Our Week

Phew, it's been a busy week! Not surprisingly, we made our way back to the airport observation park. Macey was thrilled. This time, my sister and Will came along and we also met up with a friend who has twins that are just a few months younger than Macey. The kids had a great time. However, documenting their great time wasn't an easy task. Posing five kids aged four and under for pictures goes something like this:

 

We've had some beautiful weather lately- very mild for a southern summer (think low 80's). So, we had to take advantage of the cooler days and head to one of our favorite parks with the cousins.

 

So, we are going through some...uh...interesting changes with Macey's sleep lately. Namely, she has decided that she doesn't care for sleep right now. I know she's just in some sort of transitional stage and/or a testing boundaries stage and I know it's just temporary. Things like this don't stress me out as much the second time around. But I still wouldn't call it enjoyable. Basically, she's fighting sleep at both nap time and bed time. Some days she will skip her nap entirely. Most days, she will still nap (after lots of angry protesting), but then won't want to go to bed until well after 9pm. Which, clearly, is not ideal. So, I'm in an experimental stage right now- moving her nap time around, waking her from naps earlier, adjusting bedtime-- you name it, I've probably tried it. Fingers crossed we get this figured out soon.

 

However, in the middle of all of the sleep drama, there are moments like these that I just cherish. It's been a long time since I've had a baby fall asleep on me. On this day, I woke Macey up from her nap because we had to get ready to leave for my nephew's championship baseball game. She stayed awake for about 5 minutes and then fell back asleep all snuggled up on me. I loved every moment of it. And yes- we still made it to the game.

There's an elementary school in our neighborhood, and since school is out for the summer, we took advantage of their playground.

 

Below is my fearless (almost) 2-year old leading her big bro up the long, twisty slide. Seems safe, right?

"Pee-boo!"

 

 

In other news that doesn't come with an accompanying picture, we have decided to sign Camden up for his first season of Little League this fall! So, Macey will be in gymnastics, and Camden will be out on the ball field. I know it will be busy (especially since I'll be back in school), but I'm so excited to see my little ball player and gymnast in action.

 

Home Preschool: The Letter W

Last week, we learned all about the letter W. My nephew, Will, was at the beach during part of the week, which is why you'll notice that he's absent on Day One. Luckily, he joined us on Day Two and was excited to learn about the letter his name starts with.

 

Day One:

 

We started off working on our handwriting with a printable I found using a simple Google search. Camden kept repeating the W mantra to himself: down, up, down up.

 

I did a little something different here-- a math/science combo. I thought "weather" would be a nice W word to explore. So, we began by talking about the different kinds of weather. I had Camden tell me what the weather was like that day (sunny, hot) and then asked him to name some other kinds of weather. He named: snow, ice, rain, thunderstorms, hot, cold, sunny. Not too shabby.

 

Next, I gave Camden the pictures below (there are suns, snow clouds, rain clouds, thunderstorms, and rainbows). I then read to him some clues (ie- umbrella, puddles, wet) and had him match my clues (on the yellow paper in the second picture below) with the weather pictures. He sailed through that task with no problem. After my clues were assigned to their proper weather event, I had Camden use number cards to assign a number to each weather group (in the 4th picture below). For example, he matched the number 6 card to the 6 suns, etc.

 

Our craft today had nothing to do with weather, but was a W word-- watermelon. This was a cute, easy craft from The Measured Mom. I cut a paper plate in half and the rest is pretty self explanatory.

 

Delicious construction paper watermelon!

 

Apparently, I've been habitually forgetting to take a picture of the book we read, so a shout out to Amazon for this picture. Camden really loved this book. It went right along with our weather theme and included some counting. He asked to read it again as soon as we were done.

 

Day Two:

 

Will's back- yay! Once again, we worked on our handwriting to start. 

 

On Day Two, I decided to forego our usual math activities for some science. Since water is a W word, we headed out back to our water table for some "sink or float?" experimenting. The items we tested: aluminum foil, cotton balls, popsicle sticks, pennies, and a bar of soap. Before testing out each object, I had the boys take a guess- would the object sink or float? Then they excitedly placed each object in the water to determine if they were right or wrong.

 

The floating foil...

 

Popsicle sticks...

 

Cotton ball time!

 

 The bar of soap broke in half.

 

After we tested all of my pre-planned objects, the boys looked around for more things to test. As you can see, a pair of Macey's shoes and a baseball made their way into the water table. I can neither confirm nor deny that Will's socks might've also been tested.

 

After the testing was over, I had the boys divide pictures of the objects into two categories: S for sink and F for float. They remembered most of them, but had to run back outside to test a couple of items again.

 

We then moved on to our craft: a whale (who lives in water- woohoo for the double W!). I didn't do any of the pre-cutting this time (they did follow my outlines though).

 

 

Finished product: Camden's on top; Will's on bottom.

Yay- I remembered to take a picture of our book! Both boys enjoyed this imaginative book about what clouds might be made of.

 



Wordless Wednesday

Phew, I'm just barely making the cut for this week's Wordless Wednesday (not that anyone really keeps track of this stuff...).

 

Here's a few of my favorite shots from the past week:

 

Macey has a new favorite game to play outside. See those wonderfully drawn balloons behind her on the patio? There are 5 or 6 of them, all different colors, and she's obsessed with the "baboons". The game goes like this: she steps on a balloon, I name the color, she moves to the next balloon. When she's stepped on every single color, we cheer and clap. Rinse and repeat 1,000 times.

 

PS- We are getting that little area behind Macey screened in soon. I'm so excited about that. I'm having visions of sitting out on a (little) screen porch with a glass of wine in hand, not getting chewed up by mosquitos.

There is something just so sweet about this picture to me. Camden is teaching Macey how to play Angry Birds. See how he's gently guiding her finger to shoot the birds? I loved this moment, and I love how good they are to each other (most of the time).

 

Camden's really getting good at Mario Kart (what? We're working on hand-eye coordination!) and Macey thinks she's racing too. While holding the controller upside down and shaking it.

 

Meh, it's a blurry iphone photo (aren't they all?) but Camden's expression in this picture is pretty priceless. This was his "high jump".

 



 

I captioned this picture "tired twins" and sent it to Matt yesterday. The night before this picture was taken, Macey decided to forego her normally awesome sleeping routine and party in her room (with me, as her guest) from 2:45-6am. I made sure to thank her profusely for the invitation.

Today, we took a trip to the observation park at our local airport. It's pretty awesome there-- there's a big observation deck where you can sit and watch planes take off and land. I didn't really know what to expect-- I thought the kids would enjoy it, but figured the novelty would wear off quickly. Well, it didn't. Below is Macey's expression upon seeing a plane take off for the first time. The girl was mesmerized. And my normally wild child who never stops moving sat still almost the entire time we were there, just taking in the show. She was thoroughly depressed when it was time to leave and talked about airplanes (while fighting back tears) the entire ride home. I think we've found her new favorite destination.

 

Big brother thought it was pretty awesome, too.

 

There's a pretend runway at the park too, which Camden took advantage of. Here he is, ready for takeoff.