Little Bit Turns 7!

I'm behind again . . . sigh . . . after traveling, we spent Thursday and Friday settling back in at home , and getting ready for Little Bit's Birthday.

Her birthday was on Sabbath this year, so this made it a bit different from normal. We eat breakfast at church since Lexie & Ashlyn help serve it, so rather than having breakfast ready for Little Bit, I just fixed some strawberries and hot chocolate for a special birthday morning treat.

I also got her some cut flowers and a tiny little potted rose bush.  Lexie made her a "rosebud circlet" to match the one with Samantha's birthday outfit. Her "big" gifts were all the American Girl stuff, but she still got her annual teacup from us. And, a couple weeks ago someone offered Lexie and Ashlyn some old costume jewelry they were getting rid of and one piece was a heart shaped necklace that the girls, correctly, thought Little Bit would like since Samantha wears a heart shaped locket, so that's the little white box.

Little Bit and Lexie dressed Samantha in her birthday dress, that Lexie made, first thing, since of course, Samantha was coming to church with us.

At church, I asked Lexie and Ashlyn to play the parts of Abraham and Sarah and act out the Bible story for the Kindergarten class.

We also celebrated Little Bit's birthday in Sabbath School and then, at the end of class, had a special prayer for Little Bit and her friend, K, on their last week in Kindergarten before promoting to Primary.

After church we hurried home to greet the grandparents and get lunch on the table.

Little Bit's first request had been for petit fours like Samantha had, but Lexie convinced her to go with one "big petit four", otherwise known as a square layer cake. Lexie made the cake on Friday, and then when we got home from church, she made whipped cream and sliced strawberries. She put strawberries between the layers, and then used strawberries and M&Ms to make flowers on top, as per Little Bit's request. I thought it turned out great!

Meanwhile, Little Bit was busy setting up all her Samantha goodies on the hearth to show the grandparents.


After lunch, and cake (with candles, but no singing, because she does NOT like being sung to!), we enjoyed a nice afternoon visiting with the grandparents. Lexie showed off her new violin and gave the grandparents a nice "concert". Little Bit showed them her American Girl goodies. A good time was had by all :)

Homeschool Review: Flowering Baby

Flowering Baby is a fun curriculum for children age 0-5. It is designed to be started at any time, based on your child's age.

Since Little Bit is 3, I chose to review the Three to Four year old Curriculum. This curriculum is available for $38 from the Flowering Baby Store, you will also find information on that page about ordering it as a direct download. The Three to Four Curriculum is set up with the monthly curriculum guide, as well as a Themes Guide, that includes 24 short themes. The suggestion is that, at whatever point in the year you start, you begin with that calendar month of the curriculum and cycle through for the full 12 months. Additionally, you can choose 2 themes from the theme guide each month. There are recommendations for which themes to use with which month or you can mix it up according to your child's interests. If you would like to see a sample of a full month of this curriculum, you will find the link at the bottom of this page.

Since we received this in early January, we started at the beginning of the curriculum guide. Since we are also using a different preschool curriculum, I looked over the themes and chose a theme that would correlate with that curriculum as well. 

As soon as I began reading through the curriculum guide, I realized that some tweaking would be necessary for it to work in our family. Mainly, this was adapting for Little Bit's current level. It seemed beyond silly to me, to sit and count to 5 with Little Bit when she can count to 30 on her own, so we skipped that ;) Another necessary, on-the-fly tweaking was the fact that Little Bit tends to either not have any interest in sitting for a story, or wants the same story over and over and over and over and . . . you get the idea. At this age, I feel strongly that the best way to squelch the love for reading is to force it, so I got the recommended books from the library, but let her choose which ones we read, and then we did activities from that book on that day. 

One thing that I found confusing was the fact that, starting in January, the curriculum DOES build on itself . . . later in the curriculum, instead of counting to 5, you count to 10, for example. So I'm abit unclear on how that would work if you were to start in the middle. . . it doesn't make sense to me that you would count to 10 with the child when you started in June, but then the following January, drop back to just counting to 5. My recommendation would be, if you're starting anytime other than January, to look over the whole curriculum, use season-specific activities as recommended, but the basic counting and alphabet stuff, if you're using it (I also feel pretty strongly in not pushing academics at this age, so another option would be to skip these unless your child shows an interest).

There are some fun activities in this curriculum. All 3 girls were intrigued when I said we were going to make snowmen one day (when there wasn't any snow outside), and all three had a blast making styrofoam ball snowmen.

