Quack Quack by Louise Rupnik

I thought it would be fun to review Uriah's favorite book!  Quack Quack is a touch and feel book for babies, and Uriah absolutely loves it!

There are photographs of various animals in this book with little patches for baby to feel.  Uriah doesn't just feel these patches.  He bites them.  I guess this book is Uriah approved!  This is the only book that he'll sit all the way through.  He loves it!  He's not quite 14 months and I try to read a few books to him every day, but he usually gets bored halfway through the book.  

This is a good one for little babies because it's not too long and they like patting (or biting!) the animals in the book.

Sick

For the last week and a half.  Hoo boy this is fun.  Everyone else has already gone through it (and still have lingering symptoms- thank goodness the boy is still nursing because he can't keep anything down but mama milk) and finally today I notice a little drip from the nose.  Perfect.  Well, maybe hubby can pamper me for a couple of days while I recover.  Lacy has already missed 4 full days and 2 half days of school AND two violin lessons.  We are managing to get practice in most of the time, though.  Hopefully by this Thursday she will be 100% better and ready to fiddle again!

And I always start getting smug in late February that we didn't get sick this winter.  And then we get sick in March.  Never fails.  I'll stop being smug about our health next year.  If I remember.

The Monster Princess

Tonight we tried something the girls picked out from the library yesterday.  The Monster Princess, by D.J. MacHale, ended up in my bag from the new picture book section.  

Did you ever wish to be a princess?  Lala, the Rugabee, did.  A Rugabee is a type of monster that lives underground and collects a special kind of nut.  But Lala, a very talented and popular Rugabee, wanted to be a princess and live above ground and dance!

One day, she ventures into the castle and finds the princesses' room, where she tries on their dresses.  At first they are afraid, but they end up ridiculing her in public, which really hurts Lala's feelings.

When I opened this book and realized it was a rhyming book, I silently groaned to myself.  I am not a fan of rhyming books.  I've never really liked poetry (sorry, Mom, it's true, but I'll still recite poetry for your birthday) so rhyming books usually have a groan-inducing eyeball-rolling effect on me.  But The Monster Princess was actually not obnoxious rhyming, so it's one I could read again!  Most rhyming books aren't very cleaver and they try too hard.  I didn't feel like that with The Monster Princess.  The girls enjoyed reading it with me, so I officially declare that The Monster Princess will be renewed 3 weeks from now!  Unless, of course, somebody has a hold on it already.

All boy!

They say that boys and girls are equal and that we teach them to be boy-ish or girl-ish based on our own biases and expectations.  Well, I don't believe that for a second.  I didn't believe it when my first child was born and she gravitated toward girly things to do.  I did buy the gender neutral toys, and they have a box of dinosaurs and trains (Rose requested the trains, actually!).  Of course, the dinosaur gets dressed up in fancy dresses and Lacy parades the beautiful T. Rex around the house singing, "This is the dinosaur of the queeeeeen!"

Now I have a boy.  He turned 1 about a month ago.  I love him more than life itself and I would do anything for my little man.  I'm so glad I got him!  Of course, being a mom to a boy is a new thing for me, so I treated him exactly as I have treated my girls.  And the girls have put bows in his head more than once.  I may or may not have encouraged that.  Once I put a girly diaper on him and Dave wasn't too thrilled about that, but all my diapers were dirty and I only had a pink flower one handy.  What's a mom to do?

We're in the midst of a large amount of remodeling at our house, due to some unfortunate wind, ice and rain damage that occurred.  Because Dave is handy with this type of thing, he is doing the majority of the work himself.  My dad comes over and helps Dave often with the work that needs done, as he's pretty handy as well.  Uriah of course wants to be around all the action.  He loves hanging with the guys and is always picking up tools and trying to "help" any way he can! It's adorable!  At least, until he finds the razor knives and carries them around.

Twig

Looking for a sweet little book for your sweet little one?  Twig by Elizabeth Orton Jones is a good choice.

