Mouses, Mices, Mice

Yesterday Timothy and I were playing pretend. He kept seeing "mouses" that we had to hit with a golf club and catch in a trap.

I never corrected him, but I kept saying "Oh no!! Here are more mice!!"

After a little while of this game, he switched his speech and said that there were lots of "mices."

I still kept saying the correct term.

After awhile, he saw lots of "mice."

I love, love, love how children are able to easily learn. God made them so wonderful!!

That wasn't the most exciting thing of the day yesterday, though. We went out in the morning to ride his tricycle and, lo and behold, we found a dead mouse in our driveway. We have a lot of cats that hang out there so I guess they caught one and pulled it under the truck or something.

Timothy was completely fascinated, and in his mind he reasoned that Pop must have brought that dead mouse here since Pop caught a mouse in his garage. He kept saying "Pop killed a mouse and put it in our parking lot!!"

He told me he wanted to record the mouse in his "science observation journal" and I promptly realized he's been watching too much Sid the Science Kid. Ha!! He poked the mouse with a long stick and said it smelled stinky. When David and Sonny got home later he told them all about it.

Exciting times!!

Mommy Wisdom

I think we all have what I would like to call "Mommy Wisdom" that can kick in and help us through a situation.

Last night at 1am, Timothy started crying. Actually, he was bawling like a baby. I rushed to his side to see what was wrong.

His bed was broken.

Yeah, that's what he said, anyway. I mean, it doesn't matter that his bed is just a mattress on the floor and it most certainly wasn't broken. His pillow was where it was supposed to be. He had a nice blanket. His sheet was on right. But the more I told him that his bed wasn't broken the louder he cried and more he insisted it was.

I stared at the clock, exhausted and not knowing what to do. Then, my "Mommy Logic" kicked in.

I pretended that a wrench was in my hand and made a squeaking noise.

"There you go, I fixed your bed. All better!!"

And that worked. He stopped crying and went straight to bed.

Starting School

Sunny started school today and so did Timothy!!

We decided to re-do the water unit because we sort of just stopped it in the middle last time.

Here's a breakdown of what we did today:
1) Calendar/Weather/Counting
2) Sing Spell Read and Write phonics song
3) Handwriting worksheet
4) Label game (he had words and he had to tape them in the right spot--window on the window, water hose outside, wheel on his bicycle etc)
5) Geography--all the blue is water
6) "W" jell-o activity
7) Phonics worksheet

We talked a lot about whales, the largest mammals in the ocean. We identified several of them on a poster and then were rewarded with a gummi whale snack!! David and Timothy added water to the sandbox and made a beach and talked about how the ocean stretches as far as you can see.

Most importantly, we talked about how Jesus gives our Spirit LIVING WATER to drink.

Overall, quite a productive day!!

Just keeps going and going and going and going...

This morning we were at breakfast and Timothy said:

"I like this. This is cereal. A mouse likes cereal and noodles and everything. I saw a mouse at Pop's house because it was in his garage and he put a trap out and it had peanut butter in it because mouses like peanut butter and the mouse went in the trap and it just died and there were two mouses in the garage and Pop took the trap and he put it outside for the trash men and Grandma said they wouldn't take it but they took it and the dead mouse was just gone and Pop was happy because he doesn't like a mouse, but I like a mouse. I like Mickey Mouse but I don't think Pop likes Mickey Mouse because Pop said he doesn't like a mouse. Does Pop like Mickey Mouse??"

Everyone at the table, including Sunny, was giggling. This child just doesn't stop talking!!

Church Choir

This morning at breakfast we were talking to Timothy about how he'll go to church choir for the first time tonight. It's so awesome that, at three, there are so many activities for him to participate in!!

Anyway, he didn't really understand. He said, "But I don't want to learn a new song!! I only want to sing oom ba oom ba oom ba oom ba oom ba with my favorite planet Neptune!!

Well...Maybe Not

So today we were talking with Timothy about starting My Father's World. He was so excited and said he wanted to learn about the Sun. Ummm, we already learned about the sun, remember? Then he said he wanted to learn about the Moon. Ummm, we learned about the Moon already, too.

I thought about it for awhile and started to feel really bad for saying that. Why can't we learn about the Sun again? Why not do another unit on the Moon? He obviously liked it. So I went back to him and told him that we could learn about whatever he wants, and he said he wanted to learn about:

1. Rocket ships
2. Moons
3. Mars
4. Jupiter
5. Stinky gas planet
6. Stars

So, folks, it appears we have a child who's interested in space. Of course, I already knew that. He had a dinosaur rocket ship birthday party. At this dinosaur rocket ship birthday he received a movie called My Fantastic Field Trip to the Planets. This full-length movie has been played at least twice a day for the last two weeks. No joke. We have the songs memorized. It's extremely educational and I learned things I didn't know from it (darn public education--why did I not know that Saturn's rings were made of ice and dust? Huh?? Why??)

So now we're thinking about just learning about space. We could do a week on each of the planets...actually, we could do whatever we want. That's why we homeschool!!

So it looks like we might continue to learn about space. I was glad to see the History Channel was having an awesome sale. I picked up The Universe to give us a little change of pace. $2.99? Can't beat that!

Our Year...

