We don’t have any pictures from today, so I am just going to update on some of the things the kids have been doing lately.
Ammon is talking more! I’m pretty sure we are the only people who could begin to decipher what he is saying, but at least we can tell. Right now his favorite books are:
- Llama Llama and the Bully Goat during which he gets really excited about the “zeebee!” which is his word for “zebra.” He also loves correcting the bully goat and giving him his time out. He also says “llama” the way you would pronounce the double “l” in Spanish. “Yama yama!”.
- The Twelve Days of Christmas, which is hard enough for me to sing at Christmas, much less multiple times a day during August. I do it because I adore Ammon.
- Jolly Old Santa Claus, which Ammon loves. He says, “hoo hoo hoo” for Santa Claus and has me sing all sorts of carols to match the pictures on each page.
- Madeline Loves Animals, a board book which has cats Ammon can count and his favorite, a tiger to which Madeline says, “pooh pooh!”.
Lydia is going through a phase where she is super picky about how her clothes sit on her. We think this was brought on by school and by the fact that she was traumatized to not have the proper shoes for school. The principal commented to her about her shoes before I had a chance to write the principal and explain that we were getting the shoes this weekend, and that comment scarred Lydia.
She stares in the mirror and wants everything to be perfect. Her tucked in shirt must not have a single wrinkle in its 360 degree circumference, her collar needs to be exactly even and lay straight on both sides, her skirt has to hit at exactly the right spot on her waist, and her sweaters need to lay impossibly straight and even on her torso. Abe and I have both banned her from the mirror because it just causes her to melt down and scream.
Mary has had a couple days without tantrums! We are crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.
Mary and Lydia are both doing great with our new earlier bedtime. We have them listen to audiobooks and finish up with Enya or some other calm, usually new-agey music before bed. They have burned through the entire Ramona collection (28 hours) in about a week (this was before school when Lydia could listen to it during the day too), and now they’re onto Henry Huggins. Abe downloaded Overdrive today because we will go broke buying audiobooks on Audible at this rate.
But outdoor play and audible have almost completely eliminated our need for screen time. The girls barely had any screen time at all this summer, and in fact ever since we started home schooling a year and a half ago, our screen time cut down pretty drastically. This makes me very happy.
Clarissa is basically a kitten and we love her so much. She sleeps a lot, eats a lot, and when she’s awake, she’s usually quiet and alert. She is a perfect baby. She also can lift her head! Today we all watched her do pushups for five minutes on the boppy pillow. We were amazed.
We are excited for Abe to have the day off tomorrow and are looking forward to this week ahead.