If I so much as give her a hug after family prayer before bed, she bursts into tears and reaches for daddy. On Friday, after church, Steve picked her up from nursery (by the way, she's in nursery now!) and was talking to someone. She had a dirty diaper, so took her to go change it and did not want to go with me. She tried to cling to Steve and when I got her loose, she began to scream and reach as hard as she could for him. People were giving me looks of sympathy, until I told them that I just took her from dad, and then they laughed.
I can hardly believe that we've been here for 9 months already. Look back always makes time go by faster. And having something to look forward to. We're setting off for summer vacation in 35 days! We'll spend a week with Steve parent's who are in Frankfurt serving a mission there. It's nice that senior missionaries have less strict rules. We can visit them, they can take a week off to spend time with us. They can skype. Then it's off to the good old USA. We arrived on July 4th before the fireworks, so if we haven't passed out already, we'll do some small fireworks. Sparklers anyone? I'm so excited to start the summer. I think the next 5 weeks might be a bit boring in comparison to what we have to look forward too.
Big E and Miss A have grown so much in the last 9 months. Big E has started to pretend in his play. Often he'll say, "Mom, pretend you're the mom horse, and I'm the baby horse and, we're picking fruit and snickers off our tree because snickers are your favorite." (And yes, he knows what candy bar is my favorite, and not because I eat them all the time. He also knows and remembers that pumpkin pie is my favorite kind of pie, even though we haven't had it since Christmas. Sometimes in our play he'll hand me a pretend easter egg and say, "Here's an Easter egg for you. It has half a pumpkin pie in it." Yumm!) He's really into baby animals right now. He's always the baby horse. If I'm not told to be the Mom horse, then I'm the baby sheep. There's a ball that came with some stacking cups. He's always called that "baby ball". Big E's attention span has increased enough that I noticed. We put together the train track and then built houses in the center and bridges over the train track using the building blocks. He requested that we leave it up and then went back to it after a little while. He's never done that before. He's always moved on once he's left something.
I am learning how to play pretend. It doesn't come easily to me and I'll admit that I get bored. But I'm working on it, and hopefully Big E won't notice my boredom.
Big E loves to be outside running around. It's hot outside now (95 right now at 2:10pm, but it's already been up to 100 a number of times). So outside play is limited to after dinner when the sun is almost down. He's beginning to like swimming, though won't wear any kind of life vest. He'll use a tube and hold on to that. He usually won't go near the deep end. And at the main club house, the kiddie pool is separated by a wall from the main pool so he can't just walk over. He's grown taller too. His head is completely out of the water in the kiddie pool now.
When I bake, Big E is the first to come and help. He loves to help me make bread and watch the stand mixer mix. He'll even show with his finger how it does planetary motion. When he's excited about something, he jumps up, but it's more like a hop on one leg, I guess. It's kinda hard to explain how he does it.
We've been practicing writing a few numbers. He likes to write on the white board. So I'll make dashed numbers that his has to trace. He thinks that's great fun.
Miss A gets paper and washable markers while we practice writing. One day, by the time I had made the letters for Big E to trace,
Miss A looked like this:
Miss A is a little fireball. She still screeches a lot. And not always because she's mad. She's learning words, finally. She says, "baby", "up"(though not frequently), "psss" (please), "uh oh", "moo", "wa sis" (meaning "what's this?" she'll point to things or pictures in books and say it), "maaa" (it's kinda like a cat's meow, she'll say it while she crawls around on the floor. And I'm counting it as a word because it's associated with something specific.) and one of my favorites "wow!" (when she says it, she raises the pitch of her voice as she moves through the "o"and then goes back down. Many times when she says it, he eyes light up and she's truly excited. And sometimes she'll put her hand on her cheeks.). There are others, but at the moment, I can't think of them. She watches her big brother and loves to try to do what he does. She has started pretending much earlier than Big E, probably because she has someone to watch. Big E didn't start pretending to be an animal until we moved here. Miss A is frequently a cat. She also likes to carry around a stuffed Woody that my mom gave to Big E, and a little doll. If she doesn't have either or both of those in her arms, she likes to carry a cloth bucket that we have. She'll put some treasure in it and put it on her arm or shoulder like a purse or hand bag, and then walk around in it showing the contents to me and then walk away. She'll come back and do it again.
She knows what she wants still. If she wants to color, she'll get a coloring book out and take it to her seat at the table. And then get my attention to get the crayons out and get her up in the chair. (The chairs are a bit too high for her to climb up onto the chair with her booster seat on it. But she can climb onto the chairs and from there the table.)
Miss A's attention span has also increased noticeably. She's much more willing to sit and listen to stories now. Before nap or bed time is a good time to read to her. She'll sit, relaxed in my lap and listen to stories. I love it. She's also bringing me books and handing them to me when she wants me to read them to her. She's has also sat for 20 minutes with me and we read every book that was in the basket in the dining/living room. Big E was outside playing as so I could skip around and shorten stories as needed for her and if she didn't want to finish, she could just close the book and put it aside. I love that she's to this stage now. Reading books to my kids is one of my favorite things to do. We are fortunate to be able to use the library at Steve's work. The selection in english isn't huge, but it does add some variety to our collection.
Miss A likes to play in the dirt in one of the house plants. And only one. She leaves all the others alone. One evening I caught her with both hands and one foot in the pot, attempting to get the other foot in as well. I wish I had taken a picture before removing her. She'll come to me know and show me her hands and say "uh oh" when she's been playing in the dirt.
And yet, she's girly enough to want to wear a head band, though this is how she put it on herself:
As I mentioned at the beginning, Miss A's attachment to Steve has only increased since he's been back from Spain. If I so much as give her a hug after family prayer before bed, she bursts into tears and reaches for daddy. On Friday, after church, Steve picked her up from nursery (by the way, she's in nursery now!) and was talking to someone. She had a dirty diaper, so took her to go change it and did not want to go with me. She tried to cling to Steve and when I got her loose, she began to scream and reach as hard as she could for him. People were giving me looks of sympathy, until I told them that I just took her from dad, and then they laughed.
1 comment:
Don't worry, pretend was always a hard one for me too. I love the part about having half a pumpkin pie in an easter egg and I can just pictures Miss A climbing inside one of your potted plants, what a character! I can't wait to see you all!
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