Library Day
No story time again this week, but we did go to another movie showing! This one was much more manageable: Charlie Brown's Christmas. It's only 30 minutes, and since we own it, they've seen it multiple times already. They love it, though, so they we were pretty excited about seeing it on the big screen. Oh, and the fact that the librarian gave them each their own bag of popcorn with some M&Ms tossed in was also popular.

We were travelling at the end of the week though, so we didn't check out a pile of books this time. Instead they picked out just one from the bin of paperbacks that aren't in the library system (they're actually there so the toddler's can look at books without parents having to worry about the kids tearing them up). They picked out The Donkey Prince, one of Grimm's fairy tales, beautifully illustrated. It's been interesting reading because it's the second time recently that the girls have run across a storyline in which the main character is rejected by society for being different (Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer being the first). This is completely puzzling to them. Why being different would be a bad thing simply doesn't work out in their minds, and I love that. Although I kind of hate that they have to be introduced to the concept through stories that are supposed to be teaching acceptance.

More Cookies!
We made gingerbread cookies this week to take with us on our Christmas travels. Monkey and Bug are experts now with cutting and decorating (I do the scooping and rolling out at this point). They were a little more intentional with the decorating this time, and they are definitely devoloping their own styles: for example, Monkey created a one-eyed pirate gingerbread man (then gleefully made him one-armed as well after he baked), while Zoe carefully placed a single "pearl" on each arm of a snowflake.

Reading/Writing
Reading lessons continue, if sporadically at this season, but the girls are doing well and still enjoy the mix of methods (out of the book, on the white board, or with juice can lids). The newest addition to their learning literacy: emails to Daddy! They knew I wrote to him everyday, but they only recently realized that they could do that too. At this point, they think up what they want to say and ask me how to spell each word, which they hunt-and-peck to type on the computer. In addition to the joy of communicating with Daddy while he's gone (they were SO excited when they each got an email back!), they've also learned about punctuation (I'm sticking to just periods and question marks right now). I haven't started pointing out rules of capitalization yet, but Monkey noticed that the names needed to be capitalized and I showed her how to do that. I am so looking forward to using writing as a means to teach grammar and spelling!

Mother's Helper
Can I just take a moment to say how much I dearly love our current church! When I broke the news to my Sunday school class about Daddy's sudden departure, I got not only an immediate outpouring of sympathy and prayers, but a retired military doc verified that I had his phone and told me not to hesitate to call (he makes house calls for milspouses!) and another couple said their kids were out of school for the holidays already and would I like to borrow their 12-year-old daughter one morning to watch with the girls so I could get Christmas/travel preparations done? Yes, please!

So, Miss C came over Thursday morning, and the girls had a blast. They told me beforehand that they were going to be shy for a little while (perfectly acceptable response to meeting someone new), but it took them all of 5 minutes to decide she was awesome and to dismiss me to my work. Miss C is one smart girl--she arrived bearing fairy coloring sheets and a new set of markers. I also overhead them building elaborate castles out of blocks and reading books. The girls were even willing to give her goodbye hugs! (Meanwhile, I had a highly productive morning and actually got to relax a bit in the evening instead of packing and cleaning like crazy.)

"Over the river and through the woods . . . "
The girls were amazing travellers on Friday. We had no meltdowns, no fighting, and only made two stops in a six hour drive to Nana and Papa Bear's house! They watched some DVDs (part of Tarzan, part of a Muppet Christmas Carol, and all of Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer), they played games on their iPods (and even shared with Goose!), they colored mini activities books I bought for the trip, we talked about the geography we were passing through (through great big cities, over several lakes, up and down a couple of mountains, and past waterfalls and cliffs dripping with icicles--Bug has decided she wants to take up rock climbing when she's big enough). We also listened to CDs of international Christmas carols and a kid's CD featuring the music of New Orleans. A day in the car is never a wasted time!

