Thoughful

I wanted to blog this mainly because I don't want to forget it, but had to share too.

As Jax sat on the potty yesterday I sat on the bathroom floor, my back against the door. Jax said to me, "Mommy, you don't sit on the floor. It's dirty." I say this to him everytime we're in a public bathroom, but he obviously didn't realize it didn't apply to our home bathroom. Anyway, I said, "Oh, it's dirty?" "Yes, I get a wipe and clean it. I clean my bathroom floor." "Buddy, that would be very helpful, thank you." "It make you happy, Mama?" "Yes, it would make me very happy." "Then I do it. I like to make you happy."

How sweet is that?! Had he not been sitting bare-butt on the potty going #2 I would have scooped him up and given him a big hug!

Just Another Weekend

Andy's never had weekends off. Well, atleast he's never had them off in our almost eight years of marriage. I guess as a teacher he technically had weekends "off" but in all actuality he spent them grading, planning lessons, etc. And in our time at both UofA and BYU he spent his weekends doing some hardcore homework and studying.

But now, he has weekends off. He has a regular 9-5 job. Which is great. But even better, because he works for the Corp of Engineers, much of his work is classified which means he can't bring work home. Nice.

So, for the first time in nearly eight years I have my husband all to myself on weekends. Well, WE have him all to OURselves. We haven't really done anything fancy since we moved here to celebrate having him home on the weekends, but we do make sure to enjoy our time with him. This weekend was no exception. As is the norm here in our tiny little river town, it was a hot and humid one this weekend. So, we took the kids down to the good ol' splashpad. This time though, Mommy and Daddy were smart and wore our bathing suits too. We weren't just going to sit and melt while the kids got in on all the cool water action. No way.

 

This one should make the Kleinman boys proud

Like father like son

Looking at the Mississippi. See all that greenery over there? That's Louisiana. The nearest city to us is actually IN La. We really do live RIGHT on the Ol' Mississip.

Preschool

No, I'm not sending Ava to preschool. We're doing it at home. That's right, Homeschool Preschool. We had considered sending her to a preschool, but it's ridiculously expensive and Ava said she would prefer I just teach her. Since I'm strongly considering homeschooling her next year (kindergarten) I was fine with the request and am looking at it as a learning/preparation period for what could come next year.

So, we started "preschool" last week. I had the opportunity to chat with/correspond with several friends who homeschool and all gave me great ideas regarding age-appropriate curriculum and activities. Basically, they all said the same thing, at this age you don't need to sit a child down and "teach" as they would in a public school setting. Rather, teach by example, activity and interest. Keeping this in mind, I did have some specific goals (which I went over with Ava). First of all, helping Ava learn to read. She's already doing this quite well on her own, but obviously, still needs some help and direction. That being said, we do a letter of the week. We go over all the sounds that letter makes and Ava practices writing each letter. She's had all her capital letters down since she was three, but we're working hard on the lowercase letters. This also helps Jax with letter recognition and sounds. In addition to our set letter work, I've decided it best to have a theme each day, that also corresponds with our letter of the week.

Last week, we started Preschool with the letter "A" (obviously). Our first day, our theme was ART. So, I read the kids several children's stories I found at the library about art, artists, etc (Bridget's Beret by Tom Lichtenheld and Art School by Tomie dePaola were Ava and Jax's faves). Then, we looked online at different works by famous artists: Mona Lisa (da Vinci), Georgia O'Keefe's flowers, Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock, The Ballet Class by Degas, etc. This was a great activity for both kids because we could discuss what they liked about the pictures, why certain colors were used, what colors they liked best, etc. Ava, of course, loved Degas's ballet paintings, while Jax liked how messy Pollock's paintings looked. Then, I gave the kids each their own paint set and several pieces of paper and asked them to create a "splatter paint" like Jackson Pollock and a flower like Georgia O'Keefe. They loved creating and I loved watching what they created. About 20 pieces of paper and 45 minutes later, my counter covered in art work, they were done.

As the art dried, I gave Jax some letter A's to trace with his fingers, pencil and crayons as Ava and I practices her lowercase letter. I had never noticed until that moment just how very much like me she is. She's a perfectionist and gets easily flustered when she doesn't do something perfectly the first time. Several times I just had to urge her to take a break from her paper and come back to it when she was ready. Sure enough, each time she did and by the end she was writing her little a's like a pro!

We only did two days of preschool last week, our second we learned about ants: all their parts, why they bite, different kinds, etc. and even went on a bug walk, complete with bug-catching kids.

