Begging

Earlier today Lily asked me what begging is. I gave her a basic explanation and we both moved on. Okay, maybe just I moved on because a little while later She asked me for a snack. "Sure," I told her.

"What can I have?" she asked.
"What do you want?"
"Can I have a popcicle?"
"Yes, that's a great idea since it's so hot."
"Can I have ice cream?"
"If we have any."
"Can I have candy?"
"No."
"Please, please, please?!?!"
"No."
"That's begging."
"You're right. I don't respond to begging."
With a glint in her eye and a Cheshire Cat smile on her face, "Daddy does!"

Oh, boy. I'm in trouble with this one;-)

Showin' the Love

Lily got these great window crayons from Grandma and Grandpa for Valentine's Day. She put them to good use today making a welcome home display for Ryan. Yes, that picture is from this afternoon and yes she is wearing her PJs. She has a fever and sore throat today, so we had a very relaxed PJ day.

This is what our finished creation looked like. Lily suggested she do the first letter and I do the second and that we switch back and forth for the whole sign. I started to say that wouldn't work because we would have to do all the letters backwards, but then I realized when I thought about the words we were using that most of her letters would end up being the same backwards and forwards. Wasn't that fortuitous?! I started out by doing one of her "e"s because I thought it was too hard to do backwards, but when we came to the second "e" that was hers she suggested that she could just do the upper case "E"--- brilliant! So that's what we did. As for that "N", well I started telling her about doing it backwards, but I stopped because "N"s can be confusing enough and I knew Ryan would know what it was supposed to be. That big heart on the top was Lily's idea, she decided everything about it and sent me for a stool so she could reach the perfect spot.

This is Ryan's reaction. I think he felt the love:-) Lily was so excited to do it and had so much fun with it. She even left "secret kisses" for Ryan. They are red ovals with her name written by them. I just love my kids. They are so awesome!

Lily-isms

She's outgrowing most of her cute little Lily specific mispronunciations and such, but some stick around to make me smile at all the special things that make her individual and unique.

Valen times Day- She was writing Valentine's Day cards in the other room. She ran and asked me...What letter says, "Eh"? When she figures out the answer she runs out. A few minutes later she runs back in and says, "how do you spell 'time'?"

High Sicle Musical  (1, 2 and 3 of course)

Princess Wii- Her Princess game for the Wii.  ie. "Mommy, will you play Princess Wii with me?"

Bikini bread = zucchini bread

bonus cute thing:
Tonight we said grace and Ryan started eating. Lily told him he couldn't eat yet? I reminded her that we said grace. She thought for a second and said, "We need to say 'Ah Pledge ma legiance' [The Pledge of Allegiance]  It's a special thing for Valentimes Day."

From Lily with Lof

Lily gave this paper to me two or three months ago. Of course I loved it and stored it away. After a while I thought about the fact that construction paper will fade and it won't last forever, so I scanned it. Once I scanned it I felt it was too precious to keep to myself. So now, I'm blogging it. She did this all by herself and surprised me. It was quite a surprise, too. She doesn't ever want to practice writing her letters and she really doesn't like to read any of the words at story time, except site words. I had a feeling she could do more than she was letting on, but I was so happy to see her taking an interest in writing. She did pretty well for stretch spelling and that's all they require in Kindergarten. She wrote her name at the top to indicate who it was from and she also wrote it on the back, but I didn't scan that. Then is says, "Momm I lof yoo." Which loosely translated means "Mommy, I love you. Love, Lily" So sweet. It's definitely among my favorite pieces of art at the moment.

Little Girl Dolls Make the Difference

Lily and I went to the store together. We were walking by the little girl clothes and Lily feel in love with a dress. It was purple (of course) with a bow on the front and a matching dress for a doll. It was 40% off and I had a gift card so I bought it for her. She was tickled pink. Then I realized all her dolls are babies. Little bald babies. She put the dress on one of her baby dolls happily enough and played with it for a while. Then I remembered something.

I spent the evening digging through boxes and eventually found my old dolls. There are two that I had that were close to the 18" size that is so popular right now, My Friend Jenny and My Friend Becky. So we gave them baths and washed their clothes and Lily has barely put them down since. She takes them everywhere. Jenny stays the closest, but mostly it's both of them. It's so sweet. She's played with dolls before, but this is something else. She absolutely loves them. They are a little skinny for the dress matches her new dress, but she doesn't seem to mind at all (she's a little skinny for most of her clothes, too!) She mostly has them in the outfits they had on from when I was a kid. 

