Bye, Daddy
We took Daddy to the airport on Sunday for his "great big trip." And we all miss him already! Fortunately,Daddy had the foresight to create some "Daddy TVs" for the entourage to watch, and I think that held off some of the early meltdowns. Using a webcam, he recorded himself reading some of their favorite books aloud, and we have watched at least one of these everyday. I also made a couple of videos of Daddy and the girls rough housing (like the one posted last week). Monkey had an "I miss Daddy" moment today that involved really wanting to wrestle with him (Mommy wasn't good enough--no surprise). We broke out those videos and she loved them! She laughed hysterically every time she saw herself "squish" Daddy. Unfortunately, it kind of backfired with Bug; she ended up curled up on the floor crying that she wanted to really rough house with Daddy. We snuggled for awhile, then I distracted her with the possibility of helping me cook dinner.

Adventures!
We went for lots of walks this week--often two a day! With the exception of Wednesday, the weather has been gorgeous, and the entourage loves nothing better than pulling out the trikes and stroller and going for a long walk in the neighborhood. One day the girls declared that we were going on an adventure. This seemed to mean that we would stop frequently to pay attention to things like wild flowers, prints and tracks on driveways, broken sidewalks, spilled birdseed, jet skis, and other people's chalk art. Monkey and Bug insisted we take pictures of all of it, so here is a photo collage of one of our walks:

Bible Verse
One of the things I value most from my own education is the numerous Bible verses I was forced to memorize and still remember. I've been thinking about when to get that started for the entourage, and this week I decided to give it a try. Our first verse (posted on a card on the fridge) is Psalm 56:3: "When I am afraid, I will trust in you." It seemed appropriate given that last time Daddy was gone for this long their fears of everything escalated. We sat down, read the verse from the Bible, talked about what it meant, and repeated it several times (we've repeated several times everyday). So far it's going well, and the girls are definitely learning it, although they can't say it by themselves yet. It helped that one of the books they picked out from the library this week dealt with being afraid, and they noted that Piglet should have "trusted in God, so he wouldn't be scared."

Projects
Once again it was all freeform art this week, and mostly the girls decided to paint with a few stickers thrown in for good measure. Previously the girls have always just picked one color each, but it suddenly occurred to them this week that they could paint with more than one color per painting. A new era in the entourage's artwork has begun! Of course, Goose insisted on getting in on the action. She even figured out the logistics of using a paintbrush; although she kept calling it a spoon and did in fact put it (and a glob of non-toxic paint) in her mouth. She won't be doing that again! All this painting made me very thankful for the plastic tablecloth I bought from Walmart a few weeks back and for not having to scrub all the paint off our kitchen table!

The entourage beginning their projects

The projects completed

Library Day
We actually managed to visit the library without making a complete mess of the children's section this time. We came home with these books:
Jack and the Beanstalk (a favorite, Monkey requested we check it out again)
Circles of Hope
The Busy Body Book: A Kid's Guide to Fitness
Don't Be Scared Piglet and Roo
Don't Let the Pigeon Stay up Late!
The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog
Snow Friends

Reading books at home. Bug actually had memorized
whatever book it was she's reading to Goose.

Pigeon at the Wheel!
Daddy wasn't around to take them to the playground this week, but we still made it there. They did the usual playing on the slides, bouncy toys, and monkey bars, but this time they were also inspired by the mounted steering wheel to pretend to be characters from one of their favorite books, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! Bug decided to venture outside the storyline, though (in the book Pigeon never succeeds in driving the bus; he just "interacts" with the reader in trying to convince them to let him). At the playground however, Pigeon/Bug snuck onto the "bus," grabbed the wheel, and shouted "Pigeon at the wheel! Oh no! Crash! Bang!" Bus Driver/Monkey came racing across the playground and took back the bus. After some friendly and hilarious negotiation, they decided that Pigeon could still ride the bus--if she paid for the ride in bits of mulch.

I declared it too chilly for the pool, but the entourage desperately wanted to play with water.
We compromised.