Twig was published in 1942, but even though it's going on 70, children today are the same as children 70 years ago, no matter how different we think they are.  They're full of imagination and can turn the simplest thing into a magical wonderland.  I know my own children will play with paper, cardboard boxes and fabric scraps for hours, coming up with all sorts of uses for them.  Twig is no different- she turns an old, empty tomato can into a fairy house!  It is just so amazing!

Your child will love listening to a book about a little child who has an imagination as big as her own.  You will love reading it to your child because the chapters are short!  Short chapters are a wonderful thing.  If you don't have much time to read because you've been busily running around all evenings, you can choose to read one chapter. If you have more time, you can read as many as you wish!

The language is simple and the characters are cute.  This is a good book to read aloud to kids who haven't had many chapter books read to them yet.

My favorite part about this book?  Twig looks a lot like my little Rosie!  I'll have to read Twig to Rose soon... I've only read it so far to Lacy.  Rose will be 5 in May and maybe she'll be ready to listen to it then.  I already call her Little Missy a lot, just like Mrs. Sparrow calls Twig Little Missy in the book!  Don't you see the resemblance?

The BFG

Oh, Big Friendly Giant, I am so grateful to you forever.  You finally got my Lacy interested in reading chapter books with me.  This was not the first chapter book Lacy listened to.  But this is the first one that Lacy actually actively listened to, enjoyed, and begged for more.  If you haven't read The BFG by Roald Dahl, you must go read this book.  Today, if possible.  It's worth it.

How did I get Lacy interested in reading a book about giants?  I told her there was a queen in the book.  And she was immediately interested.  This is such a great book for all kids, boys and girls alike, and I really wanted Lacy to hear this one and love it, so I used whatever I could to get her to want to hear it.  I'm glad I did- she loved it!

The two main characters in the BFG are Sophie and The Big Friendly Giant, or BFG.  He is the only giant who doesn't eat human beans.  Instead, he collects dreams and gives them to the little childlers at night while they sleep.  One night Sophie awakens during the witching hour and observes The BFG blowing dreams to boys and girls.  In order to protect his identity, he kidnaps her and takes her to his cave, where they eventually come up with a plan (this is where the queen comes in!) to rid the world of the disgusting, flithsome giants forevermore.

This book is interesting and fast paced.  This is an excellent choice for a first read-aloud chapter book.  Even if you don't have a child at home to listen to you read this aloud, you should still read this book if you haven't already. It is one of my favorite children's novels of all-time.

I just realized that I need to read more Roald Dahl to Lacy.  I've got to figure out my angle in order to convince Lacy that it's worthwhile to listen to... if it's not about princesses or little girls, she's really not interested.  We've read Matilda and she loved it, but I tried to read The Witches and she was not having it.

The Very Fairy Princess

Another picture book that we've recently checked out and read together as a family is The Very Fairy Princess by Julie Andrews and Emma Walton Hamilton.

Honestly?  Not my favorite.  It was pretty cute, but a little boring, to me anyway.  BUT the kids really enjoyed it, and that's who I'm reading for, right?  Well, to be totally honest, when I read to the kids, I want something that I enjoy and my kids enjoy.  I'm glad this was a library book because I was looking forward to not having to read it anymore!

The book is all about being a fairy princess, and how you need to "let your sparkle out."  She goes over all the qualities of a fairy princess ("Fairy princesses are very supportive" for example, when she gives encouragement to her friend).  It's a good message.

But the fact of it is, I read books to be entertaining and not to teach my kids life lessons.  As the mom, I teach them life lessons while they're living their life, not while they're reading a book for entertainment.  If there are morals in the story, I want them to not be detrimental to the plot of the book. There really was not much of a plot, which was why this book was so boring.

But, because my own daughters want to be fairy princesses themselves, I ended up reading it over and over (and over and over...).

Interrupting Chicken

I decided I'll start posting picture books that I read to my kids as well.  Rose really loves picture books.  Here is a fun one that we found recently.  Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein.

Interrupting Chicken is a fun book for kids (I'd recommend ages 3 and older).  Both Lacy and Rose love when I read this aloud.  It won a Caldecott award and is fully deserving of it!  Such a fun read.  