The other day I noticed her dolls didn't have shoes on. I thought it was just like her other baby dolls- sometimes they just don't have anything on and it's no big deal. Then we went to leave the house and of course the dolls had to come with us. She grabbed her dolls and ran to her cubby to put her shoes on and I saw this...

Isn't that just the sweetest thing you've ever seen? I didn't make a big deal (I took the picture later when she wasn't around). I just waited to see what happened. When we came back she took off her shoes and took off the doll shoes and lined them all up again. She's melting my heart, that girl! I think she may be ready for her own big girl doll soon! It's a big moment. I'd better start saving now! I wonder if I should let her decide which big girl doll to pick or just pick one I love. My favorite was Samantha and she's not available anymore. Maybe Lily and I can pick out a new favorite together. This calls for a trip to the library.

Woohoo, We Got Out of the House!

I have not been out of the house since Sunday and Lily has been cooped up since Friday. We like being home, but there is something about not being able to go out that makes a person a little stir crazy. So first thing this morning (for Lily at least- she didn't wake up until 10) we counted $3 out of the change jar for each kid and I took them to a surprise destination. Ryan came up with all kinds of guesses as to where we were going, so many I feared he was going to be disappointed with our destination. I was really only planning on taking them to 5 Below. I figured in a store full of stuff for less than $5 they were bound to find something that would be exciting for them. I'm glad I counted out the money before we left because I was tempted to give the each a few more dollars a couple times. Lily was so excited about so many things and Ryan really liked some of the $5 items. I did tell Ryan he could use a couple of his own dollars if he wanted something bigger. He is such a miser though, he wouldn't part with his money. As  matter of fact when we counted out the money this morning he asked me if they had to spend it. I told him he did. What kind of kid doesn't want to spend free money?! My kind I guess. He gets it from me. After all I'm the girl who didn't apply to Hopkins because it had a $50 application fee and I might not even get in. Ugh, I know. I realize now how silly it was. I really want to teach Ryan about value and using his money for things he values instead of squirreling it all away for no particular reason. It's funny the things you think about when you're a parent.
We went through the whole store. Lily found a necklace and bracelet pretty early on and though she saw some other things she liked nothing topped the necklace and bracelet. Ryan took a little longer to decide, that might have something to do with the extreme girlie-ness(is that a word?) of the first area we explored. He eventually found a soft, Nerf type sword that he could use to fight his brother since he has a similar one that came with his Playmobile knight set. Yep, that seems about right, dress up girlie stuff for Lily and weapons for Ryan. I was a little surprised he didn't want a USA soccer ball, but he does already have like 3 soccer balls and I'm sure he'll get another one when the fall season starts. All in all a successful outing.

Thinking Out Loud (well, at least in type)

