Pajamas for Hannah

Having a little girl is SO fun because of all the great sewing I get to do. Now that is it finely somewhat warm here we have switched to summer pjs. Since our house has no AC it can get a little hot for sleeping at night. I didn't want to run out and buy a ton of 18-24 mo pjs when we have perfectly good ones, they are just green and blue and worker trucks, etc. But who sees you in your pajamas? It's somewhat eerie how much she looks like Matthias when in blue and green...


Matthias is thrilled to have matching pjs with Hannah since he is now wearing the ones James had when he had the ones Hannah has.



But just because I had some Strawberry Shortcake lightweight "pj" material laying around (that I probably bought like 4 years ago), Hannah has one pair of girly pajamas.

Hannah & Ducks!

Hannah is in love with ducks and everything with wings and beak is a "DUCK!!" Our friends just got chickens which they normally do every summer and we happened to be over there when the chickens arrived. They are only a few months old, so not yellow and fluffy, but small and brown.

Hannah was so excited she could barely contain herself. Shouting duck over and over. One of the girls asked if she wanted to touch one and she reached out and grabbed it's head between her fingers. I thought she was going to crush it. The other little girls that were there were really funny, one said "it's not a duck" and another said, "I will call it a duck for Hannah."

I think this was one of the best experiences of Hannah's life thus far. She was SO thrilled with the "ducks" in person and up close!

Last Day of Preschool

James had his last day of preschool on June 2. He enjoyed a lot of the year, but also had some struggles. Mostly being bored I think as they spent a lot of emphasize on pretend play (which is what James does ALL day) and not as much specific "learning". He always told me he never learned anything at preschool. But we did like his teachers and he enjoyed the kids in his class. I'm not sure if we'll do preschool for our other kids or not, but I think overall it turned out okay for James.

Doom & Duck

Another fun game we tried the other day...

James says, "We're going to play Doom and Duck. When someone throws a frisbee at you then you Duck. If you don't duck then it's Doom."

I humored them.

It was actually quite hilarious because they don't throw a frisbee very hard or accurately. Hannah only got hit 5 or 6 times and she didn't end up crying at all. Overall a funny game. But it's never been mentioned again, so I guess not that memorable.

Brain Storm

The other day I was feeling restless and stir crazy and unmotivated. Generally what happens in this situation is I surf the internet and the boys play crazily while Hannah hangs on my leg.

But last week I decided to choose a different course of action and plopped down on the lawn in the backyard announcing, "we're going to brain storm".

The boys immediately sat down around me and Hannah seeing that something was happening came over to join our circle. To get everyone going I started with "Animals that are Brown." A fairly easy brainstorm.

James then said "I want to choose the next Rain Storm." (I then explained that it was actually Brain.)

This continued for several rounds with different categories such as Animals that are Yellow, How to Make a Tree Grow, How to Help the Earth, etc. My personal favorite was Matthias' "Animals that are Red, Including Fire." To which I shouted "Fox!" and Matthias shouted "Fire!"

Hannah sat proudly in our circle scooting closer and closer to Matthias. And, because she could hear a dog barking, exclaiming "Dog! Dog!" while also signing for emphasis. Everyone else was shouting out words and she was more than happy to join in.

We enjoyed a fun 30 minutes together and we didn't even have to do anything but sit in a circle and shout out random words. We've played Brain Storm a couple time since then. Very fun. And educational. =]

My Dad

Last night I was thinking about how my dad used to ride the bus to work when me and my siblings were kids. His office was downtown and so he had a short bus ride from our house into work. He could take one of two buses. They each let off at a different end of our street. My parents' home is 4 houses from a corner. The other end was over another street and down quite a ways.

We would stand in the front yard some evenings and watch for him to come home. As I remember my dad usually took the bus that let of at the close corner. But I always loved when he came home on the bus that let off on the farther corner. Because then I could see him walking down the road from a long ways off and the anticipation of his arrival would last longer as he got closer and closer. Then I could run down the street even farther to meet him and walk the last bit together.

Playing Scientist

My kids were playing scientist with James being the scientist and Matthias and Hannah being the assistants. I love watching them play and come up with new ideas.