Little Bit's snowman is in the middle, it's abit . . . abstract, but she had great fun making it and could explain what each thing was. 

I think, if I'd followed the suggestions, verbatim, Little Bit would have found it frustrating and (her current favorite word) "boring". However, by knowing my child and picking and choosing the activities that made sense for her development, personality, and interests, we were able to enjoy some new books and ideas that we gleaned from the curriculum. I think, at this age, in most cases, you CAN just follow their interests, or not start anything formal yet. But, if you have a young child who is begging to "do school", and you don't have time, or inclination to have to hunt down books and activities on your own, this would be a good option to give you lots of age-appropriate ideas for books and activities.

Don't forget to check out what my fellow crew mates thought about this product, including the other ages, here.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this product through the Schoolhouse Review Crew in exchange for my honest review. I was not required to write a positive review nor was I compensated in any other way. All opinions I have expressed are my own or those of my family. I am disclosing this in accordance with the FTC Regulations.

Blogging Through the Alphabet: A is for Alphabet

Marcy at Ben and Me is starting an alphabet series. Each week we blog about something that starts with that weeks letter. This week is "A" week.

So, since I have been negligent in posting about Little Bit's alphabet fun, I figured this would be a good place to catch up on that.

To recap, last spring Little Bit asked if she could do "school like Sissies" so we started a letter of the week study. I wasn't sure how much she'd do with it or how long she'd stick with it, but she loves, loves, loves it!! Originally I figured that we would skip the weeks when we travel, but I found that this is a great way to entertain her in the car and in hotels and such. So we are already on letter R.

Her favorite things is the sensory bins. (which I apparently have no pictures of, probably because she plays with it at home & she's generally nakey when she's in the house, at home LOL). We've decided that dry pinto beans work best, they are easier than rice to clean up when they spill, but are small enough for stuf to hide in them lol. Each week I switch the stuff to be things that start with that week's letter. Most of the time I just find toys and household items we already have. Sometimes I'll get small dollar store toys. A few weeks we've had enough stuff to do different things in the bin different days during the week.

Right now she is really into tracing letters. I honestly figured she would just color the picture and ignore the tracing part. I remember the older girls not being into tracing until they were closer to 5. But she is loving it. Sometimes I laminate the page and she uses a dry erase marker or crayon. Sometimes I leave it and she uses regular markers and I put it in the alphabet book she is making.

Tracing letters was a wonderful way to keep her entertained when we were on the motorhome trip last month, her carseat made a great "booster" to let her sit at the table and trace letters.

And while I might be abit biased (who me?) I think she's doing quite well at tracing letters for not quite 3 1/2 years old.

Different weeks we do different things. When she's in the mood to be read to, we read lots of books (I add books that start with that letter to her book basket each week), some weeks, she's not in the mood, and that's fine too.  Some days she enjoys lacing cards, for "P week" she "sewed" a pumpkin. A favorite most weeks is cutting and gluing. We have a couple different activities where she can cut out pictures and glue them to a page.

The picture on the left was one of our fun "M" activities. I printed a page that was an "M" maze with Mickey & Minnie on it. The page was full of random letters, but the Ms formed a path from one character to the other. Since it was M week, we used M&Ms to make the path.   Needless to say that was a hit LOL.

Another favorite has been the alphabet "roads". I've been printing them from this site & laminating them. While other activities I tend to vary some from week to week, I've made sure to include this each week, so now she has letters A through R. In addition to driving little cars on them, she likes to put them in order, match the upper and lower case, and is starting to spell words with them. This picture shows her playing with them on the floor next to our pew at church a few weeks ago.

So that's some of the alphabet fun we've been having around here.

Don't forget to to visit Ben and Me to see what other people are blogging about for the letter A this week.

Tot School - More Letter Fun

Little Bit is 38 mo old

With everything else that's been going on I haven't managed to write a post every week about Little Bit's "Letter of the Week" activities. Suffice it to say that we've been doing similar things for each letter, and this week we are on G (we skipped the week we were at my parents' house and . . . maybe one other one? I don't remember now).  She is LOVING it and has taken to pointing out letters on random signs, books, etc. "That's a letter we learned about".  The "bean  bin" (or this week, the "green bin" (with green split peas) continues to be a huge hit.  I thought I'd share a couple random pictures I've taken over the last several weeks and then hopefully get back to weekly, more detailed, posts . . . oh who are we kidding, campmeeting is coming, I won't manage weekly, more detailed, posts for a few more weeks.