Those who have been around me lately may or may not know, but I'm thinking about homeschooling our kids. Ryan is completely bored in school and he is there (including the bus ride) 6 1/2 hours a day. That may not seem like a lot to some people, but when you think of the time left over that's not taken up with dinner, bedtime routines and homework it's not much and of course the morning is just getting ready for school. The boy wants to learn. He's not bored because all they do is work. He bored because he doesn't feel like he is learning anything. I don't blame him, a lot of the work he brings home is far too simple. I worry though. I worry that he won't learn the right things if he is home taught. I worry that I won't be able to teach him music because I don't even know how to read music. I worry that he will become what Jay calls "one of those pod people" that don't seem to quite fit in to what we think of as normal society. I worry that I might go crazy being home with both kids all day long every day for the foreseeable future. I worry that I might start with good intentions and then want to give up when it gets hard.
Then I talk to my homeschooling friends and I look at their kids and I think it might work. I was at a meeting last night for Sunday school and as we were leaving I saw my friend, Deb, who has been a great example for me of home-school life. I went over to say hi and she told me she was going to invite me out with them that night- She was with some of her home-schooing friends. They invited me to sit down and we talked about homeschooling and lots of other stuff. It was great to talk about my fears and hear some of their stories. It's funny how God keeps pointing my way. Just this school year I've met 3 moms(not including the ones from last night) who have given me all kinds of great information and encouragement about this. And last night during my meeting one of the ladies shared that she teaches a home school Bible study for kids that they go to while the moms go to their own Bible study. How great is that? I didn't even know that existed. Then one of the other coaches said that his wife home-schools their kids. I've been learning all about the social activities, co-ops, group field trips, weekday play dates, etc. that offer great opportunities for socialization. A friend gave me a book written by a lady who didn't finish high school until her last home-schooled child did. All of her children went to college and are doing well in their chosen fields. I've been reading the blog of a really amazing photographer, Jasmine Star, who was home schooled. She has the most amazing stories and she is really cool. Oh, by the way, she went to law school, but decided law was not what she wanted to do. So she became an international wedding photographer instead.When I started reading her blog the home-school stuff was just a side note to me. I wasn't thinking about home-school then and her talking about homeschooling didn't make me want to home-school my kids, but seeing a good product of homeschooling makes me happy now that I am thinking about it.
So I've written about my fears and other people's successes and even all the nudges and arrangements God has made toward homeschooling, but what I haven't really talked about is why I want to do it. I don't think the public education system is failing my kids exactly, but I do feel like they could be learning so much more. Well, at this point I'm really only talking about my experience with Ryan and what I expect will happen with Lily since she is not in the public system yet. I can cater their learning to their needs. I feel like Ryan's love of learning is getting squelched in the system that says every child needs to be up to this level by that time. So all the focus seems to be on kids who need more help. I understand with limited budgets that they need to make choices about where they put their resources, but meanwhile some kids are sitting in class bored out of their minds because they've known how to do this stuff for 2 years. I keep hearing "as they get older there will be more separation in classes and he will be with kids with similar abilities." Well, I'm tired of waiting for that to happen and he is, too. If we kill his love of learning in these "in between" years what good is it to be with those kids in however many years? He needs to form good study habits now or he will never think he has to work to learn anything. Believe me, this will cost him dearly when he is older. In getting to choose our curriculum I will get to explore their loves and interests with them. We can go in depth about things they are really interested in instead of glossing over a bunch of stuff they won't retain because it was just a small bit they learned. I have so many ideas about studying how things work together. Studying each state, one at a time, but in groups (i.e. Northeastern states) during a block of time. So they can relate where they are on the map, etc. We can learn about so many things by doing them instead of reading about them. Composting is a great example, or growing plants from seeds(yes, I know they do this one in school). The opportunities are endless. I love that about homeschooling.
Another big issue for me is scheduling. I believe our kids today are way over-scheduled. I understand why parents want their children to experience many different activities, but I really believe they need free time, too. With them being at school for so many hours five days a week it seems like too much to schedule more than one or two activities/sports. With homeschooling I can build those growing opportunities into our curriculum. Piano lessons and dance classes for music; soccer, gymnastics, baseball, etc for P.E.; pottery classes for art; the list goes on and on. I'm also a firm believer in family dinners. Doing these activities during the day would allow us to still be able to come together for a meal every night.
Perks that are not good reasons to home-school, but I will really enjoy- awesome! Being on our own schedule. That means we can sleep later if we want, we can take vacations in the middle of the school year means smaller crowds plus we save money for it being the off-season and we can start our lessons when we are ready. Less wasted time waiting for everyone to be done, walking quietly from place to place and riding the bus for half an hour to get somewhere 5 minutes away means that we will probably not spend 6 hours on school a day= more play time. Picnic lunches together when it's nice outside. I get to choose the school supplies. More family time. I can see the interactions my kids are having with other children and act accordingly. For example if the get along really well with some kids we can make play dates, but if someone is a trouble maker I won't make my child sit next to them while they are trying to learn if they don't want to. We can learn about whatever we want with no time limits. If Ryan wants to spend 4 hours in making a craft, as he has been prone to do lately, he can because we have lots of time in our day.

Imagination

I love when my kids speak encouraging words to one another, so yesterday when I heard Lily encouraging Ryan with, "Don't give up, Ryan. You can do it!" It was music to my ears. Knowing he was playing a princess Wii game with her because she loves it, but can't really play by herself made it even better. He had asked to play Wii and I told him he could play whatever he wanted. When Lily saw him getting ready to play she asked him to play princesses with her. After making checking with me to make sure he'd still get a chance to play the game he wanted he gladly obliged. I love when they play nicely with each other and do kind things for one another.

Of course all the wonderfulness only lasted for so long and they started getting frustrated with one another because Lily couldn't get past a particular obstacle. I helped with that one and everything went okay for a while longer. Then came another one and I couldn't keep helping, so I told Lily it was time to stop playing for now and let Ryan play his game. She didn't like that, so she went up to her room and cried. Ryan went up after her and the next thing I heard was Ryan running around saying, "I'm a green bog!" and Lily laughing and giggling as she chased him with her princess wand. They were playing the Wii game in real life. I was so impressed with Ryan in so many ways. He went on his own to cheer his sister up. He used great problem solving skills and used his imagination to come up with just the right thing to make his sister happy again. They spent the rest of the afternoon playing their own versions of Wii games in real life. They played Excite Truck, Mario and Sonic Winter Olympics and Mario Kart after they were done playing princesses. These kinds of afternoons warm my heart.