Chicken enjoys getting a story every night from her papa.  Unfortunately, she gets a little too involved in the book and keeps interrupting Papa as she reads!  Finally, there are no more stories to read and Chicken creates her own bedtime story for her papa.  

Rose says:  "Funny.  Her father reads her a story.  The kid knows how to read."

Lacy says:  "I think the book is cute and funny and really silly.  The most thing I like about it is there's a chicken, and I like chickens.  They are so cute when they hatch!"

A Little Princess

Last night Lacy and I finished reading A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

It is written in really old-fashioned language and at times was tedious and hard to understand.  Especially on the day that I was so tired that I actually fell asleep while reading this to Lacy.  I said something about Sara having blond hair. Yeah, she's a brunette and I'm not sure where that came from.  Sleep deprivation is a scary thing.

To make the book more fun for Lacy, I had to emphasize my voice during certain parts.  She ate that up!  In the end, she really loved the book.  She likes the Little House books better, but she still really enjoyed reading A Little Princess with me.  She especially loved all the chapters about the magic, and she was so mad at Miss Minchen.  Well, she should be.  Miss Minchen is pure evil.

I'm glad I got to share my favorite childhood book with Lacy.  It was a difficult book for me to read aloud at times, and some of the chapters are really long.  Which is part of the reason I fell asleep that one day.  But she loved it, and that's what matters!  This book is a little hard for a 6 year old so when it's time to read chapter books with Rose, I'll probably wait until she's closer to 7 or 8 to read this book.  It's a lovely book, but it can be hard for the young kids to pay attention.

Lacy says- "It's cool and exciting.  I really wanted my mom to read all of it at the same day.  It was AWESOME!  It was awesome because I decided that I want to make another book of it- A Little Princess 2.  My dad said he would read any book I wrote."

Farmer Boy

I love reading to my children.  It is one of my biggest joys of being a mother- to read to my children and have them learn to love books.  

Last night, we finished one of my favorite books of all time-Farmer Boy, by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  It is one of the  books in the Little House series, written about her husband as a 10 year old farm boy in New York.  

Oh, we laughed at Almanzo's antics!  We enjoyed hearing all about farm life.  And how hard he worked, from sun up to sun down!  We were so excited when he won the blue ribbon at the fair, and then when he got $200 for returning a wallet- with some persuasion from a 3rd party- we were so happy for him!  The best part of all is when he found out he would finally be trusted to train a little colt!  What a wonderful ending to a wonderful book. 

Lacy and I adored the moments we had reading this book together. Every moment was entertaining and also educational.  

Yes, Lacy was thrilled when she got the box set of Little House books.  And she loves each book she's read. I do too.

Too grown up for her own good

Where did this kid come from?  She certainly can't be MY child.  I am not old enough to have such a big girl for a daughter.

...and he's off!

My 11 month old decided to turn the corner with the walking this week!  He's been taking steps here and there for about 6 or so weeks, but usually resorts to the Mowgli crawl after falling down on his bottom.  Not anymore!  He rarely is Mowgli crawling (which makes me sad because it is the cutest thing ever) and now is almost exclusively walking everywhere.  It is so adorable.

Pacific Science Center

Yesterday we decided to take my sister and her family on a trip to the Pacific Science Center- we went in the summer and got a year membership for about $30 more than going that one time cost us, and we had enough passes for my sister's entire family to come, too.  Plus, the Harry Potter exhibit was there!  Leslie's 3 big kids were really excited about going there.

We got there around 11:30 or so and find out that Harry Potter is sold out until 5:45, and we weren't staying there that long.  Lovely.  That's ok, though- there's plenty to do at the science center!

There were way too many people there yesterday, though.  It made it difficult to do anything fun.  But that's okay.  We enjoyed the butterfly house,

Riah and Rose loved the music room,

and I thought the dinosaurs were really cool.

Rose hopped in the stroller when Ri wasn't in it.

But then Turner got lost.  He wandered off when we were doing silly pictures with the girls.  We got security to start looking for him, too.  And then he just... appeared again.  I don't know where he went.  Dave said he searched exactly where he was found and he wasn't there.  Leslie explained the importance of staying with the group to him, and we all decided we were done for the day.  The crowds were too big to have a good time.

