Stop and smell the flowers

Kira and Tia take time to stop and smell the flowers. (Photos taken 11/23/07)

Baking!

Yesterday, Katie*, our wonderful new nanny, baked homemade chocolate chip cookies with the girls. Here's Tia helping.


*Katie took the pictures and hopefully she'll check in here to see them!

Contrast

Nick took this picture of Kira at the park swinging.... I love it. Today, Kira has a cold and sounds really croupy. So sad.

Concepts...

In the class I'm teaching, Cognitive Development, we're covering Conceptual Development. (That's what I lectured on today!) It's a hard topic for the students, but I'm not going to talk about the students and the joys of teaching here.

The most fun thing about teaching a class on a subject so near and dear to my heart is seeing examples of Cognitive Development in the girls. In real life, I'm currently observing Tia learn the concept of big versus little. She will say, "I'm too little for the shirt." She'll mean the shirt is too little for her. She gets the concept of size but she doesn't always get the right word.

We look at pictures in books, and in her favorite book (of the week) there are lots of 3 of the same objects, but different sizes. I'll ask her to point to the biggest one. She gets it some of the time but not all of the time. However, if I ask her to point to the "Natalie" object, she always reliably points to the largest object. Same for the "Kira" object, she gets that Kira is the "medium" sized girl. The "Tia" object is always the smallest. She has the concept of size, but the words, big, medium, and small aren't nearly as meaningful to her as the names of her sisters and her. Throughout the course of development, children utilize the most salient parts of their world to bootstrap to more complex understandings. That's what Tia is doing. Pretty cool, eh? Cognitive Development in action!

Thank you

It was Veteran's Day two weeks ago. This was Natalie's homework.

New Couch

Meet our new couch. It should arrive soon. It's more burgundy than it looks in that picture. (In the picture, it just looks brown to me. It also, definitely looks like a couch!) Shopping for it with 3 little girls was, um, interesting. Not horrible, but they were noisy!

Tip of the day, take a portable DVD player shopping with you! It helps.

Nat's Thanksgiving show

Natalie's kindergarten (combined with all the other classes) did a holiday program. Here are a couple of pictures. The first picture is from the show and the second one is from their feast after the show.

(Would you believe me if I told you video will come soon...? What about if I told you I had a bridge for sale? Heh, don't hold your breath. Probably over the next Holiday break.)

(The class I'm teaching ends 12/18 and then I have to do grades. Then I should have a bit more free time.)

Dishwasher?

Today, Nick and I were discussing the clean dishes in the dishwasher... Kira said, "It's a bowlwasher!" We were proud. An early attempt at a pun.

Kira's art gallery

Kira has taken over the walls of my kitchen. Look! She did all of this in less than 24 hours. She draws the picture and then gets tape to put it on the wall.

Three in a row

Little girls playing and all 3 (almost) looking at the camera. (Taken Thanksgiving, 2007 at the park.)

Sponge art

Natalie recently learned about dinosaur sponges that hatch out of gelatin capsules (you dissolve them in water). She LOVES them. She carries her baby dinosaurs with her everywhere. She decided she and Kira could do sponge art with them. They dipped them in paint and created. Natalie got it all ready. Paint and water were everywhere. Fortunately, they are washable and so is everything in the house. Here are a couple of photos.

The upcoming holiday...

There's a holiday in December. You know... It's coming so quickly! Yikes!

Kelly asked what the girls have on their wish list...Really, they don't NEED anything. We have so many toys and clothes. Please, don't feel obligated to get them anything. Really! Please!

If you feel you want to get something, here are some ideas. The main request is Books! This post is a lot longer because it documents the girls' interests. I figured, someday, they might like to read about what they liked when they were 2, 3.5 and almost 6.

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Natalie is kind of reading. She can read easy reader books, or we can read more advanced books to her She really liked Ramona the Pest, so we can do chapter books now! Fun!

Natalie LOVES dinosaurs. She would love anything like these puzzles! She got a T-Rex one and was ecstatic! (Books about dinosaurs would also be great!)