Bye Daddy
As Bug so poignantly put it, we had to "say a very sad goodbye to Daddy" this past weekend. Monkey and Bug are old enough (and have gone through this enough) to realize what's going on and  process it all a little better this time around. They were sad before he left, but they responded by getting in extra wrestling time and giving him good long hugs at the airport--even Goose gave him a long hug without hesitation (she's hit that stage where she often refuses hugs, especially goodbye ones, so that's a big deal). When we got home, I overheard the girls explaining to their buddies (stuffed animals) about Daddy being gone and Bug put on a Daddy shirt to help her feel better. Daddy keeps coming up in conversation, especially at moments that they wish he was around for: making and eating Christmas cookies, going to see a living nativity, etc. This time though, instead of having "I miss Daddy" meltdowns about it, they tell me I need to make sure to write him a message about it--a much more cheerful way of missing him.

Before he left, we talked about how Daddy would be missing Christmas this year, and I suggested that we buy and fill a mini stocking for him to take with him. It made me happy when the first thing they thought of that he would need to celebrate Christmas was a nativity set (small enough to pack and not breakable, they said. We found an ornament at the Christian bookstore that fit the bill). We also filled it with the requisite chocolate Santas and candy canes.

Christmas Movies & Music
Part of our Advent celebrations that I don't think I've mentioned yet is that we've watched Christmas movies every morning instead of their usual shows during our morning milk and snuggle time (and yes, Mommy has caved and frequently let them watch more than the usual 30 minutes because I love Christmas movies). Their absolute favorite: The Nutcracker, not a kiddie cartoon version but a full length ballet version designed by Maurice Sendak, full of color and drama. We also went to library and checked out a storybook version and a DVD of a televised version from the 60s. They found the 60s version a disappointment since it skipped some of their favorite parts: the moment when Clara rescues the Nutcracker by whacking the Mouse King with her shoe and the part with the Chinese dancers from the Land of Sweets. The Sendak version also had particular attraction for them because one of Drosselmeier's gifts is a toy castle full of miniature dancing automatons (thank you, Hugo Cabret, for inspiring that particular obssession!). We now own a wooden nutcracker, and the girls often request the Nutcracker music, so they dance and pretend to Clara and Drosselmeier.

We also went to the library for a showing of Polar Express. It's the first time the girls have gone to see a movie somewhere, and much as they loved it, it'll be awhile before we go to a real movie theater since I spent the entire hour and a half answering questions. They were also big fans of the hot chocolate and cookies that the librarians provided.

Of course, our house has been full of Christmas music, not just the Nutcracker Suite, but a pretty eclectic collection of other Christmas music. One of Monkey's favorite things lately has been rocking the air drums along with A Twisted Christmas. One of my favorite Christmas music memories from this year though was watching all three girls dance up and down the grocery store aisles singing "Jingle Bells" at the top of their lungs. Monkey and Bug even had real jingle bells strung on their clogs.  

Christmas Cookies!
We baked lots of cookies this year! We made enough rolled out sugar cookies, peppermint snowballs, and M&M cookie bars this week to pass out plates to about a half dozen neighbors plus a big plate for the librarians and, of course, lots of leftovers for us! The girls helped me measure and mix. Monkey and Bug even cracked eggs and manned the handheld mixer on their own (with close supervision, of course). They all pitched in to cut out and decorate the sugar cookies. Those activities actually held their attention longer than I expected because we decorated them with sprinkles before cooking them (I didn't have to deal with icing, and they could switch back and forth between activities). Obviously, beaters and bowls were licked and cookies sampled for quality control purposes. The girls had a great time walking around to pass out cookies and were even brave enough to say Merry Christmas and pass out the plates themselves.

COOKIES!!!

Monkey and Bug hard at work smashing candy canes.

Library Day
No storytime again this week, but we had a great time reading lots of stories. This week we came home with these books:
Let's Say Hi to Friends who Fly!
The Duckling Gets a Cookie
Mother's Day Mice
Mary Veronica's Egg
The Nutcracker
The Night Tree
Babar's ABC

Living Nativity
While running errands one day this week, we spotted a church near us advertising a living nativity. It also happened to be next to a pretty elaborate Christmas lights display. We decided--ok, Bug decided and informed me that we should come back when it was dark. We had a great time. The girls watched the living nativity and listened to the church choir sing carols for a long time while enjoying complimentary hot cocoa and Christmas cookies.

