Toady Day

The girls explore a toad with Daddy in the back yard. They caught it themselves (notice Mary has gardening gloves on) and the camera waited to die until the very last good shot. Now that's fortunate!

Going Calling

Emma Grace and Mary Leona, going to cousin Bobby's First Communion. Beautiful!

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Ice cream love

Would you like a tour?

Internet! I have been so VERY busy! Teaching is going well, although it sucks every spare minute of my time into oblivion. The girls are doing well in daycare. And we just put our house on the market. Would you like to have a tour of my home? Of course you would! Check it out here!

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Happy birthday Daddy!

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Gymnast

My Snow Day

Here I am, trying to do lesson plans on a snow day. It's not working out like it should, I tell you. Thanks to hubby for capturing this horrible moment in time.

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After

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Before

A New Deal

Well, I kept my chin up and bet my bottom dollar and in the end, the sun did indeed come out. It just came out a lot quicker than I thought it would. It came in the form of an interview, and then another interview. And now,right now, you are reading information typed by a teacher. Well, I was a teacher before, really. I just didn't have my own classroom. So, starting tomorrow (yes, tomorrow! tomorrow! How I LOVE ya, tomorrow!) I am teaching in a classroom. A JOB! YES! That is what you are understanding! I. Have. A. Job!!!! I will be teaching High School Biology, Advanced Biology, Chemistry, and Forensic Science. Yes, Internet, that is what I will be doing. So you may not see me around here too much, I'm afraid. I'm pretty sure no one will be seeing me around too much, except maybe the students I will have! Well, that is all. Mary will be going to day care full time. I have to pull Emma out of the wonderful Real Life Farm Nursery School, since they 1) are too expensive, and 2) do not have any full time openings for either child. I'm all broke up about it, really. Emma doesn't take change very well and it took her forever to make friends at preschool. But there is not much that can be done about it. She seems excited about going to "school" with her sister, so it may work out.

So, Internet, it's been real fun - me and you - late nights and long afternoons together. I'll try to give you a call now and then. Maybe send you a few pictures, too. I'll let you know how things are going. But it's going to be great, I tell you. It's what I'm made for, after all! Teaching! I Won't forget what we've had. It will just be different now. A New Deal.

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After!

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Before

The Reward System

Mary is potty training. We are doing stickers on a chart, which did not have any effect on Emma, but seems to motivate Mary nicely. I made the chart so that every 4 stickers she gets a reward. The first one was to bake in the kitchen with me. She choose a cake. She was fabulous and managed a lot more by herself than I would have thought. Her only drawback was she kept sticking the knife INTO the cake instead of dragging it across. Otherwise, it was a wonderful dessert. She already earned the next reward (two days later) - a trip to the library - and is well on her way to her third prize - a craft project. Then then golden award awaits - a shopping trip to Target. Can I tell you that the girls consistantly try to put their stickers in the Target row? It is obviously a well anticipated reward!

Emma is doing a sticker chart, too, which seems to be working better han in the past. She receives stickers for staying in her bedroom after being put to bed. She only needs 3 stickers for each reward. I am trying to give her a concept of delayed gratification, but it is apparently lost on her. It took her over a week to get to the first reward, and she did end up losing a sticker for biting, a criminal offense in our house. Then, after she had earned her reward it had to be postponed because she ran off at the store. Not just for a minute, but for a looooooooong search time where both parents were frantic and the store personnel offered to lock down the store, as is procedure for a clost child I was told, until she was found. It was that bad. So, she fianlly got to bake inthe kitchen and she chose cookies. It just so hapened we had some fancy cookie dough from Mum that made up four fun fun colors for us to play with. We were at a creative loss until we realized that Veggie Tales are incredibly easy to shape from cookie dough:


That's Larry the Cucumber and Bob the Tomato, for those who don't know Veggie Tales as well as we do. There was a lot of cookie dough, so we continued to make vegetables out of cookies and a wide array of other characters that made us laugh:

All said and done, it was wonderful family time in the kitchen on a Sunday night. And the cookies were goood, too!

Mary's Reward

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Scooter

Catching Up

It took me a full work week worth of days to begin to get back to normal. Most of the presents are put away, the laundry is caught up (but not all put away), we got to the gym with the girls today for the first time in a week, and Emma actually fell asleep before 10 PM. I even managed to vacuum and organize my closet. For all intents and purposes it seems like we are back to normal. Tomorrow we are going to tackle the decorations and take them all down and then the holiday will officially be over. Frankly, I'm quite glad to get the trees down - I've been itching to do it for over a week now. We put them up almost 2 weeks earlier than usual - mid November - and I'm ready for things to be back to normal. I still have 2 packages of gifts to send out to distant family, but if I take down the trees I'll probably get to those sooner.

On other news, Mary's cold remains - awful and unbeatable. She has the worst cough and drainage she has ever had. Even after the pharmacist recommended ventral that was supposed to dry up the mucus, she was coughing endlessly. I've tried the vaporizer, Vicks, extra pillows and lots of concerned hovering over her and none of it seems to work. Even all put together. Tonight she seems to be resting better, but in a few hours it may all be back. That's about all I can tell you.

I have some other things to type up but no time right now, as this will be the first night since last week that I will get in bed before midnight, and that is only if I stop typing now. For a little foreshadowing, I've had a job interview this week to write about, and my grandfather sent me some papers he found that are from the late 1800's - some of them are wonderfully unusual camp songs which I plan on typing here. You won't hear any of these today, I'll tell you! So, stay tuned!

