She didn't like the frosting on her cake and she was really shy with so much attention at first... but as soon as a giant balloon came out she became her lively little self as she wrestled with it. And when she opened her balance bike her eyes lit up like crazy. We couldn't get her off of it! She is still enjoying it quite a bit. She is also loving a little scooter that Hinckley was given a couple years ago. He never took to it but she sure has.
Speaking of our little two-year-old, she has started wearing our smallest Spider-Man "cos-oom" all the time. It drowns her and has the funniest muscles for a little girl... it can be hard to keep a straight face as she follows Hinckley around and mimics his punching/web-spinning sounds. It's funny- I can't get her to wear the princess dresses we have so far but she will put any costume, shoes, or clothing on that she has seen one of us wear.
She continued her swim lessons for roughly half of September. Even though she never did stop kicking she managed to pass her summer clothes test. She still has some things to learn but she can float for at least a good minute which is a priceless skill for us.
She is loving books so, so much. Her very favorites right now are Goodnight Moon, a sweet one called Two to Cuddle and a random one- Art & Max. She was carrying that last book around everywhere for a couple weeks and asking all of us to read it to her. After you say, "Arthur" in the book she always repeats it, "Arfur?!" And she's starting to repeat more words in her little squirrel voice, "A-da!" for "Tada!" and "Oserous" when it says "preposterous." It's absolutely adorable.
She still wants to wear dresses all the time (we often settle on a dress with pajama bottoms at night time since she hates the nightgown we have for her.) but she's also very picky about the dresses she wears. There are days that are very frustrating. But I've also found that if I grab clothes- even non-dress clothes and dress her as she's playing in another part of the house (away from the closet) she is much more likely to let me.
And she's finally getting brave enough to sing with me! She's still a little shy and will flash a big sheepish grin right after each note but there have been many times now that she has been willing to repeat some words of familiar songs. Yay!
One of the most memorable, jaw-dropping moments I had with her this month involved a mess in our bathroom. Whenever we fail to lock our cabinets she loves to get into our things. Many messes have been made but this one was different.
She had disappeared for a few minutes and I started to panic because she was being so quiet. I ran up the stairs calling for her and saw that my door was closed. Then she called back to me, "Books!" from her bedroom. I let out a sigh of relief and went to her, saying something along the lines of, 'You've been in here the whole time?"
I settled down on the floor and put her on my lap when I smelled something. Immediately I suspected foul play. I couldn't even see anything on her but I asked her, "Lucy, did you make a mess?" She looked at me with surprise, maybe even a little fear and was quiet for a few seconds before she admitted, "Mess, mess!" and led me to my room. I opened the door and saw my bathroom door was also closed. When I opened that door it was quite a sight- the mess she had left was a real doozy.
I have never had a child make a mess at such a young age and then try to cover it up like that, innocently pretending to have been reading books the whole time. I suppressed a laugh and we got it cleaned up. Man, am I out of my league with this little girl!
Listen to Lucy:
- "Watch!" ("Watch me!")
- "Hewwwo." (Always said very slowly- in almost a slow motion way. It makes us all laugh so hard.)
- "Aw you?" (She loves playing, "Hello?" with us again and again, practicing the common greeting, followed by her version of "How are you?" Occasionally she'll repeat "goot." She'll play almost anywhere but her favorite spot is on the bottom bunk- she puts her head through the ladder rungs and waits for Atticus to put his head upside down from the top and they talk back and forth. In between bouts she falls back and rolls around. I never get tired of it.)
- "Sit-suit" ("Swim suit." Oh, how she loves to swim! And beware lest she thinks you've said swim suit without any intention swimming. Life will not be fun for the next ten minutes.)
Hinckley has had a pretty good month. Yes, he still has grumpy mornings and grumpy moments but most of the time he is very pleasant. He is slow as molasses to do anything... but he's pleasant. The naughtiest thing I can remember him doing in September involved stealing Lucy's money from her jar. We had a good talk and I'm hoping he's learned a lesson.
He has played in four soccer games in the last three weeks. His first game he was on fire and couldn't wait to play. When his coach took him out he yelled, "Why am I over here? I'm not tired at all!"
Afterward, I overheard him talking to a teenage friend about that friend's game.
"How did your game go?" he asked.
"Not good," the friend replied.
Hinckley was quick to say, "Well, maybe I could teach you some things."
The next couple of games the fire seemed to go out. He has been far more reserved but, bless his heart, he runs up and down the field as long as his coach needs him and usually has a smile on his face. He has told us he doesn't want to get hurt, which makes sense. He is actually technically very good with a ball for his age and he loves his coach and practices, so we can't really ask for more.
He still wears costumes ALL the time. Every day, multiple costumes. Most often he is Spider-man but he also loves to dress as Luke Skywalker, using a winter glove as his "robot hand." Speaking of costumes, he has told us probably 10 different costume ideas for Halloween over the last month and a half, all of which he was very insistent on for at least an hour (sometimes a few days.) It was really tiresome the first couple times as we tried to keep up with his new ideas. He did, after all, have spending money left from their lemonade stand... but after ordering two costume accessories for him with his own money we decided to put a stopper on all new costume ideas. From now on he will have to use anything we already possess for his costume.
That being said, he LOVES that Lucy wants to dress up with him. He calls her "Spider-girl" and the two of them have a blast as they run around the house while listening to various soundtracks from Spider-man movies.