Seeing the living nativity inspired this scene of "Joseph," "Mary," and "Baby Jesus."

Lessons
Confession: with all the Advent festivities, we haven't been doing reading lessons as consistently this week. We worked in a few, and the girls did a great job. Monkey even read a few words all by herself! They've also gotten more adept at memorizing books and then "reading" them to Goose, which she loves.

We haven't done anything resembling formal math lessons in a while, but all the baking involved lots of counting and measuring, and Goose still loves counting anything or nothing. At some point in the car this week Bug even spontaneously counted all the way to 50! She only needed prompting after 19, 29, etc. I think that's a record.

Favorite Conversation of the Week:
Bug: "[Monkey] called me funky! What's 'funky' mean?"
Me: "Um . . . I guess it means you're a little weird."
Bug (racing back to the playroom): "I'm not funky! I'm a LOT weird!"

[Faithful readers, please note: this post covers only through this past Friday. It's just late being posted.]

Happy Advent! 
Our family got to light the first Advent candle at church! Well, we left Goose in the nursery, but the big girls were with Daddy and I (toddler + flames + microphone + large crowd = almost guaranteed disaster). Monkey and Bug did beautifully. I was very proud of them for not freaking out despite being in front of a couple hundred people. It helped that we did a lot of talking about what was going to happen, and we put up all our Christmas decorations, including our own advent wreath the day before.

We also started our advent study, which the girls love. It has a really brief devotion, a prayer, a Bible, and a short activity for each day. The first activity was making a paper chain to count down the days until Christmas, and the girls have been really good about taking turns pulling apart the links and counting how many are left. Now that we've done a week of them the girls have even enjoyed pulling out the book and looking back at the days we've done.

The entourage was very excited about all the Christmas decorations! With a few delicate exceptions, Monkey and Bug put all the ornaments up on our Chrismon tree. This meant of course that the tree was only decorated for the first 3 feet, but the next day they noticed the uneven decorating and pulled up a few stools and rearranged until they were satisfied with the distribution of ornaments. They also helped me find spots for all the nativity scenes (Daddy and I collect them, so the living room currently has 15 made in various sizes, styles, and materials. There are no doubts about the reason for the season in this house!).

Speaking of Christmas decorations, remember the cardboard and fabric "tree" from last week? Well, Daddy and I talked about eventually getting a second "real" tree for the girls to decorate with their handmade ornaments. It turns out "eventually" is this year. We ran out of room on the fabric tree in no time, so Daddy went out and bought the girls an inexpensive tree and a string of colored lights. They were thrilled to decorate yet another tree!

Nana!
Nana arrived on Monday for a coincidentally well-timed visit. (It turns out Daddy departs for another "big trip" this coming weekend, so she got to see him before he leaves, and Daddy and I got a date night that involved Christmas shopping for the entourage.) The girls were very excited about this visit; they've been telling me for weeks that it had been a long time since they'd seen their Nana and Papa Bear! (Papa Bear couldn't come, but he was missed.) The highlight of this visit was going to see Christmas lights--not the ones on random houses, but a 100 acre farm near us that puts up displays made of more than 5 million Christmas lights. They charge admission to take a hayride tour through a life-size nativity scene, scenes of classic fairy tales, moments in history, and Christmassy things like Santa's Workshop made out of lights. The farm also had a Santa's playhouse themed playground that they got to run around on. Their favorite part though--getting to walk into Cinderella's castle made entirely from lights:

RIP Oswald
The morning Nana left, we went upstairs to get dressed and feed Oswald and discovered the poor fish belly up in his bowl. Monkey and Bug were really upset. We've encountered dead frogs and birds, and Nana's dog died a while back, but this is the first time something/one they really cared about died. Planning his "funeral" definitely helped. They picked out tissue paper to wrap him in and chose the spot to bury him (somewhere the sun reaches). They even pulled out trowels to help dig a little grave beside the house and found a good flat stone for a grave marker. Bug commented that she thought he would like it when it rained because then he'd have water underground. Goose had been raptly watching all this, and once we patted down the dirt and placed the stone on top, she cheerfully announced, "All gone Oswald!" That pulled grins out of her big sisters. Monkey and Bug wanted to "sit with Oswald" for a little while when we were done, so Goose and I went around the corner to give them a moment.