Let the Festivities Begin

Well, Internet, I'm done. All of the baking is baked, all of the presents are wrapped, all of the labels are labeled, the family picture is taken and printed, all of the cards have been made and sent (so if you didn't get one yet, you aren't getting one), and everything that needs to be done for the weekend is DONE. The only things that remain are for Santa himself to do, in the order of inflating 2 Hippity Hops and putting together a small trampoline. Then all of the things that Santa can only do well after children are asleep. Even the library books are not due until the 27th. Friday is school for Emma with a visit from Santa himself (he must be all done, too) and Saturday after gymnastics the family parties start. We go o Papa and Grandma's house on Saturday, Uncle Jeff and Aunt Lisa's on Sunday, then over to Aunt Karen and Uncle Rob's before coming home and putting tired little bunnies to bed for the big day on Monday. What's left after that? Tuesday we have a meeting to finish house selections for our house that has not begun to be built yet and hopefully Mum and Papa are taking the girls to their house for a few days, Wednesday I have a job interview and we paint 2 rooms, Thursday we pick up the girls again and then it is a full week later from when I thought I could take a breath. So, that's all folks - Let the Festivities Begin!

Emma's First Christmas Program

Today we gussied everybody up and piled into the Jeep to drive the 4 miles to Emma's preschool, where we dropped her in her classroom and proceeded to the basement to wait 1/2 hour. Down in the basement, Mary, Mum, Jim and I waited (not particularly patiently) for the 3 year old's classroom #2 to make their entrance. They came! They sat in ever so tiny chairs which are so incredibly sweet in meandering rows that it breaks your heart. They fidgeted, and then THEY SANG. Ms. Tonya managed to get 30 3 year olds to sing. Not all at once, sometimes, and not all on the same song, sometimes. But they did it. Of course, I have a video -but a few things should be explained first. I put wonderful Santa-ish dresses on Emma and Mary that came with hats. I was not going to put the hats on, but Emma insisted. Mary followed suit. So there were hats. They were cute! They were very floppy in a Mrs. Claus sort of way. And neither child would leave them alone. That's all fine for Mary, who is out in the audience, bored to pieces while waiting for her older sister to appear, but I cannot begin to explain the horror I felt when I saw what Emma had done to hers. So we have a wonderful video with a red shower cap on Emma's head. I got over that - I mean, what was there to do about it? Get up from the audience and fix her hat? I'm sure SOMEONE would have thought of that, but it was not ME. No, siree, never, EVER crossed my mind. So fine. Poor Emma has had some bloody noses, so that caused her to be fiddling with her nose. A lot. I couldn't help her out there, either. And the hat. Yep, it was ITCHY. There is a whole segment of the video I left in just because she had fits about her itches. Because later, maybe even after next year, it will be endearing. And the part about saying 'hello' to her family between songs. That was endearing the very minute it happened. Enjoy the highlights!



(The last picture is her with her teacher, who is absoloutely wonderful and fabulous)

Potty Training

This is Nemo. Nemo is being potty trained on "the potty". This particular box is an empty flushable wipes container which is oddly reminiscent of a toilet, which Nemo fits neatly on when he's really got the urge. Unfortunately, Nemo "made poops in his diaper" before he got to the potty, so he was changed, cleaned, and sternly dealt with before being set on the potty (see picture) to "make pee-pee". Emma and Mary were co-parenting, with Mary being Nemo's Daddy and Emma playing his Momma. Emma was the one that changed and scolded Nemo and set him on he potty. Mary was the one that praised and hugged Nemo when he was successful. She then put him to bed, which you can see behind the potty there. Every time Nemo cried, "Momma" would jump up and run over while "Daddy" watched. After 5 or 6 messy diapers, where Nemo was told NOT to do that again, "Momma" unceremoniously thrust Nemo in "Daddy's" face and said, "He's stinky, Daddy, you have to change him now". "Daddy" dutifully cleaned Nemo (with a view finder disc, oddly enough) and told "Momma" that Nemo was hungry. Alright, "Momma" conceded, he needs Momma milk. For those who are not familiar with the parlance in our house that is our code for breast feeding. Emma promptly lifted her shirt, attached Nemo, and looked annoyed for what she thought was enough time for Nemo to get his fill. She then rocked him, told him he was loved, and put him to bed. This played out many times and only stopped when I tried to get a movie of it. Before that it was too much to expect me and Jim to get off of the floor and wipe our tears and stop our crazy laughing to pick up a camera and focus on the moment for posterity. That picture may be worth a thousand words, but the video would have been worth a million laughs.

Little Guy and the Miraculous (Daily) Recovery

Some of you may be waiting with baited breath to hear what has become of Little Guy. The very next day he resurfaced, unharmed. My psychologist friend down the street suggested this might happen. To support Emma's game without acknowledging that Little Guy might be real (which he said annoyed Emma because by her actions she KNOWS Little Guy is imaginary and I would be lying to her), I asked her the next day after he reappeared while we were walking in the mall, "How are you doing with Little Guy today?". To which she replied, casually, that he was gone now because he wandered off and got eaten by a monster. On the way home from the mall, she and Mary were BOTH playing with Little Guys, because now there are 2. Emma was rather vexed that Mary wasn't playing the right way with Little Guy, and I found this funny because I have learned that imaginary friends have to do with children wanting a sense of control. Soon after that, Charlie sat on her Little Guy and smashed him. Later, he climbed in the fireplace and got burned. Eventually he came to an awful end involving a dragon. More recently, he has had unfortunate dealings with wild animal puppets at the library. And today he had a tragic accident with the soap on the bathroom mirror. In spite of all of this, Little Guy remains a companion. He is sort of the Mr. Bill of imaginary friends, or the Kenny of Emma's life. Now Emma has developed Little Puppy, who is NOT Little Guy's pet, but EMMA'S pet. I was corrected emphatically. I just hope Little puppy isn't accident prone.

Addedum: I've been told that Little Puppy went to Argentina and he got a boo-bo and then he died. So much for that.