July



First attempt at ponytails



Aaron playing chess with Grandpa

 OK, I guess I'm long overdue for an update. 

Audrey

Audrey's hair is now long enough for ponytails.  The first time I tried it (pictured above) she wanted them out within 5 minutes.  Now she asks for them in the morning.  As soon as I'm done, she runs to the mirror and looks at herself. 

She's very particular about what she wears, too.  Or at least about having control over what she wears.  It's very hard to pick something out for her anymore.  She's just as happy picking out drab hand-me-downs from Aaron as she is about picking out girly hand-me-downs from family and friends.  And she loves shoes, but isn't specific about whose.  She sees shoes, she wants to wear them and walk around. 

She is also obsessed with books!  That's my girl.  She piles up a stack of books and sits on the floor in the play area and goes through the books by herself.  If she knows the title, (like one called Wow!  Babies!), she will repeat the title as she pages through the books.  "Wow babies." Turn page. "Wow babies". Turn page.  "Wow babies."  This is more likely when I'm not in the room or in the afternoon after nap time.  First thing in the morning, she tries to get me to read to her.

She's teething all the time.  She's got the top 4 front teeth and the bottom 4 front teeth.  But next to those she has spaces followed by molars (so 4 molars total).  The spaces are starting to fill in.  Her favorite thing to alleviate teething pain is to chew on a wet washcloth.  She calls it a "chew".  She goes to the bathroom where we keep a basket of kids washcloths, pulls one out and climbs up on the step stool to try to get it wet.  I try to intervene so that she only gets a corner of it wet.  Then she'll go play with it hanging out of her mouth.  We find old chews on the floor all the time.  She tends to go through a couple a day if we don't manage to stop her.

Aaron

Aaron is such a big boy now.  He's reading pretty consistently.  If you remember, he read his first simple book just before turning 3.  We'd try to get him to read words here and there at story time before bed, but he more often than not didn't want to and we didn't push it.  But sometime after turning 4, he started reading parts of the stories and then picking out beginner books that he could read.  Some nights he has read all of his bedtime stories.  When we are out, he'll point out words on signs.  With his penchant for numbers, he enjoys reading exit signs on the freeway.  "There's Exit 18, Mama!"

He still loves music, too.  There is a folk group that we catch once a month when they play in the morning.  They have guitars, a stand-up bass (his favorite), a mandolin (his other favorite) and sometimes a banjo or other instruments.  And there is another band that plays at coffee houses in the afternoons that we are usually able to catch once a month.  They have a CD and we now own two copies.  I bought the first copy after we saw them the second time.  I enjoy their music as much as Aaron.  Then the 3rd time we saw them, a couple was watching them for the first time and were so enthralled by how interested Aaron was in the music, they bought him a copy.  (I think the fact that Aaron requested a song by name impressed them, too.  It's instrumental music - no lyrics.)  The back of the CD case lists the tracks and the time of each track and Aaron quickly memorized that info.  He knows how many minutes and seconds each song is and what the track number is.  That kid likes numbers.

I've been doing an hour long preschool program with Aaron and including other kids.  At first a friend and I were doing it at our houses on my morning off or in the afternoon, but then her parents paid for her older son to go to preschool twice a week and she's having baby #3 next month so we gradually lost momentum.  But Aaron really enjoyed it.  He started drawing with crayons more, something he never really wanted to do.  And he started trying to write numbers and letters.  And he'd ask about preschool when we didn't do it.  So this summer, I started doing it on my own.  I tried doing it at a park, but there were a lot of little bugs that annoyed Aaron, so now we are doing it at home.  We've had different friends join us each week.  There's too much going on in the summer for the other kids.  But I'm hoping we find a few families that want to join us consistently.  I'd like to keep this up until he goes to Kindergarten next year.  And at that point, I hope Audrey is enjoying it and I will keep doing it with her.  Right now, she listens to the story and colors during the craft project, but mostly she kind of wanders around and plays with stuff.

Oh, I taught Aaron how to play chess a couple of months ago.  I set up the chess board after nap time one day and told him the names of all the pieces and how they moved.  An hour or so later when I was making dinner, he wanted to play again.  I said I couldn't right then, but maybe later.  While I was in the kitchen, he set all the chess pieces back in the correct place.  He seems to like the game, but doesn't have any strategy.  And by that, I mean he doesn't try to get his opponent's pieces.  He just likes to move the pieces.  I tried to take him to chess club at the library a couple of times, but he's not quite ready.  They expect kids to play quietly and focus on the game and at 4, Aaron's not ready to do that.  I thought it would help him learn the game.  So for now, we just play at home sometimes. 

Or at my parents house.  As you see in the picture up above, my parents have this awesome chess set with oversize pieces.  My mom made the ceramic pieces about 40 years ago when we lived in Ohio but had never finished them.  My dad came across them in their shed a month or so ago.  They had them fired and my dad built a custom chess board for them.  Aaron loved it.  The hard part was keeping Audrey away from the pieces.