We decided to see an IMAX movie (about beavers!  I really enjoyed it until Ri fell on his head in the theater) and then head home.  On the way out we snapped a few pictures in front of the space needle and headed home.

We took Porter with us so he could help butcher Dave's deer and then they went squid jigging last night.  I know they were successful because I was surprised to find a squid helping me do the dishes this morning.

We love the science center, but it's a lot more fun when there aren't huge crowds of people there.  Maybe we can go during spring break, but it might be crowded then, too.  I'll just hope that Lacy's school break is at a different time than the kids' in Seattle.

Merry Christmas!

I've been having some fun with some photo editing software. Here are some pictures of our holiday for you to enjoy! I hope you had a merry Christmas!

Resolutions for 2011

I didn't make resolutions last year. I was too busy being 9 months pregnant. But I've been thinking about it for this upcoming year. This is what I'm thinking of for 2011's resolutions:

• Read the whole Ensign every month
• Have a meaningful spiritual time with my family every day
• Eat to live this year for most of the year (at least through July to see if my diet affects my allergies)
• Keep up with my chores and maintain a clean home by doing Fly Lady every day
• 100% visiting teaching and tithing, and do my best in my calling(s) at church

Mowgli boy

My sweet little boy has been walking! Earlier than either of his sisters by quite a while. He took his first steps about 6 weeks or so ago when he was about 9 1/2 months old. He wasn't even standing up well when he first took some steps. But even though he started walking so long ago, he's still only taking a few steps at a time each time he attempts to walk. Because it is just so much faster to crawl. Especially when you crawl like Mowgli. My boy must have some serious upper body strength! He crawls so fast.

Music and my kids

I love music. Anyone who knows me knows that I am musical, and I hope to raise my children to be musical as well. Now that Lacy is in the first grade, that means private music lessons. I thought about starting her in piano, but since I was having difficulty getting into the groove of teaching her myself, I decided to go for an instrument that I can't play- the violin. Lacy's also been begging me to put her in violin lessons for about 6 months or so, and in September we finally got started with Suzuki violin. She's doing so well and has learned to play Twinkle already (it takes several weeks to understand the posture, holding the bow, holding the violin, etc. before they start in on playing the music).

Today I had a proud mama moment when Rose was done with preschool. Normally I wait outside of the preschool building to pick her up, but today Dave and I had finished our Christmas shopping and Riah was starving, so I went into the waiting area to nurse him while we waited for school to get out. At the end of school the teacher always sings a song as they are leaving. And whose voice did I hear, loud and strong? Of course my Miss Rosie! She was so happy to be singing with her teacher as she left the building, and I happened to be inside where I could witness her singing so well. She loves singing in church, too, and always loves learning new songs, too! I can't wait until she's old enough for music lessons, too!

And my little Ri guy; he's been immersed in music since before he was born. He was lucky enough to be my belly baby when I challenged myself to practice piano every single day in 2009. So he got to hear the music from the first time his ears started working in the womb! And the music hasn't stopped. We're always singing around here, and I play the piano a lot and Lacy practices her violin every day. The girls love to listen to music, so they usually have CDs going in their room when they're playing. It's a lot of fun! Riah has shown his love for music by pounding the piano keys and reaching up as tall as he can to play the keys whenever he passes the piano. I can already tell he's a musical child. People comment all the time on how big Ri is (he's almost to the same weight Lacy was at when she turned 3, and Ri is 10 months old), saying he'll play basketball or football or whatever sport. I really don't care what sport he plays as long as he plays an instrument!

This video features both Lacy playing the violin (Monkey Song) and Rose singing along enthusiastically! I hope you enjoy!

No I haven't forgotten about my blog

I know it's been a while. We've been busy! Lacy's in first grade, Rose is in preschool 4 days a week, and Riah is surprising me by attempting to walk at 10 months old! What a big boy he is!