Where Are All the Candles?!

We had a birthday cake for Jesus yesterday. I like doing this because it's a good concrete way for the kids to relate to why we have Christmas and bring the focus back to Jesus on Christmas day. And I don't know about other people's kids, but with my kids it usually brings up good questions, too. When I asked Lily if she wanted to help me make a cake for Jesus' birthday she asked if Jesus would come to eat it. Which was a good time to talk about Jesus wanting Lily to enjoy the cake for Him and talk about Jesus wanting good things for us. Later I let each child pick a color candle to put on the cake. Lily chose pink and Ryan chose blue. So I put 2 pink candles, 2 blue candles and 2 yellow candles to be neutral territory in the middle. So Ryan asked why there were only 6 candles because Jesus isn't six. I made the off-handed comment that I didn't have 2,000 candles (a rough general estimate, I know). Ryan said He's not 2,000 either, just like he would say "Nuh-uh!" when I say it's 12:30 instead of saying it's 12:28. My dad, who was standing near by, agreed that Ryan was right. Then Ryan said something very profound, but I'm not sure he knew how profound. He said, "Jesus is infinity!" Again, my dad agreed and a little dialog about Jesus and God being one went on. I plan on delving more into this with him, but what a great conversation starter, right?! I LOVE Christmas!

You Be Bruno, Okay?

I wonder if anyone else's children play that way. We're watching Dancing with the Stars. Lily has worn two three different princess dresses and danced a different routine to every song. She's convinced Ryan to join her for some of them. He likes to try to imitate the moves of the dancers. It's so stinkin' cute. I got to be the judges. Ryan told me to say what I really think, "even if it's 1,2,1." Too funny. I wish he would let me sign him up for ballroom dancing lessons, but alas, he has no interest. Maybe when the hormones hit ;-) Wait...Did I just have a moment of looking forward to male hormones hitting my house?! I take that back!

Halloween

Ryan decided to be Anakin without any trouble in the end and he was happy. He was really happy to run into his friend Luke at Trunk or Treat and be able to have a light saber battle. There were also some great adult Star Wars costumes.
Lily wore her Sleeping Beauty outfit (minus the crown) in the morning. We took it off to eat lunch and after that she wanted to be Cinderella, but the only dress up shoes she has that are good to walk in are Sleeping Beauty ones. She wanted to carry Ryan's Cars "pumpkin" from last year. She was quite a mix.
My costume was more subtle, I was a tourist. I wore a Paris shirt and my camera. I wanted to wear a touristy hat, but I didn't have one that I thought worked.
The best part about Halloween this year? It didn't cost me one cent. I had a huge bag of mini-tootsie pops that I had bought as rewards for my kids. Realizing we wouldn't get through the whole bag in a reasonable amount of time I decided to use that to give out to trick or treaters. I also pulled out the candy my kids don't like from the loot they had gotten earlier in the day. I hate throwing all that candy away, but if no one in your house eats it what else can you do? I thought giving it to kids who might appreciate it was a good solution. It wasn't bad candy, just stuff like Laffy Taffy, Whoppers, Blow Pops and Tootsie Rolls and I checked it before I gave it out, too. I did feel a little bit bad about "re-gifting" candy, so when I did I gave out handfuls instead of one piece.
Now my only problems are that I didn't really take "costume shots" of the kids and what to do with all the candy they got from 3 rounds of Trick or Treating. They sure had fun, but there is so. much. candy! I think I'll help them with the chocolate bars;-)

Pirates

Lily's version of the pirate song...

"Yo ho! Yo ho, the pirate's after me." After we rode the Pirates of the Caribean Lily rode around Disney World on Jay's shoulders happily singing her little diddy. He tried to correct her, but she wasn't having any of that. She was singing it again this afternoon. I love when kids trigger great memories.

To give you an idea what I deal with each day...

Lily doesn't want to do what I tell her to. She tilts her head down, gives me a very stern look and says, "I do what I do and I do what I want to do!" hmph!



When I go in the garage to get a broom for the back porch Lily asks to go on a bike ride. I told her not right now. I start to go back into the house and she says, "I'm staying right here if I can't go on a bike ride! I'm not going inside." I start counting and she comes to the door, but not inside. I tell her if I get to three she loses a princess, she steps in the door with her back against it and says,"I'm not going any further in! This is it!"

