Kid Stuff

I'm feeling lazy, so here are some lists.

Joseph no longer has any interest in babyhood. Things he does:
- Sits and listens to books before nap and bedtime. He also sometimes interacts with the stories, which I love; he pretends to eat the food in The Very Hungry Caterpillar, "rolls" his arms in Pat-a-Cake, and "beeps" the horn in Little Blue Truck by banging his hand on the book. His favorite book is called You Are (Not) Small. It's basically a big monster telling a little monster that he's small, and the little monster telling the big monster that he's big, and then they argue like this: "BIG!" "SMALL!"  Then a really big monster comes in and his tiny monster friend flies down on a parachute, and the small and big monster realize they aren't so different after all, and they go to lunch. It's all very nice. Nora has it memorized.

Nora reading You are (Not) Small to Joseph

- goes to get his shoes when he wants to go outside. When we say, "ok, let's put your shoes on," he gets excited and sits down on the floor and hands them to us.
- puts his shoes back in the shoe basket (He really likes shoes.)
- shakes his head no when he doesn't want something. I'm trying to also teach him to shake his head yes, which turns comical pretty quickly and he rolls his head around and then does it just to be funny
- eats bananas. All the time. Today he ate an entire banana in less than 2 minutes.
- throws food on the floor to Zadie, even though he knows he's not supposed to.
- puts dirty diapers in the diaper pail. (Gets mad when he can't get them back out.)
- throws things in the trash can. This would be helpful except it's usually things he's not supposed to throw away. We're fairly certain he threw away one of Nora's sandals before we knew he was capable of doing that.
- Dumps out the dog's water bowl. The other day he did this so many times that I gave up and just let him play in the water for awhile.
- He really likes taking all the mixing bowls out of the cupboard, and then putting them back. It's cute, but also very loud.
- He tells us very emphatic stories from time to time, when he is excited about something (typically putting his shoes on). It sounds something like this: "ah ya ah ya ah ya ah ya!" and he nods his head around.
- puts a ball through a basketball hoop or in a soccer goal. He hasn't learned how to kick yet...but he just learned how to walk, so one thing at a time, I suppose.
- takes the markers from Nora's dry erase easel in her bedroom, and throws them down the stairs.
- Gives kisses.
- Blows kisses.
- Hugs baby dolls.

"I'm going to throw this raisin overboard."

We recently went to Texas with Ryan's family. This was an attempt at a family selfie (A famfie?) on the airplane. Joseph wanted to sit between Ryan and I the entire second flight, which was honestly easier than having him on our laps, so we ran with it.  Nora got those sunglasses as a part of some Dallas-Fort Worth promotional kids thing they were passing out in the airport during our layover. She loves them. One day we went to the grocery store and I forgot my sunglasses. It was very bright and these sunglasses were in the car, so I put them on. While we were walking into the grocery store, we saw someone from church. After saying hello, we kept walking and I realized that I was still wearing a pair of children's sunglasses. This story is a good example of getting off topic.

Nora!  Preschool started up a few weeks ago, and she is loving it. Today they had a "Touch-a-Truck" event at her school, where all different kinds of vehicles came for the kids to explore and ask questions about.  I helped and had a group of four kids, and it was so fun to see them so excited. We were looking at the fire truck and right after they climbed inside, the fire fighters got a call and had to go. It was the talk of the preschool for the rest of the day. A real life emergency! (Not to worry: the fire truck returned later and all was well.)  They got to push the siren on the police car, and one of the kids in my group told the police officer "Well, my dad has been pulled over LOTS of times" and it made me laugh. It maybe wouldn't have been quite so funny had it been Nora saying it.  There was also a food truck that brought chocolate chip cookies, a mail truck, a police motorcycle, a tractor (this was a big hit), a school bus (Nora's favorite because she very interested in the idea that she can ride the school bus next year), and a tow truck (also a big hit because they got to move the big crane thing-y up and down).

Nora's other exciting things:
- She is really working hard on her letters and learning a lot at school. They have "homework" each week (very low pressure and no stress if it doesn't get done) where they trace the letter of the week, find a picture in a magazine of something that starts with the letter, and then write the word.  She is sort of starting to sound out words and I struggle with how much I should help her. Last week she cut out hearts for the letter H, and then I let her sound it out on her own. She came up with "hrt," which I thought was pretty good.  But I didn't know whether I should correct her or not, but in the end I just left it.

First day of preschool. Their color was yellow, so Nora took a Curious George book as her show-and-tell.

- I always ask who she played with at school, and she often says "I just played by myself," but then later tells me about playing with one friend or another.
- Her teacher sent home a list of sight words at the beginning of the year, just for us to have as reference. I kind of forgot about it, but then one night while we were reading stories before bed, I showed her the word "the" and pointed out all of the different "thes" in the story. Within a few pages, she was finding them herself, and now she's very proud that she can find it and read it all by herself.
- She's playing soccer again this fall, and still loves it. She scored a goal last week and was so excited.  She also wants to do gymnastics again, but I haven't signed her up yet because it started at the same time as school and soccer, and it just seemed like too much all at once.  So, soon.

She appointed herself as goalie. 

- She has grown several inches this summer and dresses that used to go to her knees or farther are now more like tunic tops that require shorts or leggings underneath.
- Our garden went crazy this summer and she loves helping with it.  We have more tomatoes than we know what to do with (though the big ones didn't do very well, just the cherry tomatoes), zucchini, peppers (no one but me is patient enough to let these go long enough to become red or orange bell peppers, so they're just green), and more cucumbers than we know what to do with. We've given lots to the neighbors and some to friends because there's no way we could use it all.  I made a TON of double chocolate zucchini bread, and still froze 13 cups of grated zucchini after I was done.

- She's still a great big sister and is enjoying that Joseph can actually play for now, but gets frustrated sometimes because he doesn't understand or even indulge her pretend play.  They both love (and I hate) when they play "airplane" - this is a game that Nora invented where Joseph "runs"away and Nora catches him and picks him up.  I say "be gentle!" at least 30 times a day, and regularly become the Fun Police and have to put the kibosh on whatever shenanigans they're currently into.

"6 more weeks of winter!"  (This is at the Children's Museum in the Playscape area that is just for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers.  I love it because they can run wild and everything is amazing.)

We recently went to the Children's Museum.  In this thing, you put balls in a hole and they bounce down to the bottom.  Joseph could have done this all day.

They opened a Doc McStuffins exhibit recently. It's amazing. This is Nora's friend, Leah.

The Carousel is always Nora's request when we go to the museum.

Nora and cousin Catelyn during our Texas trip. I didn't take many pictures because Joseph was too busy clinging to me and screaming at me all night long, but this one is cute.

That's all for tonight. Good night!