It's a bird, it's a plane...No! It's a post!

I've been slacking lately, I know. I'm just keeping busy with the girls. I can hardly believe that this week is the Fourth of July already. Jason and I met the day before the Fourth so it's a pretty special holiday for the two of us. I'll be baking cupcakes with Elsie later this week and making no bake cookies too. We bought red, white, and blue sprinkles for the top so Elsie's already looking forward to it.

One of Elsie's favorite toys when she was a baby were stacking/nesting cups. She LOVED them. She loved them so much that the two sets we had of them are mismatched and half lost. So, we bought Claira a new set yesterday. She's definitely ready to handle the job of knocking down. It turns out that Elsie's love for stacking cups is still quite strong. They came to church with us this morning. She did manage to share them with Claira for awhile last night. Elsie would stack them up, and Claira would knock them down...it's funny to see Elsie react to Claira knocking them over because usually Elsie is the one knocking down a block tower Jason or I have built. This time, the shoe is on the other foot, and she didn't enjoy it at all. I had to get her started giggling and then they had a lot of fun together.

Today, we bought Claira her first baby doll. Elsie got her first doll for her first Christmas so she would've been 10 months old. She wasn't really interested in it for awhile. I'm sure it was well after her first birthday before she took any interest in them at all. Claira is a completely different story. She's fascinated with dolls. Elsie's into dressing them so I end up with a baby on my lap helping her often. If Claira's in my lap as well, she just grabs ahold of the doll and doesn't want to let go. When Elsie wants it back or wants to switch for another doll, Claira throws a tantrum...not a little one. So, today we bought her first dolly, and her face lights up whenever she sees her. It's so sweet.

Elsie and I have been making some fun changes to the playroom this week. We went shopping and purchased some ABC's, a couple of alphabet posters in print and cursive, a "Jesus Loves Me" sign, and some days of the week. I'm still on the lookout for a type of wipe off calendar, but I haven't found quite what I'm looking for yet. We also bought some workbooks so we can start doing just a couple of pages each day. We started with colors because she already knows all of her colors. I want her to get the feel for the activities she's actually doing. It's pretty simple stuff. There will be a column of cars on each side of the paper, and she needs to draw a line to match the yellow car on the left to the yellow car on the right. This skill needs some work. She has no trouble identifying the matches, but drawing a semi-straight line to connect them is tough. They also will give a group of objects like colored balls and she'll have to circle all of the blue ones. She's really good at that. Underneath, there will be 3 pictures...like blueberries, a boat, and a train for her to color blue. The activities are quick and easy, and most importantly--she loves doing it. We haven't done any this weekend, but she's asked about it both days.

I'm just getting practice in before we really start homeschooling, which probably won't be this fall but next. We need to do a lot of curriculum research before we decide on one, but we have plenty of time. In Illinois, you're not required to start homeschooling until your child is 7, and we'll be starting well before that. I'll probably be writing a lot about this in the next year.

Weekend Elsieisms:

We were shopping this weekend, and Elsie HAD TO HAVE a Hannah Montana shirt. During the shopping trip, Jason was pushing the cart and singing, "I might even be a rockstar..." Elsie responded, "No! I'm a rockstar!"

I've had a headache for a couple of days so I picked up some Tylenol while I was at the store awhile ago. It was sitting out on the kitchen table and Elsie asked what it was for. I told her that it was for my headache and she said, "Well, I need some for headaches sometimes too." Jason asked her, "What gives you headaches?" and Elsie piped up, "YOU!"

Jason was sweeping the kitchen floor, and Elsie kept getting in his way. Trying to distract her, he asked her where her babies were. She told him they were in the living room sleeping. So, he told her they were probably hungry and she should wake them up to feed them. She responded, "Well, I only have two boobs, and they're not growing." For the record, she does have pretend baby bottles and uses them all the time. I have no idea what made her think differently this time.