I think a Dictionary for kids with mostly pictures would be very helpful. Natalie makes a lot of books and it would help her write / spell.

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Kira still LOVES princesses. Books about Princesses (not just disney princesses as we have a lot of those) would be great. She also likes all girly-girl subjects so books about dolls, dancing, ponies, fashion, and other girly-girl things would be greatly loved by her.

Kira also loves shoes... She would be delighted with sparkley flip flops (size 10), or any shoes with sequins or sparkles on them (9.5 or 10). (I've seen some cute tennis shoes with sparkles/s on them at Mervyn's but haven't gotten them.) (We would prefer not to have the dress-up kind of plastic shoes as they are really loud and echo through our very empty upstairs with wood floor house.)

Kira doesn't really need any clothes... She loves dresses (size 5) but again, she doesn't need (or want for) anything!

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Tia loves Diego and Elmo. She'd like Diego books. I think she'd love t-shirts with Elmo, Diego or Thomas the Train on them. (You might have to look in the boys department for t-shirts with Thomas or Diego. She's cool with wearing boy clothes.)

Tia would probably like Thomas the Train books too. We have quite a few Elmo books. (Tia does not need any stuffed Elmos...she sleeps with a crib full of them every night--seriously!)



They all would love

Art supplies (washable PLEASE!)
Bubble Bath (princess, Deigo, Thomas the Train, Dinosaur)

The girls really don't need anything. They have so much. Our playroom is overflowing.

Another idea is to give gift certificates to

Movie tickets/gift certificates
local parks/museums/etc. (I can email you ideas if you want to know more specifics. I don't want to put links on the web to these.)



We have also opened 529 accounts (for their education) for each of them. Though they won't understand money for their future, eventually they will appreciate it.

Welcome!

A big welcome to our new iMac! It's a 20 inch and it's going to live in the kitchen.

We're calling hir Three! Check out the photos (of the little girls) at the Gallery. It's a new feature on Leopard -- Mac OS X (10.5). Tell us what you think of the Gallery.

Still curly!

September curls...


November curls... We'll see how long they last. (Or how long I can keep rolling her hair every night...Yea, right!)

Eyes shut!

A few weeks ago, Kira wanted me to take pictures of her with her eyes shut. I got one with her eyes open. She's pretty silly, eh?


(Photos taken 10/24/07)

The fine arts

At preschool, Kira drew the 14-year-old dancer by Degas. You can see the sculpture and Kira's drawing of it below.

Have I mentioned that I love our preschool?

Kira's half birthday

Today, Kira is 3.5!

We went to a birthday party for a little girl (the daughter of our neighbors) today. The little girl had a birthday crown. Kira wanted one. She said, "I'm 3.5. I need half a crown." We were impressed by the logic.

See fun pictures from the party!


Videos coming soon. (Yea, yea, I say that all the time, but this time, it's likely they will be here fairly soon! I only have to edit them, not download them to the external hard drive.)

More Gymnastics

Here's Tia in her gymnastics class.

Tia jumps and claps!

&

Tia walks on the beam.


(Video taken in October.)

Girl Parade

Today, we were out and all 3 girls were looking very cute (and not screaming)... A woman said, "Aww a girl parade!"

Crash

Everyone is fine. I ran out of flash memory so I couldn't take any more, but I'm glad I captured the crash.

(We recommend playing it several times in rapid succession.)

Picking Flowers

Some photos from February when Tia first learned about the joy of picking flowers.

(Can you believe how short Tia's hair is? She was 18 months old.)

Collaboration

Here's a picture of Natalie and Kira collaborating on Kira's Cinderella picture. Natalie helped her cut it out and put it on another piece of paper. Natalie is teaching Kira all of the art techniques she perfected. I love watching them share information and learn from each other.

More on the kitchen...

Here's the prototype for our new table.... Hee! We decided cardboard wouldn't work very well.

Click to see more pictures of our kitchen.

My family by Natalie

(If you know Nick, you know what is on his shirt.)