Gingerbread Men and Family Tree

Carolyn didn't sleep as much today, so we had lots of time to do some preschool work.  I wasn't planning to suggest anything since it's Saturday, but she was excited.  First she listened to a book on CD twice.  Next time we go to the library I'm going to see if they any that beep for turning the pages.  The ones we have don't, so she often gets to the end of the CD before the end of the book.  Then she asked what she could do next.

So we did lesson K2 of the CSMP math curriculum.  She had lots of fun with it.  We read the gingerbread man story with some cut-outs I had made.  Compared the sizes of the various cut-outs very easily.  She was quite cute with the whole thing.

Then moved into her family tree.  We had already read the family books and talked about who is part of a family.  This was the art project portion.  So she cut out the trunk and leaves part.  Then we wrote some names in lemons and oranges (circles on yellow and orange paper mainly because I didn't have red).  We started with "Me", which she then insisted we add her full name to.  She wrote mom, and I wrote dad and James.  We drew a sling with snoopy on James' circle.  She then cut out those out.  We glued everything onto a large piece of paper.  Then we wrote in aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great grandparents.  With a large family, this filled all 24 circles I had prepared.  I cut out the remaining circles and she glued them on.  I then drew the "branches", which was slightly difficult because she had randomly placed the circles.  But she then took her crayons and added leaves.  She was so proud of the final product, showing it to her dad when she was done.  She showed it to James when he woke up as well.  Then we hung it on her wall.  Tomorrow I need to take a picture of it and will add it here at the end of the month.  It was awesome to see how excited she was.  And she asked if we could do 2 more "projects" tomorrow.  We'll see what we get through each day.  But if she does keep up at this rate I'll have to look into some first grade curriculum ideas this Spring!  I figure she'll have days where she doesn't want to do anything though.  Time will tell!

Spoke with our neighbor's son tonight as well.  Randomly asked him if he knew anyone willing to rent and he said he might be.  We let him know we want to move by July 1 and he said he would be looking in the spring to move.  Have to wonder if God's at play here with the timing of everything.  Would be great if we could help someone by renting to them and get to where we want to be, keeping our finances and my credit in tact.  Everything is truly in God's hands and we will see what happens over the next few months.  If you're reading this, please keep us in your prayers!

Success!

Just wanted to share that I have officially broken the 180lb mark.  Two weeks in a row I've now weighed in under, today at 179.  I haven't seen 17- since before I was pregnant with Carolyn, 5 years ago!  This feels like a major accomplishment to me because it's taken so long.  But honestly, since I started eating Primal (no grains, fairly low carb, limited sugar, no yucky oils) it's been fairly easy.  Slower than I would like (of course would like to be 160 by now), by steady progress.  And I keep telling myself that losing slowly by making lifestyle changes that I have no problem keeping up with forever, means I'm more likely to keep the weight off.  I don't have to count anything and I'm not constantly hungry like I used to be.  There are no special supplements or anything crazy like that.  The exercises are fairly short, and I'll forever have the option of adding in more exercise if I feel up to it and have the time.  But my life looks likely to only get crazier for the next few years as the kids get older.  So working out 3-4x/week for 20-25 minutes fits perfectly.  The workouts leave my muscles feeling taxed as well, a feeling that I LOVE.  I never imagined feeling this way with a non-impact, body weight program.  It's really rather amazing.  I feel like I'm writing a commercial, but after having lost 15lbs fairly effortlessly, I think I should share.

Didn't get to any preschool lessons yesterday because Carolyn until 3!  I guess she was pretty tired from her crankiness on Thursday.  So perhaps today we will get to try one of the activities I prepared yesterday.  She's been really into counting lately, so I'm think we'll do math with the ginger bread men.