Cutting and gluing.  She LOVES this!! She gets to cut out the animals (just straight lines around the pictures) and then glues them onto a pattern of the week's letter.

Another fun activity that gets more fun each week. We keep adding new "roads" to our collection as we add letters and she drives matchbox cars, as well as having various plastic animals and/or squinkies walk on the "roads".

You can see what other tots are doing here.

C is for Cute

Little Bit is 37 months old

This past week was "C" Week for Little Bit, here's some of the fun we had:


She is still LOVING the sensory bin! I was lazy and just used the pinto beans again, but obviously switched out the stuff in the bin for "C" stuff. C was a fun letter since it included a "can" and a "cup", so lots of pouring fun.

We sang the "C" memory verse song from Songs for Saplings. 

Each day we sang "The C says c" from Leapfrog

I printed, and laminated the letter C from 1+1+1=1's Animal ABCs. We put it on our white board for the week.

Little Bit made the cutand glue letter C from the Animal ABCs

Each day in her sensory bin, Little Bit found 3 chocolate caramel candies, one for each of the girls. 

I printed and laminated these "road" letter C's for her to drive a matchbox-type car on.

Little Bit is loving playdoh! So I went through and pulled out several "C" cookie cutters for her to use this week.  I also printed the C playdoh mat from 1+1+1=1's Animal ABCs for her to play with.

I printed a C do-a-dot page for her to put magnets on.

I printed a "C" cut and paste page and let her cut out the pictures and glue them around the C.

I printed and laminated the letter C  pattern block page from this site. That page also has the pattern blocks you can print out. We already have pattern blocks similar to these, but this week we took it with us to MiniMe's piano lesson, and used our magnetic pattern blocks instead.

We played with the letter C beanbags from the sets of alphabet bean bags the grandmothers made for Little Bit for her birthday.

She continues to love the salt box (salt in a plastic shoe box), but generally just sifts it through her fingers and draws random designs in it,  or covers my hand with it. 

I printed a couple different C coloring pages for her to color, and we added them to her ABC book. 

We read "C" themed books. I went through our bookshelves and pulled out any that seemed in her age range. I also got some from the library.

On Friday we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and she added a C sticker to her  "Coconut Tree" (inflatable palm tree from the dollar store).

This last picture is only a "C" thing because it's made out of crackers. Little Bit was eating crackers for a snack and came up with this flower all on her own. She was soo proud of herself :) 


To see what other Tots are doing, check out this link.

The B Says B, The Be Says B . . .

Little Bit is 37 months old

This week was "B Week" for Little Bit. Here's what we did:

• A "B" Sensory in. This was alot easier than A for some reason, we had TONS of small B toys around. I used a bigger bin, and filled it with dry pinto beans. I'm not sure she ever made it to the bottom of this one, but she loved it just the same (on a side note, if you've ever cooked with dry beans and considered NOT rinsing them first, don't! The first day or two that she played with this her hands were BLACK after sifting through the dry beans, sigh . . . ) 
• We sang the "B" song from Songs for Saplings. 
• Each day we sang "The B says b, the B says b, every letter makes a sound, the B says b" (anyone who's seen Leapfrog videos, no doubt recognizes the song LOL).
• I printed, and laminated the letter B from 1+1+1=1's Animal ABCs. We put it on our white board for the week.
• The above Animal ABCs also has a plain letter B, and then Bears to cut out and glue onto the B. Little Bit cut out the Bears and glued them on the B, then we added the page to her "ABC book".
• We had biscuits for breakfast one day, bananas for snacks, and banana muffins for breakfast another day.
• I printed and laminated these "road" letter B's for her to drive a matchbox-type car on.
• I printed a Butterfly do-a-dot page for her to put the magnets an
• I printed a "B" cut and paste page and let her cut out the pictures and glue them around the B.
• I printed and laminated the letter B pattern block page from this site. That page also has the pattern blocks you can print out. We already have pattern blocks similar to these, so we used them. 
• We played with the letter B beanbags from the sets of alphabet bean bags the grandmothers made for Little Bit for her birthday.
• She continues to love the salt box (salt in a plastic shoe box), but generally just sifts it through her fingers and draws random designs in it,  or covers my hand with it. On Friday, when Sassy was the teacher, they added some rocks and "dew drops" (blue flat marble thingys, for putting in the bottom of vases and such) so now she hunts for those, covers them up, etc.
• I also printed a couple different B coloring pages for her to color, and we added them to her ABC book. 
• We read lots of B themed books, and alphabet books this week. I went through our bookshelves and pulled out any that seemed in her age range. I also got some from the library.
• I got an inflatable palm tree from the dollar store (conveniently they have a bunch of "luau" theme party stuff right now). We read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and she put an A sticker (because we didn't get to it last week) and a B sticker, on the "Coconut Tree". My plan is to continue adding stickers each week. 

