Beach Day

Lydia continues to amaze us with everything she is learning. This week she learned about whales in preschool and came home telling us so many facts she learned. We went to the library to check out more books about whales to foster this learning (and for myself to confirm those facts:) This week she also had to find something that started with the letter "s." I always encourage her to choose this on her own. She decided she would do "Sam's Club." Interesting choice, but we went with it! I may have a shopper on my hands. She painted a whale in preschool and wanted to put it in a book. When I asked her what that meant, she replied, "see mom, you can feel it. I want to put in a book for babies." Lydia is absolutely in love with playing "Bear Hunt" which is the Melissa and Doug version of Guess Who. If you have never played it before, the concept of the game is to try to figure out your opponent's bear by asking yes/no questions at each turn. After your opponent answers, you can knock down some of the bears on your board which gets you closer and closer to only having one bear left. She is very good at it! I am going to be on the look out for the Guess Who game.

Isaac is quite the little explorer. His favorite thing to do right now is play with the doors on our Entertainment center or the DVD player. He is such a happy boy! His is getting into EVERYTHING! The girls usually go into his room in the morning when he wakes up and hop into his crib to chat with him. This week, however, Lydia went in there and the next thing we know she is putting him in our bed! When we asked her how she got him out of the crib, she explained that she first picked him up and laid him on the changing table (right next to the crib), placed her hand on his side so he wouldn't roll off and then proceeded to climb out herself to the floor. She then picked him up and carried him over. Yeah, we told her she was NOT to that again.

Ava is having fun trying out different areas of our house to take her afternoon nap. This past week, she slept in the walk-in closet downstairs, a make-shift bed in the corner of her room, and under a card table in the office. Lydia helps get Ava all set up and enjoys reading books to her. She is starting to get herself dressed. She has been putting her own shoes on for awhile now, but finally getting them on the right feet 99% of the time. We are still having trouble with pinching and scratching. Lydia's face has LOTS of marks on them. Any suggestions for discipline? I have tried timeouts and pinching her back. It hasn't helped. She often thinks that if she apologizes right away, she's off the hook...on the contrary:) Other than that, Ava is our Happy-Go-Lucky girl who LOVES to cuddle and help others, especially her little brother.

Glancing outside summer seems so far away, but this was not the case inside our house this past week. We decided to have a beach day. The girls were ecstatic! They changed into their bathing suits and found their sunglasses. We laid out some beach towels, and I set up the large umbrella. It was so much fun to eat lunch on the "beach". Lydia is already begging to do it again this week.