Goose is 2! (almost)
Daddy's going to miss some major events while on his big trip, and we realized the one thing we could easily celebrate early was Goose's birthday. Since she's still oblivious and it's right before Christmas we were just doing a family birthday celebration anyway. We made her a chocolate cake, and she got to open presents. Like her big sisters she freaked out a little about the sing Happy Birthday and blow out candles part, but she loves her new toys! (Sadly, I wasn't with it enough to remember to take photos.)

Reading
The girls continue to do very well with their reading lessons. Bug got to read several complete sentences this week (in addition to all the usual tasks) and added the sound "th." This is a very difficult sound for her to make (it comes out as an "f" when she talks), so being able to read it with correct pronunciation was a huge triumph. Monkey also added a new sound this week, "d," and she's requested a combination of white board and juice lid activities for her lessons (keeping up the variety is going to be key in this kid's education!). Monkey and Bug even requested that I make a set of juice lid letters for Goose, since she keeps requesting her own reading lessons.

Bug has also started writing much more recently. She occasionally pulls out paper and practices all the letters she can think of at the moment, or she ask me how to spell things (mostly family members names). It's interesting: she can write letters that I've never actually showed her how to. I don't know how her technique is, but her finished product is definitely improving!


Quotes

• Bug [munching on apple peelings]: "We're your vacuum cleaners because we clean up the mess you make in the kitchen. You have some cute vacuum cleaners!"
• Monkey has been experimenting with interjections lately. Among her favorites: "Oh jets!" and "Blasted rats!"
• Benefits of not talking down to your preschoolers: Having your almost 2-year-old ask, "My beverage?" about a questionable sippy cup or having one of your 4-year-olds say, "Well, acquire some!" after you inform her that we do not own any markers.

The closest we'll get to a full family Christmas photo this year.
Aren't we a cute bunch?

Goose Counts!
I've done very little to attempt to formally teach Goose to count. In fact, I'd only worked on the concept of 1, 2, 3. Then sometime in the car this week, Goose suddenly started counting and got up to 9! (Well, she skipped 6, but that was her only mistake!) It turns out Monkey and Bug had decided to take on that responsibility themselves and by the end of the week Goose was counting up to eleven (over and over and over). If they keep this up, I may never have to sit down and actually teach Goose anything! (They've also been trying to teach her read but more on that below!)

Reading
I decided we needed something to add a little more variety to reading lessons (sometimes we do them straight from the book, sometimes I write them out on their white boards). This week I took a bunch of the frozen juice lids I've been hoarding and made them each a set of letters they've done in their lessons and a set of word endings (at, am, eat, etc.) to share. This turned out to be a great idea. Not only have they enjoyed doing their regular lessons by moving these around, but they have loved making "silly words"--stringing together letters and syllables and getting me to help them sound it out. They've also started using the lids to attempt to teach Goose how to read. They use the lids like flashcards and hold one up and get her to repeat the letter sound. She loves it!

I also realized this week that some of their dragging through lessons is probably boredom with the repetitive sections rather than actual struggles with the concepts--particularly for Bug. A couple of times this week Bug asked to skip the "practice sounding out" section (which she deemed silly and boring almost from day 1) and go straight to reading a list of half a dozen words and a sentence all by herself. She zipped through it like a pro! Until this week I'd been making her plod through all the sections with me, but since she so obviously grasps the concept of sounding out, it looks like I can give her a pass on those. Monkey isn't reading words by herself yet, but she's really improved on the rhyming games, so she's getting closer. One of these days she'll probably pull a typical move and just take off without warning like she's been doing it forever!

Bug has been looking at the word books again lately. Of course, when the girls were toddlers they loved them for vocabulary building purposes, but now she looks at them to see how the words for different things are spelled. I haven't bothered testing her, but I imagine she's learning a number of sight words that way.

Preparations for Advent!