Preparations

So I spent time earlier in the summer gathering materials and making lists of lessons I want to do this year.  I think I've put together a great start to a program for Carolyn for this year.  But when we started this week, I realize I had forgotten to organize the projects into complete sets.  So with both kids out of the house this morning (at the store with Dad), I set to work.  I now have a plan and sets to get started in every subject.  Here's what I did today:
Math - cut out 5 gingerbread men, made notes for needs for first 5 lessons for manipulatives
Social Studies - drew patterns for Carolyn to cut out tree pieces to make family tree
Science - thought about more activities to do live make hand/foot prints as we talk about each of those
Writing/reading - made templates for art projects - already had apples printed, decided on cotton ball black sheep, made grandfather clock template for cutting, made dog and bone template, made engine 9 template

This didn't take me too long either, which is nice.  Only about 45 minutes and I have the first 5 lessons of everything but social studies put together.  The next unit for SS will likely involve more field trips than crafts since it's community helpers.  I'm thinking I'll wait until Jon goes back to work before figuring that out.  But the unit will likely take a while.  I'm thinking we'll start at the library and talk about all the helpers there, we're visiting the doctor 8/31 for James' collar bone follow-up.  They go to the store each week.  Maybe we'll go to the post office to buy stamps, and try to see if we can visit the firehouse and police station.  I think that's a good variety of places.  If anyone is around and wants to join us for the police station and/or firehouse, let me know.  We'll be going on a Tues/Fri most likely, unless we go early in the year before soccer and story hour start up.

Having put all this together, I'm pretty excited to keep working with Carolyn.  As we go I think she's going to enjoy all the different thing we'll be doing.  She already likes reading her "preschool" books and getting to spend special time with me.  So here's to a great year with hopefully minimal arguing over school stuff. 

Yesterday we read all 3 family books I had found, then discovered I didn't have the family tree ready to work on or the ginger bread men cut out for the first math lesson.  So she listened to a book on CD and then we read some more, then she just looked through some of the preschool books we will read.  Did I tell you she's excited and a total bookworm?

The Heart

Went to the library today and loaded up on preschool books.  And by that I mean books that fit into the curriculum I've developed.  Carolyn is very excited about the idea of doing "preschool" and I'm enjoying feeding into that.  She also chose princesses as her topic - again.  I think we may have already ready all of those that we brought home.  The library was fun and we worked on vocabulary and a bit of alphabet order while there.  They have flash cards with pictures and words.  James took those out initially and was going through them with Jon.  He got bored and Carolyn took over.  Once she got bored of identifying the objects, I took out 5 pictures and we tried to order them alphabetically.  I realized I start a little too difficultly by selecting 5 cards at random.  So I went back and chose words with A-E and we put those in order.  She got bored part way through F-J.  Something to think about another time we go as a family.  Or maybe even a game we could recreate at home with pictures from magazines with words on notecards.  Although I'm torn as to how important being able to order letters is.  It doesn't help you read, but it does help make sense of the world.

While James was still sleeping, we completed our first preschool activities.  First we read a book about the human body.  It was a really cool book and one I am almost thinking about buying.  Simple, but provides a lot of facts, and some cool effects with holding a page up to light.  Carolyn really enjoyed reading it.  Afterwards, I wanted to the heart activities I found, but she wanted to read more.  So I gave her a Curious George book on CD and she sat with that for the whole book.  She wanted to read more, no interest in activities.  I found the Magic School Bus in the Heart book and so we read that, then she would do some hands on things.  I had her listen to Jon's heartbeat, which she found very cool.  And then we found her pulse on her wrist.  She felt that for a minute.  Then I had her do 10 jumping jacks (next time I'll choose a higher number to challenge her counting I think).  We felt her pulse again and talked about how it was quicker because her heart was beating faster.  Then James woke up.  All in all, a pretty successful first day.  Tomorrow we'll choose a different subject area or go on to hands.  We've officially started the school year, because she's ready to learn.  Awesome that it's still going to be laid back, but she'll be prepared for kindergarten in HP.  If we can get academics to be pretty much covered, it'll make it so she can focus on adjusting to a new place and the social aspects of school.  We're ready!