Find more Tot School ideas here.

Today's Post Brought to You by the Letter A!

Little Bit is almost 37 mo old

I mentioned in our curriculum plans post, that Little Bit had asked to start "school" of her own, so we are starting some "Letter of the Week" activities.  This past week was our "A" week, so here's what we did for Letter A:

• I made an "A" sensory bin. I went around the house and found small toys that start with A, and rounded it out with a couple new things from the Dollar Store. I put them all in a bin and filled it with rice (couldn't come up with an "A" filler, so just went with rice). This was a HUGE hit, she spent time every day (that we did school), digging the toys back out of the rice and just running her hands through it and such, LOVE it (though the vacuum's going to get to eat lots of rice next time I vacuum, despite my attempts to keep the bin on a placemat so the rice would stay contained.
• We sang the "A" song from Songs for Saplings. Each song is a Bible verse that corresponds to a letter of the alphabet (with some other songs at the end of the CD to correspond to holiday,s etc), so this also led to her learning a memory verse over the course of the week
• I purchased this Letter of the Week curriculum, which includes printables to make an "Alphabet book" so she colored the cover for that  the first day in preparation for adding more things throughout the week.
• I purchased this Letter of the Week curriculum, which includes printables to make an "Alphabet book" so she colored the cover for that  the first day in preparation for adding more things throughout the week.
• I printed, and laminated the letter A from 1+1+1=1's Animal ABCs. We put it on our white board for the week.
• The above Animal ABCs also has a plain letter A, and then alligators to cut out and glue onto the A. Little Bit didn't feel like cutting the day we did that, so Sassy cut them out for her and she glued them on. This was one of the pages we added to her "ABC book".
• We had apples, apricots, and almonds for snacks on various days, and asparagus for lunch one day, yum!
• I printed and laminated these "road" letter A's for her to drive a matchbox-type car on.
• I printed the Alligator "magnet page" from this site. One day we laid the page on a cookies sheet and used some round magnets (I'm not finding ones like ours, but these would work well)   in the dots. One the last day I gave her some dot stickers and she put stickers on the dots, then we added the page to her book.
• I printed an "A" cut and paste page and let her cut out the pictures and glue them around the A.
• I printed and laminated the letter A pattern block page from this site. That page also has the pattern blocks you can print out. We already have pattern blocks similar to these, so we used them. Since Little Bit enjoyed using magnets for other things, I may pull out our Melissa and Doug magnetic pattern blocks for next week and let her use them instead.
• We played with the letter A beanbags from the sets of alphabet bean bags the grandmothers made for Little Bit for her birthday.
• I poured a layer of salt into a plastic shoebox and we practiced drawing A in the salt.
• I also printed a couple different A coloring pages for her to color, and we added them to her ABC book. She put some A stickers on one of them too, because stickers are fun!
• We read lots of A themed books, and alphabet books this week. I went through our bookshelves and pulled out any that seemed in her age range. I also got some from the library.
• On Friday, I was gone, so I left some A activities for Sassy to do with Little Bit while MiniMe and I were gone. To make it more special I dumped all the rice out of the A sensory bin and replaced it with animal crackers, needless to say, THAT was a hit! (and interestingly enough, when she was eating the leftover animal crackers in church this morning, it occurred to her that they weren't in the "blue bin" any longer and asked me about it. I told her there was new stuff in her blue bin (when I fished all the animal crackers out I went ahead and switched it to the "B" stuff for tomorrow morning), she was very excited, and wanted to see her bin as soon as we got home from church. I told her it had to wait till tomorrow. So, the bin continues to be a HIT with or without animal crackers LOL.
• The one thing I wanted to do and didn't get a chance to do was start a "chicka chicka boom boom tree". I would have done that Friday, but didn't want to try to explain it to Sassy, so will do it first thing tomorrow before we start with the "B" stuff. . . that an I'm still thinking on how I want to do it . . . I got an inflatable palm tree at the dollar store (they have "luau" stuff right now) so I'm going to blow that up and we're going to put a letter sticker on the tree at the end of each week.

So that was our letter week. It seems like a lot, but was only 2-3 things per day, and most were short.

You can see most of these ideas, and others, including various coloring pages, on my "Alphabet" Pinterest board. And I'll continue to add to it as we go.

