Daddy's Long Trip
Daddy was gone Monday through Friday on a business trip this week. The day he left we found his destination on the big map in the study, then used GoogleMaps to see what roads he would be on (Monkey and Bug are very interested in the names of roads and how many roads we will be on to get from one place to another). The entourage handled his absence pretty well with only a few "I miss Daddy" meltdowns. Goose never melted, but she would occasionally wander around the house yelling, "Daddy! Daddy!" I think it really helped that Monkey and Bug have some concept of a calendar. A while back I made them a days-of-the-week calendar with icons for our usual outings, so they could tell each other that Daddy was coming back on Friday: "grocery shopping day." This week was also the first time Goose got to use the phone. Oh my goodness was she excited! When she heard Daddy's voice she started bouncing up and down with the biggest grin ever on her face. Of course, all she can say is "Daddy" but that hardly lessened the joy of the conversation!

Library Days
We had 3 library days this week! The first, on Monday, was a special evening storytime to celebrate Valentine's Day. (Usually this is Daddy Date night, but Daddy's out of town). The storytime involved Valentine's Day books and poems, a craft project, and a snack. The craft was a little too advanced for the entourage, but they had a great time anyway--especially since our neighbors Miss N and LA were there too. I had a proud Mommy moment when snack time rolled around: All three girls turned down the cookies and went straight for the grapes! We discovered that while Goose loves grapes, she doesn't appreciate the skins. She would pop one in, manage to suck off all the inside, then spit the skin back into my hand. The girls didn't have a lot of free play time at the library that evening, because Miss N invited us to join them for dinner afterwards, since Daddy was out of town. The girls had a great time and keep asking if we can go eat at LA again. We've had discussions about the social niceties of having to be invited before showing up at someone else's house for dinner.

The very next evening Monkey and Bug insisted they wanted to go somewhere. When I asked where, they replied in unison, "The library!" How could I say no?! So, we spent an hour or so at the library mostly snuggled up on a big bean bag chair reading books they picked out.

Then on Thursday we had our usual library day. Goose didn't go for the puzzles this time--she spent the hour or so we were there triumphantly climbing up onto chairs and rearranging all the cushions in the children's section. I can't remember if I've mentioned it, but I've been intentially reading a lot of classic folk and fairy tales to the girls. Today was the first time since I started doing that that we read a parody of a classic tale. Monkey and Bug loved it. They thought it (The Stinky Cheese Man) was hilarious and spent almost every page exclaiming, "That's not how it goes!" Unfortunately, the library's computer system was down, so we were only allowed to check out five books. We opted to keep a few from last week, too. We came home with:
Happy Pig Day!
George and Martha: Encore
Where Are You Going? To Visit My Friend: A story of friendship told in two languages (The two languages were English and Japanese. We talked about how the Japanese write differently than we do and how Aunt E is going to Japan, so she's learning how to speak Japanese.)
When Machines Go to Work
Leonardo the Terrible Monster
Swimmy
Spots
Recycle Everyday
Truckery Rhymes

After Thursday's library day, we met the neighborhood moms and kids at Miss N's house
for lunch and decided to see if the bounce house would fit in her living room.

Writing (Score 1 for Unschooling!)
Bug has decided to learn how to write. One of the entourage's projects this week was coloring the wrapping paper for Daddy's birthday present. At some point Bug looked up at me and asked, "Does Daddy start with a D? Does a D look like this?" and preceeded to execute a near perfect D! "What comes next?" she asked. I answered, explained what the letter A looked like, and wrote out DADDY on a piece of notebook paper for her to copy from. Unfortunately, after Bug completed a lovely beginner A, Goose decided to scribble all over Bug's letters. She was distraught and, because she'd been writing in 6 in. tall letters, didn't have enough blank space left on the paper to start over. Then while we were outside playing with sidewalk chalk with some friends, Bug decided to practice again. She started to write Daddy again, but after a messy attempt at the letter A, decided to switch to writing "DOG," which turned out very well but was backwards and around a corner. We're still working on the "letters go from left to right" concept, but I didn't want to discourage these early attempts. As I'm uploading photos on Saturday, Monkey and Bug are doing "projects" at their table in the study, and Monkey says, "Look Mom, I can do letters now too. I wrote [Bug]." Sure enough, one of the letters was iffy, but it definitely says "[Bug]"--not even her own name. I was impressed.

Bug's first attempt at writing DADDY
(I don't know why it's upside down, but I can't get it to flip)

Bug's writing with sidewalk chalk

Goose loves to color too!

Questions
There were some doozies this week:
What does God do?
Why do some mommies and daddies not live together?
Why don't mean people listen to God?

Self Defense
At one of our library days the girls asked me to read Rumplestiltskin to them, which led to some interesting discussions later in the week. it started with "Why did that mean little man try to take the mommy's baby?" That part of the story always terrified me as a little kid, so I redirected focus to the "clever Mommy who kept her baby safe." This led Monkey and Bug to think about what they would do if a mean man tried to take them: scream really loud and hit and kick as hard they could. They went from there to brainstorming ideas for how they would handle any "bad guys" who tried to get us in our house. God help the home intruder who shows up here! Here's their game plan: Monkey is going to "poke him through the tummy" with her light saber, while Bug hits him with her light saber, "so he can't get up anymore." But if he does get up, they are going to don their "Daddy work clothes" (fatigues, because that's what you wear when you fight bad guys) and bike helmets (to keep them safe), then run the bad guy over with their trikes. They even conceded that Goose could take on any "baby bad guys" who showed up, but mostly they plan on protecting her. They were practicing keeping the invisible "bad guys" away from her with their light sabers. Goose was blissfully oblivious to the danger. I know this sounds like I'm raising violent children, but I am proud to be raising daughters who have the confidence and creativety to protect themselves and the ones they love.

Ring around the Rosies
This is one of the entourage's favorite games. Just thought you'd like a glimpse into the everyday at our house!