Quality Time
After the mostly wonderful craziness of last week, I tried to keep to the "normal" routine as much as possible with lots of family quality time thrown in. Daddy deployed this weekend, so we tried to get in as much time with him as we could. Their Daddy date this week involved watching him mow the lawn, which for a trio of preschoolers is actually a fascinating activity. Daddy even made sure to get in lots of rough housing time with his girls. They are going to miss evenings spent like this!

Thanks to our wonderful neighbors even I got a date night with Daddy this week! The entourage was thrilled to spend an evening hanging out with LA--eating alphabet soup for dinner and playing princesses.

Project
The entourage was incredibly excited about the project this week. I threw into a shoebox the following items: a few sticker sheets, a collection of cut outs from magazines, a couple of glue sticks, two pairs of scissors, a handful of crayons, and a few pieces of construction paper. I gathered the entourage around their table in the study, opened the box, and told them to have at it. They were far more proud of their finished products than they have been of any formal craft project I've led them through. Of course, the "finished" products were cut into slivers before I could take pictures of them, but they had the best time letting their creative juices flow. We will definitely be repeating this with a variety of things in the box!

Trucks
Monkey in particular spent a lot of time with the toy trucks this week: parking them in various locations, creating different arrangments and patterns, vrooming them from one place to another, and occassionally lining them up and naming them.

Toddlerese
I've officially lost track of how many words exactly Goose says now. She's constantly popping out new words, and life is slowly getting easier now that she can communicate a little more effectively. Her most frequently used phrase: "I want . . . " This usually ends in a request for food (and yet the doctor thinks she isn't gaining enough weight. I don't get it.)

Little Techies
In addition to all the new words, Goose has discovered that there are several apps on her big sisters' iPods that she can play with (her current favorite is a shapes game, but she really enjoys the coi pond too). Monkey and Bug continue to play games are Starfall, and I recently showed them the Paint program on the old laptop. I had to laugh the other day when I looked around the study to see Monkey playing a JumpStart program on the desktop, Bug painting a picture on the laptop, Goose playing with the fish on an iPod, while I worked on the netbook.

Library Day
We were back to our usual library day today. The big girls claimed a table in the kids section and spent most of the time picking books off the shelf and quietly "reading" them. Goose didn't play with the puzzles at all this time--she too was busy pulling books off the shelf, but she did a lot less quietly reading than her sisters. We're trying to teach Goose that books are taken off one at a time and looked at, not dumped off the shelf by the armload. It's going to take a while. (It probably makes it harder that I have no problem with her doing the same thing at home. Only at home once she's emptied the shelf she plops herself down in the middle of them and spends a long time flipping through them.) Anyway, we came home with the following books this week:
I Love My New Toy! (An elephant and piggie book; this series is one of our favorites)
Horton Hears a Who
Where the Wild Things Are
Five Little Chicks
The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything
Good Night, Engines! / Wake up, Engines!
The Very Grouchy Ladybug

Routine? What Routine?
This week looked a lot different than normal. It was spring break where we live, so some of the weekly activities were cancelled (homeschool playgroup and church night supper). Nana came to visit (much excitement! It's been the longest time they've ever gone without seeing her), so the entourage didn't do their usual Daddy date night or come to the Y with me. We didn't go to the library this week, because we decided to spend that morning at home with Daddy since he went out of town again (just two nights; he's back already). And to top off the week, we cancelled our usual Friday activities to go to the zoo with our neighbors Miss N, Mr. S, and LA. Next week we'll be back slightly closer to "normal." The poor entourage won't know what to do with themselves!

Nana!
Nana's arrival was the first major event of the week. She arrived Sunday night after they went to bed, and they were so excited to have Nana here when they woke up Monday morning. Nana drove down in the convertible, so the entourage got to ride up and down the street a few times with the top down. We played outside alot, and got to try out the girls' new bubble bucket.

We also dyed Easter eggs while Nana was here. Monkey and Bug helped with the whole process--from boiling the eggs to eating the finished beautiful product. Goose was very disappointed that she didn't get help with the dying.