Visit 1+1+1=1 to see more Tot School posts.

Weekly Wrap Up - April 2

I started this post on Monday, it's been a busy week LOL, but, better late than never . . .

I've already blogged about most of our adventures last Monday.

Tues and Wed we were at Mama & Papa's house, working on the playhouse, visiting with friends, and, on Wed, celebrating birthdays. Little Bit insisted that birthdays require balloons so my mom found some and the girls had great fun blowing them all up and hung them around.

Papa hung a makeshift rope swing from the "catwalk" on their playhouse (that will eventually have swings hanging from it) and all 3 girls spent TONS of time swinging on it. Even Little Bit was able to stand in the loop of rope and keep her legs stiff enough to swing.

Our birthday dessert was a HIT!! The girls had decided they wanted "chocolate strawberry pie" so we started looking at recipes. What we finally decided on was this recipe for "Death by Chocolate" but with sliced strawberries added to each layer. It was SOOOO good!!! Definitely a keeper!

Thursday we headed home.

Sabbath was an eventful day for Sassy & MiniMe. They had decided several months ago that when they turned 9, they wanted to start helping in Cradle Roll (the class for children 0-4) instead of attending their own class. So, this was their first time helping in Cradle Roll. They were SOO excited, and did a great job! The timing was perfect too. Little Bit was NOT in a good mood. That is especially challenging when Mommy is leading the program. It's not like I can just take her out, if I do that, the whole program screeches to a halt. But since the older girls were there, it worked well. I took Little Bit out to the hall and left her there with MiniMe, who was probably better at comforting her and calming her down than I would be LOL. A couple songs later we were getting ready for her FAVORITE (the parachute!) so I stuck my head out and asked if she was ready to come back, and she was, whew! So much less stressful than if I'd had to hand the program over to another mom and worry about how long we were taking and such. And then Sassy and MiniMe told children story for church. They enjoy doing it, and it's fun to see how much more comfortable they are each time they do it. I wasn't sure how they'd do now that there's a large group of children (ranging from 5 to 12, roughly, though the oldest ones don't always go up for story) from a nearby neighborhood who come for church. That's abit more intimidating than telling a story to 3 or 4 toddler and preschoolers as has been the case in the past, but they did great.

So that was our week.

Oh, one more milestone! Two days before we left for my parents' house, Little Bit announced, at bedtime, that she was going to sleep in Sissies' room. She's said that before but never actually DONE it. She has her own bed in there and sleeps in there for naps, but had never slept there at night. The logistics are complicated since she stays up later than the big girls, and even when I thought about trying to decrease or eliminate nap to move her bedtime earlier, it still seemed challenging since they typically read quietly in bed for a little while, wasn't sure how that would work with her there. . . But when she said she wanted to, I decided to try it. I reminded her that I couldn't lay with her (her bed is right against MiniMe's (both are "featherbeds" on the floor), so for naps I can just lay on MiniMe's bed but that doesn't work when she's already sleeping there. But told her I'd sit at the foot of her bed. She was ok with that, so I sat and read a book while she went to sleep, and slept there all night! It was kind of fun to go in to wake up the big girls the next morning and "surprise" them with their baby sister asleep in their room LOL. She repeated all of it the next night. But then we were at my parents' house. She actually DID ask a few times to sleep with Sissies, but since they sleep on the floor in Mama & Papa's room, and Mama & Papa were still getting ready for bed and such. I wasn't sure what would happen when we got home. The first night she did start toward her bed in our room, but when I asked "are you sleeping in Mommy's room or Sissies?" She changed direction and went to the girls' room. And that apparently was the end of that. She's slept all night every night in the girls's room, and now refers to it as "my room too" instead of "Sissies' room"). It all seemed a little too easy . . . guess she was ready :)

Happy Birthday Miss Little Bit!!!! (and how we spent the rest of our day in DC)

One more post covering yesterday and then I'll stop babbling! Yesterday was Little Bit's 3rd birthday! We celebrated all 3 girls' birthdays on the 17th with Daddy and our neighbors. And we'll celebrate all 3 birthdays with Mama and Papa tomorrow, on the big girls' actual birthday. Yesterday Little Bit got dragged all over creation for her birthday LOL.

But I think she had an ok day overall. She had great fun running around and climbing on rocks at Great Falls (more pictures here).