One of our most memorable moments with Hinckley came when we went to see the bishop of our congregation for tithing declaration. Dane and I are very happy to pay a tithe to our church. We feel that we have been blessed over the years by doing so and are trying to help our boys experience those blessings for themselves. Atticus has struggled with this in the past but he has finally come to accept the idea. For some reason I thought Hinckley had, as well.
We grabbed the money that the boys had set aside and drove to the church. As we entered the Bishop's office the first thing out of Hinckley's mouth was, "Why are you taking all our money?" in an accusatory tone. I couldn't help laughing out loud. We had another good conversation afterward.
I am happy to report that a few days later he said the following, "I'm one blessed kid. I got two new things today!" (New shoes and a shirt.) "Yep," he continued, "I'm one blessed kid. It's because I gave all that money to the govuhment... I mean the Bishop!" Again, I couldn't help laughing. Kids are just the best.
Hinckley Speaks:
- "Sorry ma'am but I can't take this off. It's my robot hand." (After being asked to undress for bed.)
- ("Would you like a baby brother or a baby sister?") "Hmmm... A sister, so Lucy's not alone."
- ("You two seemed to have a good time together.") "Yep. He was very nice to me." ("Probably because you were so nice to him.") "Yeah. I'm a nice kid."
Atticus had a breakthrough in reading this month. He has been doing just fine for a while now. Then, over the summer, my sweet niece Natalie gave us her copy of a book that has all the Curious George books in it. Both boys love it and Atticus has been reading from it for 25 minutes a day pretty much ever since.
I wasn't sure if he was really progressing until we started studying Japan this month. I had heard that some families enjoyed The Big Wave so I borrowed it from the library. The language was a little simpler than many of the books I read to the boys so on a hunch I asked him to take turns reading it with me. He did so well! Even more importantly, he felt good at it. I was just thrilled sitting next to him. Often when I offered to take a turn he wanted to keep reading, which has never been the case in the past. After finishing up for the day he told me, "I like reading now." Yes!
Another notable topic for Atticus has been paper ninja stars. While talking about Japan we read a great book called The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks and I spent an evening making origami ducks for a little homeschool group that meets at our home on occasion. Atticus asked for a refresher on how to make paper ninja stars (we made a couple last year) and this year he mastered it. He has now made dozens, including several for his friends and Hinckley's friends. It might seem odd that I'm taking time to note this but I'm always so relieved when my little guy with a constant case of ants-in-his-pants can sit down and create (and enjoy it!)
The soccer season has been fun for him (and dramatic, as always.) Though he gets very nervous before each game, he really is so talented. He has started playing on the street with friends or cones every chance he gets, like last fall. It is so fun to see his improvement from week to week. He will even wake up early, get dressed and grab some cones and a ball to get in some touches. There's no better way to start a day.
Atticusisms:
- "As soon as I find the right girl I"m going to ask her to marry me. I'm not gonna wait." (After hearing the first line of "On top of Old Smokey"-- about losing a true lover from courting too slow.)
- ("Do you want a baby brother or a baby sister?") "A baby brother so I can get more nerf guns."
Atticus's good friend invited him to an amazing birthday party and my sweet Hinckley got to go, too. The boys had such a good time. Our good friend, Mr. G, accompanied Hinckley on all the rides since Dane wasn't able to be there. We are blessed with such good friends.
Homeschool Updates:
One part of our homeschool that I am really coming to value is "notebooking." It's kind of like journaling where you look for the "gems" of whatever you're reading and record them. It's not really a revolutionary idea, I've been told for years to journal and write down spiritual insights but only since I discovered the Well Educated Heart philosophy of parenting have I given it the thought and attention it deserved.
I want my boys to learn to notebook and the greatest way to help them begin doing that is to notebook, myself. So while I don't do it as often as I would like, I have made several notebooking pages about books that we've read that I have loved (like Pollyanna and Winnie the Pooh.) I really enjoyed putting this page together about a wonderful book we read together titled Mother Carey's Chickens. We found out that Disney made a film adaptation of it called Summer Magic. I'll be honest, it wasn't my favorite movie at all but the book was great. It was so heartwarming and gave me a lot of food for thought as far as my role as a mother is concerned.
As I mentioned earlier, we studied Japan this month and in addition to new kinds of origami we made more sushi (I think it was even better this year!)
We also studied China, India, Stars & the heavens, Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus. While talking about China we made paper fans and Chinese paper lanterns, ate stir fry, had fortune cookies and celebrated the Moon Festival, which I'd love to make a tradition. Here is the harvest moon that could be seen that evening.
Our study of India led us to read both A Little Princess and Kari the Elephant. We absolutely loved these books and had to watch the film adaptation of A Little Princess. We tried making mulligatawny soup (with naan bread, of course) and it was fantastic. We designed our own henna hands, using symbols many Indians will use for holidays and weddings. I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun we had doing this once the boys settled down.
We also listened to a short book called Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt with the most interesting Hindu fairy tales. Our cultural differences definitely shone through and one, in particular, had us rolling with laughter. ("The Little Buzz-Man," which featured a little man who would yell, "Don't you know that I'm your gentle, patient, loyal servant?!" While pinching and beating his master and others up angrily.)
Until next time. Have a wonderful October!