 The last morning of Nana's visit proved particularly eventful: The entourage got to see a sheriff up close and in person when I got into a fenderbender (no one was injured, there was minimal damage to the cars, and the officer was merciful enough not to give me a ticket), we went to the bank to take care of some paperwork, and Nana bought us frozen yogurt (she decided we all needed a treat--yum!)

Puddle Jumping
Thanks to a couple of really hard rains we had two fantastic puddle jumping days. There's a dip in the road right in front of house which creates the most fantastic, huge, mud-free puddle. The first time the girls mostly did just jump--with vigor. In fact, they had to stop a couple of times to dump the water out of their rain boots. Toward the end of the water play Monkey and Bug decided to reinact the "fetch a pail of water" part of Jack and Jill. They scooped water into buckets with sand shovels, and they were kind enough to let Goose join in. The second time they still jumped quite a bit--enough to get soaked head to toe, but they also floated boats and other objects, collected and examined rocks found in the puddle and surrounding area, scooped water into buckets and watered the street, and discovered that when you draw with chalk on a wet street it makes for really vibrant colors.

Veggies
Last week we planted microgreens; this week we harvested! The entourage was thrilled to eat the veggies they had grown themselves. I have plans to put them salads and on sandwiches, but the first harvest was snipped and eaten immediately. The girls didn't even want to go inside first; they sat on the front porch in their PJs and ate every last leaf. I highly recommend gardening as a way to get your kids to eat their greens!

Wheels on the Bus
Monkey and Bug have been singing "Wheels on the Bus" a lot lately, but they get very creative. One recent rendition involved a bus whose passengers included the usual people, babies, and mommies, but also a tiger, bunnies, a sloth, a clown, a dinosaur, and of course Diego, who showed up to rescue the people from the tiger and the dinosaur, who were apparently wrecking havoc on the bus. They were cracking themselves up!

To the Zoo!
Monkey and Bug have been begging me to take them to the zoo for a while now, and we finally made it! We borrowed a big wagon from some neighbors, caravaned up with our next-door neighbors, and the entourage had a blast. They were extremely good travelers (an hour and a half in the car with just me and three 3 and under: I was a bit nervous, but they did beautifully. I even wore them out enough that they all slept the whole way home). At the top of their to-see list were elephants, monkeys, and zebras, and this zoo did not disappoint. We also got to do cool things like walk through the kangaroo habitat, feed goats (Bug was so brave!), and get face to face with a hungry giraffe (sadly we didn't have any food for him, but being at eye level and maybe a foot away was pretty nifty). We didn't have time to see everything, but since this trip was such a success, we're planning to get a membership, so you can look forward to more zoo reports.

The entourage plus one (LA) were very excited to "ride the elephant"!

Goose Is Flying!
Down the slide at least. This girl is fearless and a lot more mobile than other kids her age or at least her size. On the zoo playground and on our neighbors playset, while the other toddlers were sitting hestitantly at the tops of slides and grasping at the edges while they slid to their mommies at the bottom, Goose was flinging herself onto the slide on her belly headfirst, controlling her speed to slow at the bottom and tumble off into the rubber mulch/grass, bouncing up and repeating endlessly. She freaked out more than one parent on the sidelines who seemed to think she was zooming toward certain death or at least a bad fall, and more unfortunately inspired a few bigger toddlers/preschoolers to do the same with considerably less success. She's pretty tough too: At one point at the zoo, she got knocked over in the rush of bigger kids. A preteen girl tried to be helpful, pick her up, and carry her off the playset. Goose was indeed crying--not because she got knocked over (she wasn't phased), but because someone was trying to take her away from the slide! She squirmed out of my arms and right back up the stairs as soon as I "freed her" from the preteen.

Daddy's Gone . . . but Grandma's Here!
Daddy was out of town this week, but the entourage had the happy distraction of Grandma visiting which made things a bit smoother. It's always fun for them to have a new grown up around to do things like read lots of books and build super tall towers.