As I expected, the kids have received our little at-home preschool with open arms. Each day, they ask if it's preschool day. And Ava has given me several ideas of things she'd like to learn about when we get to a certain letter. I'm so grateful both of my kids love to learn. They're eager and dilligent, so much like their dad!

This preschool "year" will play a large role when it comes time to make the decision to homeschool Ava or send her to public school. Until then, we'll just enjoy our time together. I'll occasionally post updates here of fun things we've done and the progress the kids have made... that's mainly for the grandparents :)

I WANT THIS!!

One of my favorite blogs is hosting a giveaway for a Silhouette Machine. Oh my heck, I'm in love! Most people want it because it can cut vinyl, but since I already have a HUGE heavy-duty vinyl machine that doesn't appeal to me. It's all the paper crafts that I'm so excited about. I get an extra entry in the giveaway for blogging about it, but if I don't win and you'd like to buy me a present to console me then I have the perfect idea! ;) Check it out.

http://www.theidearoom.net/2010/08/silhouette-giveaway.html

Look What We Found

On our way home from our bike ride/tennis playing last night we found this:

A teeny little froggy. She (Ava is SURE she was a girl) was hopping on the sidewalk as if it wanted to be picked up and mangled by two kids! So, we did just that. After chasing it around for a few minutes I finally caught the little sucker and then handed her over to Ava, who was ready to take the frog home and make her her pet. Jax got a turn and was so excited he dropped Sally (Ava named her) before I could get a picture of him with her. But don't worry, Ava quickly collected her and was sure not to let her go. As a matter of fact, she held on to Sally so tightly that the little frog nearly lost her life. Fortunately, Andy and I saw she was on the brink and encouraged Ava to let Sally go so she could find her family. Lucky break, frog.

*By the way, those are not tears on Ava's cheek. It's sweat. We live in a humid, sweaty place... and she had been riding her bike for 45 minutes. However, that is chocolate near the corner of her mouth.

Summer Dress

All Ava wants to wear are dresses. That IS what princesses wear, of course. She has a few casual dresses, but most are only for Church. So, I've been hard at work making dresses for the little miss. She has a few stipulations that I must abide by when constructing said dresses:

1. They MUST be twirly
2. They MUST have sleeves
3. They MUST have pink or flowers or fruit on them (her words, not mine)
4. Did I mention they MUST be twirly

That being said, I put together this little number for Ava-Ave.

I started with a $3 tank top from target, added the skirt portion and some makeshift sleeves. Not too shabby. There's a few things I'll do differently next time around, starting with making the sleeves a little wider. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Most importantly, Ava L-O-V-E-S it!

She had JUST picked this tomato from her garden.

Texas Two-Day

Being here in Mississippi we're far from friends and family. So, you can imagine how excited we iswere to discover that some of our friends from college live just a few hours away in Tyler, Texas. Some of mine and Andy's greatest memories during our courtship involve our Crazy Friend David (his official title), and his wife Shelly is his perfect match. We didn't get the chance to hang out with Shelly much in college, but after this weekend, we look forward to more fun visits with our friends (and their adorable little girl).

We didn't really have an agenda, more than anything we just wanted to hang out. But, in researching Tyler I discovered it's home to one of the 25 best children's museums in the country (according to Parents magazine). Uh, yes please! For $6 a piece (Jax was free) our kids got to run, pretend, destroy, dig for dinosaur bones, build towers... so fun!

Both kids really loved the little "town." It included a grocery store, fire truck, ambulance, veterinarian's office, pastry shop, theatre (complete with dress-up), auto garage (with a real car), restaurant, construction site, airplane, I'm sure I'm missing some things.

After over an hour playing pretend and Ava fixing several broken bones (and nursing several of her own) and Jax repeatedly buckling and unbuckling the seatbelts in the car, we headed over to the science area. Personally, I wish we had spent more time here. It had caves, dino bones, a dino dig site, a ship, a ball roller coaster, building areas, a TV station... I'm really not doing it justice.

Neither of our kids wanted to leave, despite the obvious exhaustion on their faces. Ava has already made me promise to take her back. Thank goodness we have a reason other than the museum to head back to Tyler... otherwise, that'd be one long trip to the museum.

While the kids slept, the grown-ups got to spend some good quality time together, chatting, laughing, reminiscing, eating ice cream (you have to know David and Shelly to know how important this is) and staying up much later than we should. A few years ago, I could have stayed up until 3:30 a.m., gotten up three hours later and functioned fine the rest of the day. Two kids and a few birthdays later and all of a sudden my body is too old. We all took naps that afternoon, could barely stay awake that night and spent a few days recovering. Ahhh, but it was worth it.

Thanks friends for the wonderful weekend. We owe you a few tubs of ice cream!