Earlier this week Abby ran into the room I was in yelling, "Kisses!" I asked if she wanted a kiss and she said yes, so I reached down to give her a kiss on her head. Just as she jumped up. Results: one screaming toddler and one bloody lip for Mommy. Thank goodness for BJ working from home. I knew I couldn't comfort her and stop my bleeding at the same time (it took several paper towels soaked with blood before it finally stopped), so I just texted him, "Help" and he ran straight upstairs. I love him working from home. This was Monday. I still have a tender bump on my lip. Abby seems to have recovered much more quickly.
Oh, and then that night BJ and I played Ticket to Ride with Kessa. She's been playing it a lot on the iPad and is getting pretty darn good. So we played real rules with her on the real board (except we let her put trains on the cities she was trying to connect, so she could see them easier) and... she totally beat both of us. Legitimately. We lost TTR to our 4-year old. It's a good thing my self-esteem isn't based in games.
Tuesday after Abby's nap I took the girls to IKEA. The play place was full (Tuesday is kids' eat free day, so it's always busier), but Kessa knew it might happen and chose to just go shopping with me instead. It was actually kind of fun. You know that bookcase-esque thing in our family room that has 8 cubbies inside of it? 4 across and 2 down. Well, we got another one that's just a 2x2. A few months ago I was sick of all the toys in the family room, so we cleaned out some space in the office and moved all the toys in there. And now we have a shelf in which to put them. It's nice. We also bought another stool like we have in the bathroom to put up in Kessa's room, so she can reach her clothes in the closet. Currently she stands on an upside down laundry hamper, which seems like it will eventually collapse and it will all end in tears. (Currently the one in the bathroom is actually by the toys in the play room, just below the window. Abby loves to stand on the stool and watch outside. She's obsessed with the trucks doing construction across the street. And garbage trucks. And cars going by. And birds in the sky. And anything else she can see.)
Kessa painted her own fingernails a few weeks ago, with my supervision. She did a great job. So the other day when she wanted to paint her own fingernails again, but I was busy, I let her try. We talked about what she needed to be careful of, and I let her go. She came back to me a little while later, "Mommy, I don't know what the heck in the world happened!" With glitter polish All Over her hand. I had her go get the polish remover and cotton balls, while I tried not to laugh, and made her clean it all off. It took her probably 20 minutes, but she eventually removed it all. :)There were a few things that happened this week, one right after the other, that made me feel like my social life was being stripped away from me, leaving me no control over it. The next day Kessa was super bored during Abby's nap, so I decided we could make some St. Patrick's Day crafts together. So we went shopping and came back and painted some letters to spell LUCK, then modge podged scrapbook paper on top. Later that day I cut a leprechaun hat out of my Silhouette and put it around my shamrocks. It's currently a centerpiece on my table. The two events together led me to start up an old-school homemaking-style craft group. I provide the parts, they pay for cost, we all craft together, sans kids. Great girls night out. It fills both my crafting and my social needs. I'm really excited about it. It currently has 25 members. Yipes! We may have to find a different location than just my house...
I printed off the temple names that have been saving up in my family history yesterday. 61 ordinances! I took the names that needed baptisms and confirmations down to my niece and nephew (Bailey and Braiden) who go to the temple monthly. I figured it's their family, too. So they'll do that next week and then we can get started on the rest of their work. I'm kind of excited. I think we'll need to set up a more regular babysitter and go to the temple more often...
Saturday's daily chore was vacuuming. I needed to write a talk (I spoke in church today. Again. I'll post the talk). We bribed Kessa. If she would help clean up everything on the carpeted floors before Abby's nap, then daddy would take her rock climbing during Abby's nap. She immediately got to work. Haha. I was able to spend the morning on my talk. BJ and Kessa cleaned the house and vacuumed all the floors. Then they left and Abby took a nap and I got a couple of hours to finish up my talk and do some family history. Meanwhile BJ and Kessa stood in a really long line, went rock climbing, played in the playground thing at Trafalga, then got ice cream together. What a fun daddy/daughter date!I'm pretty sure Kessa isn't getting into Lakeview, the charter school I was rooting for. There are 100 spots in Kindergarten and she's 163 on the wait list. Which means every single child accepted could drop out and she'd still be 63 on the wait list. Yipes. I don't think that one is going to happen. The other lottery we put her in won't be held until the end of March, so we'll have to see what happens now. Right now I'm figuring she'll probably just go to the local public school. We may rethink things for 1st grade. Re-enter her into both lotteries. Plus there are two public schools around here that offer immersion. One for Spanish and one for Chinese. But they don't start until 1st grade. So we'll look into that next year.