Tonight was Timothy's first night of AWANA at our church. I didn't know how he would do since the class is for 3-4 year olds and Timothy just turned 3 a few weeks ago. I stayed tonight and was rather impressed. They wear cute little vests and earn badges, are responsible for bringing their Bible and handbook, and do lots of fun stuff (color, puppet show, free play, snack). Tonight Timothy memorized "God loved us and sent His son." And they'll learn a new verse every week!! Timothy talked about it the whole way home and really seems to enjoy being a "Cubby"

We're going to be involved in a lot this semester!! Our week looks something like this:

Sunday - Church & AWANA
Monday - School Time with Mommy
Tuesday - Preschool (3 hours), MOPS (2x a month)
Wednesday - Community Bible Study (both of our classes will study Genesis), Children's Choir
Thursday - Preschool (3 hours), MOMS ministry (1x a month)
Friday - School Time with Daddy

I *love* Timothy's preschool (which happens to be at our church). The classrooms are full of hands-on learning activities--one of the best looking schoolrooms I've ever seen! Lots of his friends are going and he'll get a nice break from me twice a week (and vice versa).

We'll still do our My Father's World, but at this point we're debating whether to do Monday, Wednesday, Friday or just Monday/Friday. We need one day a week just for appointments (prenatal, etc) so we might just do two days of week of My Father's World. We're also starting lots more hands-on science activities a la Sid the Science Kid. We'll be having a fun time!!

Babies are SMART

I found this on Yahoo News today:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090814/us_time/08599191640600

Basically, it says that babies are incredibly smart and know way, way more than scientists previously thought. Guys, I've been trying to tell the world that for three years now!!

From the article:
"If you just casually look at a baby, it doesn't look like there's very much going on there, but they know more and learn more than we would ever have thought. Every single minute is incredibly full of thought and novelty. It's easy as adults to take for granted everything it took to arrive at the state where we are."

And I have a story to back that up. Yesterday I woke up and found that I was bleeding (not spotting, bleeding). I called the midwife and she wanted me to go the ER. They performed a sonogram on this portable sonogram machine and the doctor had to press pretty hard to get a clear picture. When he did so, the baby turned and looked right to where he was pressing down. I mean that child whipped his/her head around and looked right toward the machine (then he/she proceeded to impress us with water aerobics for the next three minutes. Once again, the doctor said we have one of the most active babies he's seen).

I really, really think babies are smart. I think this 14 week old child in my womb has much more going on, intellectually, than scientists can even begin to realize. For one thing, this child was created by an awesome God who made us with so much potential. I think a great deal of that potential is lost as time goes on.

I can't wait feel this child moving, start BabyPlus in three weeks, and give this child a great environment to learn!!

[PS--The bleeding has slowed but not stopped completely. They said the baby's completely fine. I'm in pain when I move, but it might be a stretched ligament or something. I'm trying to take it easy]

"I Need Something to Eat..."

It never fails. At 6:00am Timothy gets out of bed, walks over to where he's standing right next to me, and demands "I need something to eat!!"

Like most people, I don't really enjoy waking up at 6am, and I especially don't enjoy having to jump out of bed first thing to put on a robe (for privacy from the exchange student) and go to the kitchen to get a snack. But I have to. If I don't do it immediately, Timothy whines and cries "I'm so hungry!! I need something to eat!!" relentlessly until I do.

This is getting so old. I need to sleep later than 6am. Last night Timothy didn't go to sleep until 10:45, which isn't enough sleep for him or for me!! Yet he still woke up at 6 on the dot. And he is sooo grumpy this morning (what else is new?). I'm at my wits end!

Is there any hope for this situation? Seriously, I'm pregnant and tired and I just need sleep--badly. And I don't know how he'll ever sleep past 6am, and I simply can't keep jumping up at the crack of dawn to get a snack first thing.

I am soooo tired!!

Sid the Science Kid

Every night before bed I allow Timothy to watch one episode of Sid the Science Kid recorded from PBS. Honestly, I'm really impressed with this show. I've always loved science and science experiments, so it's been important to me that Timothy have an adequate science education. I've talked to so many public school teachers who say with reading, spelling, math, TAKS, and all the things they "have" to do they rarely (if ever) "do science." I want Timothy to know science and love it, too.

Anyway, tonight they were talking about the sense of smell. I guess Timothy learned something from the show because he just sniffed and said "I smell bananas. Are banana molecules in my nose??"

What We're Hoping For...

Important Announcement (please read):

This weekend, I was talking to a mom at a consignment sale. She did an amnio with her last pregnancy and found out her daughter had a 1 in 20 chance of having Down's Syndrome. The little girl was completely normal (now 3 years old) but the mom said, had she known the risk, she wouldn't have had her daughter (even knowing her daughter is "NORMAL" now).

People keep asking me what we're hoping for, a boy or a girl. When I just smile and shrug, they normally just say something like "Just as long as it has ten fingers and ten toes, right?"

The truth of the matter is that is NOT right at all.

We'd love to have a little girl with blonde curly hair and bright blue eyes and big rolls of fat on her legs who smiles all the time. We'd love to have a strapping young baby boy who resembles both of us and who reaches every milestone weeks early.

But we strongly, fevertly, completely believe that every single child born is a blessing from God regardless of the packaging.

So if our child doesn't have ten fingers and ten toes, we still want it. I dare say we'd still love it every bit as much. If, worse yet, we have a Down Syndrome child or a paralyzed child or anything else under the sun, we still absolutely want this baby. We want the child that God created just for us, that he knowingly knit together in my womb. That's our only prayer.

We just want whatever's in me, however it comes...