The evening before Daddy left we decided to have a "Daddy Date" that I got to go to as well. We took a picnic to the park, then went out for ice cream. Perhaps the biggest excitement of the evening was getting to witness some fascinating weather. We could actually see and hear the rain coming toward us from across a baseball field! It's a good thing we had the warning too, because it turned out to be a hail shower. The girls got to watch the hail bouncing around and look at one up close. Fortunately, it didn't stick around for long and we got to keep playing outside for a bit.

Daddy's teaching the entourage to do the monkey bars.

I managed to catch them mid-dandelion blow.

Playdate to Pizza
Monday turned out to be a very social day for the entourage and I. In the morning we were invited to crash a Mom's Club playdate that Miss N was hosting next door. It involved playing in LA's bounce house and getting to eat one of Miss N's practice cakes (she's taking a cake decorating class and a had a final that night). Needless to say, a great time was had by all. Then Grandma arrived in the afternoon to find three very excited little girls waiting for her in the front yard. To top off the day that evening most of our neighborhood friends gathered in our backyard for pizza and play until bedtime. Two other families had grandparents visiting this week too, so it was quite the gathering!

All the little ladies created a pizza eating train.

Library Day
We decided to go to storytime at our little branch library again this week, since it was a more Grandma friendly event. And, of course, we got to see some of our neighborhood friends too. All three girls made paper caterpillars as the storytime craft project. We came home with these books this week:
Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus!
From Seed to Plant
The Foot Book
Green as a Bean
The Neighborhood Mother Goose
Aesop's Fables (renewed)

Gardening
Plants and gardening proved to be the theme of the week. Grandma arrived with a collection of pinecones to examine as well as an assortment of vegetable and flower seeds. She helped the entourage put together baggies with damp paper towels and a variety of the seeds, so they can watch how different plants germinate (at this writing a few of Goose's are actually starting to sprout). We found a book about the life cycle of plants at the library. I happened across a bunch of veggie themed worksheets that the girls enjoyed working on. Grandma brought a self-watering planter we had hoped to get set up, but it leaked too much (maybe if Grandma can fix the leak we can try again later). We actually did plant a bunch of lettuce and radish seeds in a couple of berry containers to see if we can succeed in growing microgreens (I'm keeping my fingers crossed--I have something of a black thumb and even managed to kill a cactus once).

Easter Eggstravaganza
Our church had it's big Easter party this Wednesday. We had a bit of rough start in getting the entourage involved in activities, but once they got into the egg hunt things went smoother from there. It was a drop-in egg hunt for preschoolers, and  the entourage wasn't aggresive and/or fast enough to snag the eggs as soon as they hit the ground. Once the initial crowd cleared out, we had a lot of fun though. Perhaps more exciting than even the candy in the eggs was that some of the "eggs" were actually plastic cupcakes that you could take the tops off of. I think about half a dozen of these have joined the pretend food collection in the kitchen. (As a result, Goose uttered her first two word phrase: "My cupcake!") The party also involved several inflatable activities; the bounce house and the huge slide were favorites. I think Monkey and Bug went down the slide at least a dozen times each. Goose mostly spent most of this time sqatting on the ground getting eggs in and out of her basket. We got to meet live chickens and a bunny to meet and do a craft. The Easter Bunny was also there. The entourage didn't want take pictures with her, but we observed from a distance. Bug noted with excitement that it wasn't a real big bunny--it was just a person in a costume!

Worksheets
I happened across a bunch of veggie themed worksheets this week that Monkey and Bug were pretty excited about (mostly matching and counting). The only difficulty with saving worksheets as records of jobs well done is that the finished projects usually look like the've been done incorrectly. They haven't been; Monkey and Bug just like to go above and beyond. For example, one of the sheets this time instructed them to circle the veggie in the row that matched the one in the column on the right. They did this perfectly, then they informed me that they wanted to practice drawing circles and circled every veggie on the sheet. Little overachievers!

At some point this week I was working on the computer upstairs,
and Goose decided to grab several books, climb into the butterfly chair,
and snuggle in looking at books for 30 minutes or so.