After we left Great Falls, she napped while we drove to Georgetown for a quick stop at "The Old Stone House" so the big girls could turn in their Rock Creek Junior Ranger books and get their badges. They had done most of the work on Sabbath, but weren't quite done when the Nature Center closed, so they finished up at home and we took it down yesterday. Interesting bit of trivia from The Old Stone House. They had marks on the wall indicating the average height of men and women in colonial times and today, and then the heights of a few famous people. It was interesting to see, visually, how short Martha Washington was and how tall George Washington was. But the one that surprised me was Ben Franklin. I'm not sure why, but I've always pictured him as being on the short side. Not abnormally short, but average or slightly below average for his era. However, based on the marks on the wall, while not nearly as tall as George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, he was still taller than average. I'm horrible at remembering numbers, but I think he was shown as being 5'10" which was slightly higher than today's average height for men.

Little Bit continued to sleep while we drove around DC and finally found a parking spot. Our main reason we NEEDED to go down into DC yesterday was to turn in the girls' Junior Ranger books for the Cherry Blossom Festival. This year marks the 100 year anniversary of Japan giving us the cherry trees, so there  is a special Junior Ranger book just for this year's festival. Dad grabbed the books for us while we were at the zoo last week, and the girls did the work at home and while we were driving around on Sabbath. So all we needed to do was turn them in. But that, alone meant a good bit of walking.

Once we did that, we decided to walk another mile or so (thankfully Little Bit is much happier in the stroller than her sisters were. She rode almost the whole way, and MiniMe pushed the stroller almost all of it except when we were crossing streets, I insisted that a grown-up be in charge of the stroller while crossing streets, and in some stretches we were crossing so many streets, that it was easier to just keep pushing than to keep trading back and forth with her) and go to Frozen Yo.
My parents discovered Frozen Yo awhile ago and have taken the big girls a few times, but this was the first time Little Bit or I had been there. It's a frozen yogurt shop with 16 different flavors of yogurt and then a "topping bar" with several different fresh fruits as well as a variety of candy and such. You serve yourself, then pay by weight. We stick with frozen yogurt and fresh fruit. So we declared this Little Bit's birthday dessert. She was pretty ok with that LOL. I had to laugh, as we were standing in line, with me holding my own and Little Bit's and each of the big girls was holding their own, the man behind us in line (a business man getting coffee), noticed and commented on how "healthy" our bowls looked (we all had fruit piled on top, completely covering the frozen yogurt) and that his children would never go for all that fruit LOL.

So after leaving Frozen Yo we began our hike back to the car, with a stop by the Jefferson memorial on our way.

My dad wears a step-counter and based on the number of steps he "logged" yesterday, and the fact that all his walking was essentially with the rest of us, he estimated that we all (except Little Bit) walked about 9 miiles total yesterday (that includes walking out to Great Falls on both sides of the river and all our walking in DC). Not too bad for a couple of almost-9-year-olds!! (or for this out-of-shape Mommy).

So that was how we celebrated Little Bit's actual birthday!!! I still can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that she is THREE already!

A Mini Milestone

Nothing huge, but thought I'd document it . . . 

The background: Since Little Bit was old enough to take regular naps (as opposed to the newborn, nurse, sleep, change diaper, repeat thing), she's either slept in the car (I'm a huge fan of having my babies at least know how to nap in the car, it makes traveling so much easier when you can plan it so that a good part of it is while baby/toddler sleeps!), nursed to sleep & then slept/nurped on my lap, or I wait to take my shower until naptime and put her in the takealong swing in the bathroom while I shower. The sound lulls her to sleep & then I leave her in the swing with the fan going (to keep at least some white noise).

At campmeeting this summer I would nurse her to sleep on the bed, then could get up and read or do other quiet things in the motorhome while she slept on the bed. I've done that a few times at my parents' house too, and once, soon after campmeeting, here at home, she asked to take her nap on the bed and I laid down with her and nursed her to sleep, then got up. It worked great, but honestly, given the choice between laying down with her to nurse, or getting my shower done w/o worrying about where she is or what she's doing, I'm pretty happy with the swing/shower method. She knows the routine, and when she wakes up she just yells "Mommy, come get me" or "Mommy, me awake!"