I have a lot of updates. A lot of good things going on in our lives. Lacy and Rose love school. Dave is working every day in a city that is 2 hours away from here. Why don't we move? Because the work isn't consistent enough for us to move out there. Because I totally would move there if I could. The town has a giant food co-op and is very anti corporation, which is totally my kind of town. It's like Olympia with fewer people and no big chain stores or fast food. Maybe someday, but for now Dave commutes every day. We're just thankful for the work, and that he only has to commute half way.

Growing Up

Everyone's growing up so fast! Here's what's going on in our house:

Lacy got her ears pierced! My mom made me wait until I was 10 to get mine pierced. I didn't want to be that mean to my own babygirls, so I decided I would let them get it done when they wanted (love ya mom!). Lacy has asked to have it done a few times in the past, but she's quickly forgotten about it. I wanted to wait until she was really ready to have it done, and really wanted to get it done! This week was the week! She asked me earlier in the week and kept on asking. She made a 5-day chart and said she'd get them pierced in 5 days if she was a good girl and did her chores. Well, she was pretty good most of the time, and there was really no reason to deny her getting them pierced, so today we went ahead and did it!

Then there's Rose. She's my rough and tumble little brave girl. She rarely complains and is so independent! I love that little girl! Poor thing is allergic to several things... what they are, I'm not sure. I do know mosquitos are on the list though. We went camping, and she was bitten way more than anyone else (even after bug spray was applied) and she swelled up massively. She looked terrible. To top it off, she fell off a makeshift swing that Dave made up (and subsequently dismantalled after the fall) and got scrapes on top of the already swollen mosquito bites. Poor kid! But she didn't complain at all. She's also starting to talk like a kid, not a toddler anymore. She still has a few speech issues (but the speech therapist said it's nothing to worry about), but she's certainly sounding more grown up every day!

And Uriah, my sweet little baby boy. He's eating solids now! I wanted to wait until he was sitting up unassisted very well, growing teeth, acted interested in food, mastered the pincer grasp, and was older than 6 months in order to begin solid foods. I am pretty strict about when to introduce foods because early solids introduction can lead to GI tract disorders, diabetes and food allergies, which can show up at any time in life. Dave is blessed with GI tract disorders and food allergies, and diabetes runs in his family, so I am extra cautious. But Ri was very ready, so at 6 1/2 months we started solids. He wasn't terribly impressed with them until he got to try cucumber spears and big chunks of melon. He loves those! My big boy is getting bigger now that he gets to eat big boy food! He'll eat maybe a tablespoon of babyfood at a time, but he'll attack foods that he gets to feed himself and eat a lot more that way. I've always given my babies their own food to feed themselves from a relatively young age, and I never knew that the technique I used had a name until maybe a year ago- it's called "Baby Led Weaning," and it's basically what I've always done with my kiddos, I just didn't know it had a name! I'll probably give Ri another week or so on babyfood before we abandon it completely!

First bites of babyfood... um... that was weird, mom.

But cucumber? Nom nom nom nom give me more, mama!

Missionaries

This morning, I had a Young Women's presidency meeting. I had to bring all three of my kiddos. Which is not my favorite thing to do. The meeting was at 9 am at the church. Ugh. I'm not a morning person, and neither are my kids.

Monday is Preparation day. Basically, the day the missionaries have to get ready and gear up for the week ahead. Also some time to dress down and just be young adults. Minus dating- they can't do that. Because it was their day off, there were several sets (4? 5?) of missionaries at the building where we had our meeting. Including a set of sister missionaries. They were cooking breakfast together. They fed my girls food, gave us the leftovers, and entertained my girls during my entire meeting. Lacy was especially enamored with the sister missionaries who were there. She gave one sister a nick name ("superstar," and my Lacy's nickname is "sparkle") and they formed a girls club, which included my girls, the sister missionaries and one Elder (he was included because Rose asked on Saturday if he was an old lady when they came to our house).

Anyway, I'm so happy for the service they provided me while I was fulfilling my calling! Sure made my meeting go so much easier! AND my kids weren't bored. But, Sisters, I bet you'll soon realize it was a mistake to exchange phone numbers with my daughter, since she's already called you twice. The meeting got out two hours ago. Sorry about that.