Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Wordless Wednesday



So I'm trying to get posts up regularly on Mondays and Fridays over at Together Walking. So I thought I would add another to my weekly posts here. I've seen others do "Wordless Wednesdays" and I like the idea. Instead of just picking one picture I plan to pick a handful of our week. If I can do it consistently it will give an idea of things we've been up to. So here's my first one with some snapshots of the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!
























Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Gerry's big strides

Gerry has had some huge developments lately too, so it only seems fair that he should get an update too! First of all he is diaper free and by that I mean uses the potty 99.9% of the time. Yay! We also are experimenting with going diaper-free at night - this week he hasn't worn one at all and had no accidents, so keep your fingers crossed. I distinctly remember his first weekend out without diapers because Nonna Gigi was visiting and he was exactly 2 1/2 years old that weekend. I loved the philosophy of Elimination Communication even though we didn't do it full time. It definitely helped us so much get to this point.

The other huge thing is that he is talking SO MUCH now. It is so fun! He turned 2 last July and had only a handful of words. But in the past few months his speech has exploded! Some of my favorite expressions right now are, "Be rea-wy rea-wy cayful." on the stairs, stopping at driveways to say "wook bofe ways!" and "I luv __________" fill in the blank. I keep waiting for him to grow out of the painfully, amazingly adorable phase but it hasn't happened yet! I have to be very careful to be fair when dealing with him and Marisol because he still can't really do any wrong in his mama's eyes. ;-) I *think* I'm doing a good job because she still declares her love for me daily and they are getting along well, as well as brothers and sisters can I think anyways.

He still loves to climb and jump and has daily courage badges to prove it. He also still loves his "muk" (nursing) but is eating more and more other foods. (I made sure not to say "real" food - breast milk is very REAL after-all! Actually, with his sweet tooth I'm really glad that he still does nurse.)

And there you have it. A little Gerry to brighten your day. Here's a video so you can hear some actual Gerry conversation.

Baby Sort

A little Marisol update. One project we did this week was sorting all of her babies (stuffed animals). We put them on our bed in groups. Then we counted them up and made a list. A few of our groups were: primates (apes and monkeys), sea mammals (whale, manatee), birds, reptiles (dragon, dinosaur, and turtle) and the biggest piles were Dogs (22), Horse family - including zebras and unicorns - (16), and the biggest of all Bears (27). Bears included Care Bears, polar bears, a panda bear, and lots of teddy bears.






For a grand total of 145 babies! Wowza :-)

Marisol is way into math. We can't stop her. Counting, adding, multiplying... also loves setting her timer and measuring lengths with rulers and tape measures. Grandma is, of course, every excited about this.

She is also into writing and her letters and numbers are getting more legible and orderly all the time.

Go Marisol! :-)

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Many Uses of Sticker paper


We bought sticker paper last summer while planning Marisol's birthday party. We printed out fairy stickers from her favorite Daisy Meadows series. Those stickers are still in the envelope waiting to be used ;-) But the sticker paper has gotten lots of use and we are now on our second pack of it. In one of my last posts you saw the project where we printed something from the barbie website out on sticker paper and Marisol cut them out and made two pictures from it. Here are some of our other "sticker projects".


Marisol made Christmas decorations for her dance classmates and friends. We found pretty ballerina paintings online and printed them on sticker paper.

We also added her initials and the year.


Family tree project from a book Marisol received for Christmas (thanks Uncle Alan and Aunt Jill... er, I mean Colin and Tristan ;-)












Animal food webs, inspired by Wild Kratts



Finally, maybe the best discovery at all, plain sticker paper can be used to cover up mistakes!
TOTAL AWESOMENESS

PS I'm not getting paid by Staples or any other "sticker paper maker" - we just really like it!

Christmas

Better late than never.
I don't have too many pictures - I tend to rely on my mom and sister when they are around.
It was a wonderful, love filled weekend!

Christmas Dinner

The note, eaten cookies and milk, and our fire on the TV ;-)

Fancy dress from Nonna Gigi

Christmas day chaos

Thursday, January 5, 2012