My biggest concern (which is a concern for all potential schools) is Common Core. I don't actually know a lot about it, but I know a lot of parents against it. I decided to look into it for myself and went to the Common Core website. I first looked at the math requirements for Kindergarten. Probably 90% or more of the curriculum she can already do. And what's left I could probably teach her in a day or two. Things like recognizing 3D shapes, like cones and cylinders. Or starting to count something in the middle of the list. "Can you count to 20, starting at 12?" Since I read that I've noticed that she always starts at one. But I don't think that'd be hard to teach, either. I... fear she'll be bored in math.
So then I looked at the reading requirements. She'll learn to recognize letters, recognize that letters go from left to right, top to bottom. Words are separated by spaces. Written words are just symbols for spoken words. Learn a handful of sight words. Oh boy. This week she brought home the first book in the 1st grade reading level group. She's learning to blend consonants, like gr in green. She can read short and long vowels. She's probably got dozens of sight words under her belt. So, apparently she's going to be bored in math and reading. [sigh] So pray she'll get a good teacher that will worth with her and with me. K? My biggest fear is that either she'll get bored and become a behavioral problem, or that she'll see all her friends far below her and decide she wants to be like them, and regress. She loves to learn so much. I hope she keeps that. So... pray for her, k? Though, you'll be about home by the time any of this actually comes into play...Has anyone told you that Nick started a Kickstarter? (Do you know what Kickstarter is? It's where someone puts up an idea, says "I need this much money to make this real" and people give him money. And they get rewards for their money. So for the most part, you're just buying the product in advance. The more money you give, the better the rewards.) Nick wants to make a pdf of "How to build a motorized couch" so that everyone can build them! (How long, do you think, before Utah starts making laws regulating the use of motorized couches?) He's only asking $150. So my guess is that he's doing it just to get a better feel for how Kickstarter works. Maybe he'll use it for his flyboard someday? Who knows. Or maybe he's just doing it for kicks and giggles. Because he's Nick. :D
Abby's obsessed with "sad" lately. Her stuffed animals are often sad and she brings them to us to make them feel better. If you ever ask if she or anyone else is happy or sad, she'll say sad. She'll pretend to frown. It's kind of cute and funny. And slightly worrying. But hopefully the phase will pass. :) She's also really adorable when she's sad. (Not when she's mad, though. Yikes.) Like this morning I was sitting up on my vanity, straightening my hair and doing makeup. She was sitting next to me. She was trying to climb up on my lap while I had the hot flat iron in my hand, so I told her, "No, Abby. You can't sit on my lap." She looked up at me with the most *adorable* sad face, and then promptly buried her face in my lap, where she sat for the next 2-3 minutes. That sad face, followed by burying her head in my arm, lap, side, etc. is probably one of the cutest things ever. In a sad way, of course.
From Facebook:
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I've been in process of deep cleaning my room for a few days now. I'm almost done. I mostly just need to move the dozen piles of books from the floor to the bookcases, once they're mounted on the walls.
But last night I looked around and remembered that our room is really big. And when it's clean it looks really empty. And when it looks really empty, I'm going to want to buy furniture to fill it.
Conclusion: it is far cheaper to not clean my room.
(Note: We did end up cleaning our room. Yesterday BJ attached the bookcases to the wall, so we spent the evening moving all the books over and organizing them on the shelves. It seems weird to be able to see all of our books again. And to have so much open space on our floor. I'm glad I'm planning a home birth and will want the space for the supplies and tub so that I won't get overly focused on wanting to fill the space with furniture...)
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Cool thing I learned about my family tonight: My mother's line is Norwegian (this I already knew) and as such followed a patronymic naming system. So the last name of the children are the first name of the father plus -sen or -datter. I was curious at what point in my line that tradition stopped. Turns out my grandma (and her siblings) were the first generation to take their father's last name instead of his first.
I'm trying to decide if it's because that was the first generation where the father was not Norwegian or if, in making the decision of what surname to give their children, they realized that their child would be named Doloris Harmon or Doloris Lorenzodatter. It seems that choosing between the two should be pretty darn easy. (Also, they chose wisely.)
Kiddisms:
- While talking about the size of the sun, Kessa: you would need more than 100 days to build that.
- Me: What should we have for dinner?
Abby: Ice cream! - Kessa forgot what she was going to ask me. I told her to think about it and get back to me. “Ok. I’ll think about it and if it appears in my head, I will tell you. That is my plan.”
- Kessa: I have 4 blueberries.
Me: And you're 4-years old!
Kessa, thinking: You should give me one more because I fit 5. (She wears size 5.) - Abby's shoe size is 5. Kessa's clothes size is 5. Kessa saw Abby's shoes and said, “If Abby's shoes were clothes, they'd fit me.”
Happy Sabbath!
~ Tianna and Co.
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