a few funnies

Cracking an egg in class to help remember the letter E (a program called jolly phonics).

Mariah reflected in Cloud Gate (aka the bean) at Millenium Park

Life never gets dull when you have kids. They can frustrate you and make you angry but they can also make you laugh and be in awe of all that they are learning and doing and what amazing little creatures they are. Here are a few of my favorites from the last week or so.

Rachel -- now 15 months. She is getting opinionated! She knows what she wants and she is not quiet about it! The only words that she really says are mumumum and dadadada and bah (for boo) but other than that she communicates with pointing and exclamations. She doesn't like to hear 'no' and she'll pull a big pouty face and tears sometimes. Othertimes (when her sisters say no) she will attempt to bite them, but that doesn't work so well because they are bigger. It happened once that Allison pushed Rachel away from something, Rachel fell down, got up, was crabby about it, tried to hit Allison, but couldn't, walked over to Mariah and took a swipe at her, then walked to the toy cupboard and pulled out the toy hammer:) I don't think that she quite knew what she was doing with the hammer because she didn't go hit anything, but it was just a funny toy to grab. The days are pretty peaceful for the most part, but Rachel definitely tries to exercise her indepedence at times. Rachel loves to help unload the dishwasher. A few months ago it was grab all the silverware and throw it on the floor. Then, it thankfully progressed to handing the silverware to me so that I could put it in the drawer. A few days ago, though, she decided that she was not going to hand it to me, but instead she totters over to the drawer, holds onto the edge because she can't even see into it, and chucks with silverware in. I was impressed. I'll take it. Her other feat for the week is climbing onto the girl's 2 foot tall table. She loves to watch the trains go by and she recognizes the sound right away, but the windows are all about 4 feet off the floor. Usually I pick her up and let her look outside, but a few days ago she discovered that she can climb up onto the table and look by herself now. Now if only she would learn to climb down.... And last but not least, the ladder feat. In our new place, we turned the master bedroom into the girl's playroom and Mike built a 4ft tall platform in the walk-in closet of the bedroom to put our queen bed on (and there's still room for a desk!) We have a 4 foot stepladder that lives in the room so that we can climb into bed. Allison usually naps up there and so she was in bed and Rachel was just playing in the playroom. Well, it got pretty quiet so I just walked over to see what was going on and where is Rachel?? She had climbed up the ladder all by herself and was on the bed! I was astounded, but very thandful, too, that she hadn't fallen! Needless to say, we'll keep the door closed from now on!

As I've said before, I've been enjoying having only two girls at home. I feel like I get to know the younger two a bit better which helps me to love them more. As the author of The Shack noted, our ability to love somebody increases with knowledge of them (applicable to both God and people) and I have found this to be so true. I just marvel at what the girls know and what they can do. Allison loves to do puzzles -- she can do 100 piece puzzles by herself (I usually sort the pieces, but she can put them all in) and once she even did a 300 piece one after I sorted the pieces -- it took her over and hour, but I was impressed that she stuck with it! Her speech is very fun, too. See if you can figure these out: She likes to play "oh-no" (she doesn't care about winning, she just wants to have to draw cards when she can't match the color or number), "chest" (she knows that the pieces get moved around and that you can be in check, but she likes to have the pieces talk to each other:), she once liked to eat "cuzinni", but doesn't anymore, and she likes to have her hair in "tonypails" sometimes. She has lots of good questions, but this one was really good. They have this spinning toy (called a sit and spin, maybe?). It is a plastic disk about 18" wide with a handle in the middle that you pull yourself around to make the disk spin. The other day she asked -- "can you spin on the spinning toy on a merry go round?". Good question.

Mariah continues to enjoy school. Since I posted last she has gone to the Chicago cultural center and the Art institute on learning excursions! They have maybe a week off and then they get to ride the El train (the subway trains that are sometimes underground and sometimes on Elevated tracks above streets) and a city bus! Sounds like fun to me! Yesterday her class baked cookies because there was a parent event about school curriculum so they made refreshments for us (and even special gluten free ones for me!) She's been learning lots about letters and sounds and reading and on Wednesday she sounded out an unfamiliar word. We were driving and of all things, she found some graffiti to read:) It said something like Ramos Lives and she said "does that say liv?" I said yep! How did you figure that out? She said , "well, it looks like antie liz's name only with a v so that's how I knew what it said." Good strategies:) It is going to be really weird when she is fluent at reading and spelling! It will open up whole new worlds to her.

As for Mike and I, we are doing well for the most part. Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, one and a half steps back, especially when somebody in the house is sick. I unpacked the last box of dishes yesterday (hooray!) , but have a few boxes of toys and things left. My mom is coming to visit this weekend which will be very exciting! and we are planning to go back to Minnesota the weekend of the 18th/19th so it will be so nice to see some familiar faces. I miss home in Minnesota and I miss the familiarity and knowing where all the groceries in the store are and all of our friends and fellow-churchgoers. We do like it here and we'll get adapted and it will help to join a church and get involved with some activities so that we meet people, but it still feels weird that we are going to live here for a long time!