Sunday, November 1, 2009

This Week, and Last Week . . .

Little Bit isn't giving me much typing time these days, when she's nursing she's generally too wiggly &/or distractible for me to type (sometimes even for me to surf the 'net), and she no longer has a long (3+ hour) sleep stretch at the beginning of the night, so I have to greatly prioritize how I use the half hour or so of baby's asleep time that I DO get at night . . . and blogging hasn't made the cut.

So now we'll attempt it while she eats her cheerios, or at least get it started.

Let's see . . .

This weekend my parents came up. My wonderful Dad helped us babyproof by installing our gate at the top of the steps and anchoring the bookcases and game cabinet to the wall, methinks Little Bit will try scaling such things more than her sisters did, plus the bookcases were hidden away in an extra bedroom when they were her age.

On Sabbath we went to the Philadelphia Zoo. It was rainy (forecast was only 10% chance of rain but it drizzled most of the day) but that kept the crowds away and we spent most of our time in the buildings anyway, the girls spent large blocks of time watching the naked mole rats and later a family of monkeys that were eating lettuce.

We've been being more consistent about doing school each day. We're just finishing up Little House on the Prairie for our Unit Study, and we're starting on v.17 for Polished Cornerstone (our year-long study of Prov 31:10-31) we started some seeds for winter container gardening week before last and the girls are excited to see sprouts coming up already. We started lettuce, cilantro, basil, chives and parsley.

The girls have been doing very well at keeping their room clean, I'm proud of them! We're going to work on doing some additional decorating in there now, they're excited about that.

Yesterday Mama helped A to mend the dress of the doll that she got in Williamsburg, she was so excited to "sew" and L was wishing there was something she could mend too. Mama said when the girls are at their house for our anniversary, she'll help L make a bib for her doll. L is very excited and went down to my fabric box and chose the fabric she wants.

Last week the girls painted pumpkins. We'd gotten them a few weeks ago & the big girls had each chosen a big pumpkin for themselves and a small one for their dolls. When we got ready to paint them, L decided that Little Bit needed a pumpkin more than her doll did, so she painted her little pumpkin for Little Bit instead.

We started reading the Addy American Girl books. Addy was a slave girl who escaped at the end of the first book, the harshness of slave life was hard for the girls to understand. When Addy & her mother decided they had to leave baby sister behind and escape, L was in tears at the very thought of leaving Little Bit behind. A was more "practical" about it all, pointing out that there aren't slaves in this country now, and that "President Obama has brown skin, so he wouldn't let there be slaves again". The 2nd book, after Addy & mother had successfully escaped and were making their new life in the North was less traumatic for the girls LOL. For some reason it's taken almost a week for the library to get book 3 since I reserved it (and even now, it just says it's "in transit", hopefully it'll be there by this afternoon) when they had multiple copies checked in, just didn't happen to have one at our closest library, sigh . . . anyway.

Speaking of American Girls, I somehow got on the American Girl mailing list so a catalog came a week or two ago. A & L have had great fun pouring over the catalog trying to decide which doll they want (when they're 8) and generally planning out future purchases, at the time, they also were very gung-ho to start saving their spending money NOW to get additional AG stuff when they're old enough, we'll see how long that lasts . . . LOL.

Last Sabbath (a week ago) for Sabbath school Teacher Joyce went all out for the story of Jericho and made a kid-sized Ark of the Covenant to have A & L carry as they "marched around Jericho" the girls had alot of fun.

We've been having unseasonably warm weather alot of the time recently, so we're taking advantage of that & going to a playground we discovered nearby. It works out nicely to leave at naptime (or run errands before naptime, timing things for the errands to be done at naptime) and let Little Big fall asleep on the way to the playground, then the big girls get to play on the playground while I stay in the car and read or knit while Little Bit naps. The playground includes monkey bars and both girls are now proficient monkey-bar-crossers and are quite proud of themselves.

Little Bit continues to pick up speed and venture farther from Mommy in her crawling/exploring. She also is working hard to be able to stand unassisted, pulling up on things often and carefully trying to let go with both hands (she does pretty good holding on with just one hand, and enjoys having us put finger foods on a chair seat or the big ottoman we use as a coffee table so she can stand to eat.), so far she plops down on her behind when she lets go w/ the second hand, but she keeps trying. Yesterday Daddy was watching her while I was working on organizing bookcases and such (inspired by having to take the books off the non-built-ins so my dad could anchor them to the wall) Daddy had put a laundry basket across the living room doorway so she couldn't get to the entryway (a very tempting place w/ all the shoes piled by the door AND leaves that track in every time anyone comes in) but then it was very unfair that MOMMY was standing in the entryway, so she was trying harder to get past the laundry basket. She finally figured out & turned it 90 degrees then proceeded to walk (holding onto it) around it to get to me, she was quite proud of herself.

And in other "Little Bit is growing up to fast!" news, she has her first tooth! You can't see it yet, but can definitely feel it! Fri evening she was fussy in the car & I was riding next to her so tried giving her my finger to suck on (I'd forgotten her paci, which she usually likes in the car) and felt the tooth. Might actually be both of those bottom front teeth, it feels "bigger" than one tooth, but hard to tell till we can see it/them.

I think that's all the news from our house. Tomorrow the big girls are scheduled to give the worship talk at Daddy's office (it's his turn to have worship and they want to tell their story about the model rockets (where they lost Ashlyn's, then prayed, and found it), we'll see if they get cold feet when they actually get there, but at the moment anyway they're excited about it.

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