Weekly Wrap-Up - October 10

We had a nice week at home this past week.

We wrapped up our "study" on Halloween (we found a couple different books at the library that give the basic history of Halloween at a child's level, and read them together, then discussed our findings), the girls have decided that we shouldn't celebrate Halloween at all, which I certainly support, but wanted it to be their decision, not just "Mommy says we can't" (now I'm thinking I need to find a good, elementary level, whole foods nutrition class, so far I haven't found what I want, but I think that would help get them on board for healthier eating, instead of whining about it).

Little Bit's "school" is still Signing Times she LOVES the videos and asks for them pretty much any time we're home. And she is learning tons of signs!! She signs "bath" not only during her bath, but whenever one of us is in, or getting into, the shower. She was also able to tell me that her foot is "hurt" (she has a little scrape on her foot that's bothering her a little bit). And of course, animal signs continue to be a favorite. When she's playing with her Schleich animals she will sometimes ask me where a specific one is, if she can't find it.

The big girls are still enjoying their typing program, as well as playing the lap harp. They finished book one of their cursive handwriting program this week. We've also been reading A Child's Eye View of History, and we're all enjoying that.

On Friday we finally found time to dry apples.  We got a bushel of apples from an orchard near my parents' house when we were down there a couple weeks ago. All 3 girls have been enjoying eating them fresh, but we also wanted to dry some to have for snacks later, so the big girls took turns playing with Little Bit in the family room, or laying apple slices on the dehydrator trays, while I used the apple peeler, corer, slicer on about half a bushel of apples. We also sprinkled cinnamon on the apples before we dried them, YUM!!!

Little Bit continues to move toward potty training. She's nakey butt all the time (except at night) when we're at home, and we have very few accidents here at home. BUT she's nakey butt, so can take herself potty, and the potty is handy (in the family room downstairs, and in the bathroom upstairs). When we're out, I still keep her in diapers of some sort, and actually have found that the trainers I was using some of the time before don't work well now because she does hold it, so then when she goes, she goes a LOT and the trainer just isn't absorbent enough to handle it, so right now we're mostly using Flip diaper covers with our trusty old prefolds & flatfolds as filler.  I've also found that I can pin a  flatfold into our wool soakers and then they work kind of like a leak-resistant, trainer (as long as I'm pretty sure she won't poop).  She DOES tell me she needs to go potty when we're out, but often she seems to tell me "every other pee" so when I take her potty, her diaper is already wet, but then she does pee again while she's on the potty. She also generally tells me she needs to go potty AFTER she poops, when wearing diapers. But we're getting there.  I tried leaving her diaper free in the car one day this week, just laid a prefold under her (w/ a plastic bag under that to protect the seat) because usually we can run errands and she'll stay dry. Naturally, when I tried taking her w/o a diaper on, she peed, but no biggie since I had the prefold in the seat under her.

We finished off our week by spending Sabbath afternoon with friends from church. The girls were thrilled to find out Miss Karin and Miss Tina are great storytellers and have had lots of interesting experiences in their lives. After supper Miss Tina brought out the Uno Attack game and the girls had a blast playing that with Daddy, Tina & Rolland, while Karin and I visited and kept Little Bit away from the breakables, hee hee.