Nighttime, she's still sleeping in our bed (which is a queen+twin, so plenty of room), I still usually nurse her to sleep downstairs then carry her up and go ahead & go to bed when she does (probably wouldn't have to, but she's a night owl, so I'm usually ready).  I'm not desperate to get her out of our bed, or not nurse her to sleep, but have been thinking toward that eventuality. The big girls love the idea of having her sleep with them, and I certainly wouldn't complain if I could put her to bed with them and have a couple hours in the evening with all 3 children asleep. . . so, when I saw a good deal on babysteals.com for a little turtle that is a nightlight the child can turn on/off itself, carry around, etc. I decided to get it. Wasn't necessarily going to give it to her right away, but she saw me open teh box and she LOVED her turtle immediately. I told her that this turtle is for her to sleep with in "Sissies' room" and she was fine with that in theory, carried her turtle around all day, told Miss Judy it was for sleeping in Sissies' room, but bedtime came, and she wanted nothing with sleeping in their room, which is fine, and she was fine with not sleeping with the turtle since she wasn't in their room.  We did set up her "bed" in their room so she could see where she would sleep.  They sleep on the floor under their loft. Sassy sleeps on a regular mattress on the floor, but MiniMe has a King sized "feather bed" designed to go on top of a mattress, it's folded in half and she loves her "cloud". Since it's white, and I had an extra white down comforter, I folded it to fit in the space next to MiniMi's bed, and put Little Bit's pillow and favorite blanket there and that's her bed. So the last couple nights I've suggested it, she'll often lay down on her bed with her turtle while I tuck the big girls in, but then, even if I lay down with her, she won't stay laying down there and go to sleep. No biggie, she's getting used to teh idea, she'll do it when she's ready . . .

So, today at naptime I told her it was time to go upstairs for her nap, to find whatever baby/stuffed animal she wanted to "rock to sleep" (in the swing that no longer swings, but she likes the idea of rocking baby to sleep instead of it being about HER going to sleep). She picked up her turtle and I reminded her that her turtle "only sleeps in Sissies' room". She said "me sleep in Sissies' room" I fully expected her to change her mind when we got upstairs, but she didn't. She went potty, then went in and laid down on her "bed", I got her pillow and blanket and got her all settled in with her turtle. Turned on an Uncle Rick CD and told her she needed to stay laying down and go to sleep. Then I went and took my shower, fully expecting her to come in the bathroom after about 30 seconds and want to get in her swing. But she didn't . . .

I took a short shower, then left the water running when I got out (in case she was almost asleep and turning the water off woke her back up), peaked around into the girls' room and she was laying on her bed, but still awake. Gave her a few more minutes, peaked again, and she was sitting up, so I told her to lay down, which she did, but was still fiddling with things, not going to sleep. So I went in and laid down beside her and every time she opened her eyes I'd quietly say "close your eyes and go to sleep", in all of maybe 3 minutes, she was out. And she slept there for a normal length nap (didn't pay attention to times but it was all in the normal range)!!! We were all very "excited" that she'd slept in Sissies' room like a big girl! We shall see if it continues . . . but it's another step toward growing up :)

One More Thing!

Just because I think they're cute, and will forget later . . .

This evening Little Bit had a small (empty) cereal bowl and she took it over and put it under Daddy's foot. He wondered what she was doing and I had no idea but whatever . . . then, she walked over toward me and said something about "me wash feet" and proceeded to put the bowl under my foot. . . oooooohhhhh . . . last time we were at church (obviously last week, we didn't make it since she was sick), we had communion and foot washing . . . and she was obviously paying attention! She put the bowl under my foot, then used a playsilk to "dry" my foot, then carried the bowl over to a laundry basket and "dumped" the dirty water out, then went to MiniMe's feet . . . it was SOOO cute!!!

Little Bit-isms

Little Bit has become quite the chatterbox. I've been sharing some of her cute sayings on facebook, but thought I'd record them here too:

• One morning she was laying on my lap and trying to put her foot in my face. I caught her foot before she kicked me in the nose, and was holding it away from my face. She said "Me. Stinky toes. in. Mommy's face. Pwease" at least she's polite about it huh?
• At our neighbor's house yesterday there was a fan blowing and Little Bit kept standing in front of it and saying "wind. blow me awaaaaaaay"
• The big girls stayed for an extra day at Mama & Papa's house. This morning when Little Bit woke up and said "Mama Papa", I reminded her that they were at their house. "Sissies", I reminded her that they were at Mama and Papa's. She said in a dejected voice "all my fends. gone." (guess Mommy and Daddy don't count)

I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but those are at least a few of the current ones.

A Little Bit of What Little Bit has Been Learning - April Review

Little Bit is 25 months old

It's been awhile since I've done a Tot School post. So I thought I'd scroll back through my camera and summarize some of the things Little Bit has been up to in the last few weeks, in no particular order.