The anticipation is building, and the girls have been counting down the days until Advent when we get to put up all the decorations and start our Advent study. Of course, the rest of the world doesn't wait for Advent, so the entourage has already been coming home with fun handmade ornaments. Our big tree is a Chrismon tree instead of a typical Christmas tree, so we had to find a different home for those cute decorations. This year I had the girls come with me to the fabric store and pick out fabric that looked like a tree. We brought it home, wrapped it around a big cardboard triangle, and I added loops of ribbon to hang things from. The girls love having their own "pretend tree" upstairs.

We started our Christmas shopping this week. The girls helped me find gifts for my family's gift exchange, and they are very excited about the stocking stuffers they picked out. (So no, the entourage doesn't believe in Santa Claus, but they are really stoked about being sneaky like St. Nicholas was and putting secret presents in the stockings when nobody's looking--my family's tradition.)

This week the girls and I also went shopping for Christmas dresses! This was the first year that I didn't even attempt to coordinate dresses, and I'm so glad I didn't have my heart set on matching little girls. Monkey and Bug's dresses actually clash, but each girl got a dress that made her eyes light up--even better! Before we set out I told the girls the dresses had to cost less than a certain amount and be machine washable. Bug spotted her dream dress almost as soon as we walked into the first store: red velvet with white faux fur edging. A quick glance at the price tag revealed that a life lesson would have to be learned very quickly. Bug took the news far more gracefully than I expected, and I told her that we'd be visiting several more stores that might have the same dress for the right price. We talked about the dress and about what she really liked about it. She told me after an unsuccessful next stop that while she really liked that dress, she "might have to get a different one and just deal with it." This mom's prayers were answered when the last store on my list had the right dress for the right price! Finding Monkey's dress wasn't nearly as heartwrenching. After perusing the first store's offerings, Monkey decided she wanted one with roses like several of the dresses there, but she wasn't really excited about any of those particular ones. The next stop however had the dress: a pink tiered, sleeveless number sprinkled with sequins and featuring three roses at its empire waistline. I assumed I would be picking Goose's dress since she was just running around the racks seemingly without paying much attention to the dresses. Suddenly, I hear her yell "Mine!" and look up to see her clutching a sparkly silver dress with big black polka dots. Everyone came home very happy, and since our family's been asked to light the first Advent candle at church this coming Sunday, the entourage has a special occasion to pull out those dresses. (Pictures will hopefully be coming in my next week's post.)

Library Day
The storytime "Christmas" theme this week was "Naughty or Nice," but I'm pretty sure all the books she read were about naughty kids--redeemed at the end and always loved by their mommies, of course. For this week's craft they made Christmas tree ornaments from triangles of patterned cardstock and popsicle sticks with sparkly pom poms at the top for stars. The girls loved this craft and happily made one for home and one for the library's tree. We came home with these books:
There's a Bird on Your Head!
Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten
Dora Goes to School (Monkey and Bug have lately been very curious about school and very relieved that they don't have to go.)
The Christmas Bird
When Africa Was Home
Dogs
Farms (The previous two are Eyewitness books that Goose picked out, full of lots of great photographs. The girls have been particularly interested in Farm, which is mostly about the history of farming from Stone Age humans poking in the dirt with a stick and catching wild sheep to modern farmers with full-size tractors and milking machines.)
Aircraft (their "what do you want to learn about?" book. Monkey's favorites: the flying boat and the stealth fighter jet. We've also been making lots of paper airplanes this week and revisiting the subject of aerodynamics.)

A Sample of Questions I've Been Asked This Week:
How do spiders build their webs?
Why do bugs die?
How do space ships get to space?
How do submarines move?
How do clouds stay up there?
How big is God? And what does He look like?
What's a spirit? (When I attempted to answer this one and confessed I didn't really understand it either, the girls were quiet for a minute, then Bug offered, "Maybe we'll understand it when we get to heaven.")
How does God get us to heaven?
Will we be able to walk there?
Jesus is God, right?
Can God do everything people can't do?
Do animals worship God, too?

We bought a new winter hat for Goose this week (her pick). Just too cute not to share!