This morning when it was time to get dressed I pulled an outfit out and told Lily it's time to get dressed. She fussed and threw herself on the floor, so I left the outfit and went downstairs. She came down about 5 minutes later with a different shirt and a pair of shorts. A shirt with purple flowers and a pair of shorts with flowers on a different color purple background. It did not look good, but I chose not to fight that battle. It's what she wore today. She'll probably hate to see pictures of herself in these outfits when she's a teen, but at least I can tell her she picked them out.

Don't hear that much

As I bent down to pick Lily up from the step above me she said, "You're soooooo tall, Mommy!" I'll treasure that little tid bit since it's not something I hear much at 5'4".

Bed

When I was putting Lily's jammies on tonight I noticed the princesses on her sheets were upside down. I said, "I see Daddy made your bed."
To which she replied, "You can say that again!"

Play

Yesterday my kids were being goofy. When I told Lily to get he shoes on for gymnastics she came to the door in rain boots and a clown nose. Later she wanted to pick Ryan up at the bus stop as Buzz Lightyear. As soon as Ryan came in he put some of Lily's pink hair stuff on top of his head and the clown nose on his face. Then he tried to juggle 1 ball. They had me laughing anyway.

Today I hear "Roar! I'm going to eat you!" Then I see this ...

Big Bad Wolf coming around the corner.

And from the other corner come Little Red Riding Hood...

Oh, no! He got her!

It's a good thing her dad came and took her out of his stomach...LOL.

Ryan cracks me up. You may notice there are no eye holes in his mask. He can only see because he glued (oh yes, I said glued) his mask so there was a tiny hole at the bridge of his nose where he could peek out.

They are fun kids, especially when they get along.

Never Forget...

Never forget how cute and innocent they are at 3. Yesterday we went to the Orioles' game with Grandmommy and Granddaddy. Lily didn't watch much of the game, but she found ways to amuse herself. At one point she came over the the seat next to me. She situated herself with her back on the seat and her legs up the back. She played for a while tipping her head over the edge and laughing as if it were the funniest thing in the world. Lily has a very contagious laugh, watching her enjoy herself brings a smile to my face almost all the time. She plays some other games with herself, or so I thought. The next thing I know she's looking over at me with a big grin on her face and says, "The people LOVE me!" I guess she was entertaining the people behind us as well;-) It was so funny because she was just innocently trying to say that the people behind us liked her, but it sounded so diva-esque. One might have thought she was a Broadway star the way she made her proclamation with such confidence and feeling;-)

Splash

What do you do when there is a short break in the seemingly never ending rain storm?

You bust out the rain boots and camera and hit the streets looking for good puddles to splash.

Sadly, I had to convince Lily to splash. Once she got going she had a good time.

Dancing with the Stars- Take Two

Well, I watched the second week of Dancing with the Stars on my own. I thought it was much more tasteful. Maybe they spoke to those contestants. Maybe it's because I missed the interviews with the notorious "stars." Who knows, but thank God for DVRs. Lily and I are watching the recorded show from Monday night right now. I skip all the questionable parts which unfortunately this week includes half the dances. I think the Argentine Tango is a little much for her. I like it, but she is 3. That's cool though. I'm just glad to be able to watch with her:-)

My favorite thing about watching with her today...
We were watching the Lindy Hop and she said, "I wish I could be like that!" She's so my little girl! I see ballroom classes in her future ::squee::

I'll Belax

Lily had gotten herself into quite a pickle this afternoon. She was wearing one of her princess dress ups with her dress up shoes and playing with a bunch of balloons. She had tangled the balloon strings all around her feet and the buckles for the shoes. Somehow some of her dress had frayed and become entangled with all the other mess of knots, etc. All at once she turns toward the bathroom, announces she has to use the potty and falls down because of her entangled feet. She'd made the announcement in that 3 year old way that tells mommy 'if I don't get to go right now you're going to have a mess to clean up!' I immediately sprung into action trying to get her freed from the mess. I got her feet free from the balloons quickly, but the frayed threads from the dress proved difficult to untangle and impossible to break. I looked at her and said, "I need to get some scissors. I'll be right back!" She laid back, put her arms out in this meditative sort of way, closed her eyes and said, "I'll belax." [decoded meaning= I'll relax] This girl cracks me up! Anyway, I got the scissors and cut the strands and she made it to the potty.

I'm off to belax. It's been a long day.