One of the most important parts of "learning" this time of year, for all of us, is plenty of outside time while the weather is nice! Running through a field of dandelions with big sister is about as perfect a "school" activity as I can think of for a 2 year old (and the 8 year old)!

More outside fun.  Riding her "bike".  She so desperately wants to ride bikes with big sisters, but can't keep up with their 2 wheelers. She still has great fun with it. This is one of my favorite pictures at the moment. She was riding and then said "Mommy. Picture. Me. Bike" (she puts a period at the end of every word when she talks, I love it!) and gave me this great cheesy grin!

Even rainy days, or post-rain days, are an opportunity for outside fun now that the weather's warmer. Little Bit thinks jumping in puddles is great fun!

Little Bit continues to love her puzzles. This one is one that my parents have from when I was little. I LOVE this puzzle! And now Little Bit seems to love it too!

Reading books is another favorite. Sometimes Little Bit likes to be read to (Brown Bear Brown Bear is a current favorite, she has it memorized!), other times she likes to "read" books herself. I about died when I was driving somewhere and the older girls were singing and she said told them "Quiet. PLLEEEASSE! Me Readin!"

Another favorite "treat" at Mama & Papa's house is the piano. She spends TONS of time banging away on the keyboard whenever we're there.

And of course, Easter. She LOVED the Easter Egg hunt! And, I think, was better at finding some of the well-hidden eggs than her sisters. And then, after our "official" egg hunt, she continued to enjoy her afternoon by having sisters and Mama re-hide the eggs 2 or 3 more times! Great fun!

And a final outdoor fun! Wading in a friend's creek! She LOVED it! We learned about balance and such on the uneven rocks of the creek bottom, saw minnows swim by. Saw a BIG turtle hiding under s thorn bush (smart turtle, with 7 little girls running around his woods), threw rocks in the water to see them splash, and otherwise had a blast! It's re-inspired me to make sure we take time to go down to our creek in our woods this summer and let her and her sisters wade and such.

You can see what others are doing for Tot School at 1+1+1=1.

A Little Bit of Learning for Little Bit - March 30

Little Bit is 2 yrs old

So I'm finally remembering to take pictures & now I'm forgetting to actually write the Tot School posts, sigh . . . always something. Here's a little bit of the fun that Little Bit has been having the last week or two.

Awhile back I saw this idea and put together a little "kit" to take with us on a trip when I knew I'd need to keep her entertained in a hotel room. We played with it a little bit on the trip & then it got put in the game cabinet & I kinda forgot about it. Found it last week and pulled it back out. First we used small pompoms, a small divided plate, a small bowl (it's a collapsible silicone one to keep things compact for travel, otherwise any bowl would work), and a set of tongs (I think I ordered them from timberdoodle.com). We put the pompoms on the plate & she used the tongs to transfer them into the bowl. Part of the time I'd tell her what color to move & she'd find one that color, part of the time she'd pick one up and tell me what color it was, part of the time she was tired of colors and just moved them. 

When she got tired of the tongs (they're pretty stiff, and she has a hard time with them still, but insists on trying them each time), we switched to using a plastic spoon. Much easier! We did the same things just used the spoon instead of the tongs to move the pompoms around. 

I also have multi-colored pony beads in the bag. So when she got tired of the pompoms we put them away and got out the pony beads. The tongs are too stiff to use with the beads, so we just used the spoon to transfer them around, the same as  we had done with the pompoms. We also used pipecleaners to string the pony beads. And she discovered it was great fun to then dump the beads off the pipecleaner into the bowl.  All in all, this is a great little "kit" that she seems to really enjoy. It requires supervision (obviously) but is very portable. I'm so glad we re-discovered this!

 She continues to LOVE playing with the "boo coo cawds" (blues clues cards, otherwise known as Blues Clues Memory). I tried to get a picture of her  playing memory with me, but she wiggles so much, the game was pretty much over by the time I got one that wasn't just a blur. I continue to be amazed at how well she does at memory for being so little. 

The other game she enjoys with the memory cards is putting them away. She generally dumps them ALL out when she plays with them, then I go through and put one card in each spot in the box, and then as I find the matches to those, I hand them to her & she finds where they go. We were almost done in this picture, she just had her final stack to find and put away. 

And finally, a few days ago, Little Bit pulled the pop-up toy back out. She's been able to do it for MONTHS, I know that when she got a second one for Christmas, she'd already mastered this one, and mastered the new one in about 10 minutes (we passed it along to a friend). But, she's having fun rediscovering it just the same. 

Visit 1+1+1=1 to see what other little ones are learning this week.