Hard Knocks

We've had an injury in our house, and the first major one since Carolyn was born.  Both kids were playing on the couch last Thursday and James fell, off the back.  He landed hard, but we didn't think too much of it at first.  We gave him lots of snuggles and some ibuprofen before bed.  He slept fairly well that night, but didn't push himself to standing in his crib Friday morning.  Jon brought him into bed and he refused to nurse, didn't want to be moved at all.  As the morning went on we decided a trip to the doctor was in order.  So we made an appointment and headed over.  The pediatrician came in and suggested he was likely fine, until he did the exam.  James would/could not be pulled up by his left arm.  And one spot increased his crying to a wail.  So we were sent for xrays.  They only took 2, one of the collar bone and other of the shoulder.  It was easy to see the bend in the collar bone and break.  So they gave James a snoopy sling and told us to get him to rest.  Thus we have spent the last 3.5 days trying to get our energetic, 2 year old to sit still.  Not a problem Friday, but since then it's been a challenge.  He did crash this morning, crawling into my lap after lunch and promptly falling asleep.  He didn't even wake when Jon transferred to his crib!  So nice to get the extra snuggles, but watching a little one in pain and knowing there's nothing you can do is torturous!  Here's hoping for a speedy recovery!

Still waiting on the house, and deciding we need to be patient.  As bad as we WANT to move tomorrow, we can get by one more year here.  I will be working as much as possible during this time, and we will try to save up as much as possible.

Two more weeks with Jon home and then we will be starting preschool at home.

Searching for a Buyer

All that's missing right now is someone to buy our house.  We've visited Highland Park and Carolyn is excited about the move.  I've found a gym that looks like it will work very well for her to continue gymnastics.  And I'm sure I can easily find her a soccer program in the Spring.  For now I've signed everyone up for their fall classes assuming we won't be moving.  I don't want them to lose their spots.  Plus it's looking more likely that we wouldn't move until October or so anyway.  I hate the idea of going into the school year with the responsibility of keeping the house show ready.  But we're going to tell our realtor that we will simply need more notice than what's currently listed.  And we might need to be sure and straighten everything up on Saturday mornings so it doesn't get too out of control.

We've been looking for a sign that we're on the right path with our goals.  With dropping our price, I continued to be nervous about giving up a large portion of our savings.  But when you look at all the reasons we want to move - be near stuff, have a park district, walk to the library, have a pool to go, awesome schools, plus cut Jon's commute in half - I was starting to become more comfortable with the idea.  Then I went to check the mail yesterday as Jon started the grill for dinner.  I noticed a small envelope from my grandfather.  Knowing that he has a record of sending money at random times, I opened it quickly.  There were so many 0's that I actually had to read the written portion to be sure the amount was correct.  The note attached said it's for birthdays and holidays.  For our family it will mean financial security when we sell the house.  What amazing timing!  I wish there was some way for me to help my grandfather understand what his gifts mean to our family.  They always come at just the right moment - definitely God is at play here.  This one check is equal to more than I make per year, just under 1/4 of our adjusted gross income!  Once my grandfather is settled back in AZ for the year, we will start to plan a trip to visit him.  With the remaining money, we will have the cushion we need to not panic as we look to sell our house.  This is a pretty amazing sign that we're on the right track.  So now we just live our lives and wait for the buyer we need to move.  Jon is very excited about the 5 hours a week that he will regain once we move.

God blesses us over and over again.  We're hoping for a blessing from Him soon of a buyer for our house!

Learning through gardening

I finally picked the first vegetable from the garden today... a wonderful zucchini.  I can't wait to enjoy it for lunch with my salad!  Carolyn went out with me to check on the garden as we have started to do each morning.  I showed her how to remove the zucchini by twisting and it popped off with a small tip, so perfect.  There are a bunch more squash and zucchini out there and I've found 2 green beans.  Should shape up for some yummy lunches/snacks or vegetables with dinner over the next month or so.

What was fun was that when we came in, Carolyn asked to measure the zucchini.  My first thought was "why?" but then I beat back my adult brain and pulled out the tape measure.  This vegetable is over 6" long and about as thick as Carolyn's arm!  And I had to pull out a second tape measure so the kids could play around with them.  It's so cute to watch them walking around pretending to measure various things.  So much fun!