Passover!

We had visitors! After cancelling their trip here in February because of snow, Maeme and G finally made it out to St. Louis, and it was really nice to have them here to share Passover with us.

Family portrait


And one with Maeme. Someone had to take the picture! Thanks G.


Matzo cover a la Nashy and Margot. And me, I guess, since I sewed it up. Nash wrote "Matzo" all by himself and Margot made the pretty finger stamped flower, with a lot of help from Mommy.


Smiley moment.


Margot loves her new play stroller! We had one for Nashy but he loved it too and it got used to much it went kaput. So Emmy gets her own girly pink flowery stroller. Fair or not, there aren't too many pink girly toys in this house. I have to say, I think she knows this is all for her, and she LOVES it.
The new dolly is from Maeme and G and is called "Little Me." Margot is feeding her a goldfish. In the end I guess Little Me wasn't hungry, and Margot put the goldfish on her dress, so she could enjoy it later.

Now we're ready for Springtime and beautiful weather!

On A Roll

Look at all this posting! Trying to make up for months of being a bad blogger. Had Nash's first parent-teacher conference today. Nash is the youngest one in his class. The school starts at 3 years old, as long as the child is potty trained. Nash took to potty training pretty easily and was trained in September '09, when he was 2.5, and never looked back. So, anyway, being the youngest at his school I would expect to hear from the teacher that he has some catching up to do in a lot of areas. But she didn't really say that. She said Nash loves to spell and is curious, and interested in learning. She said there are a handful of kids in the butterfly room (4 year olds) who aren't writing their own name yet. Actually, every kid in the school has a symbol associated with their name because it's easier to recognize and practice. Nash's is a box with an x in the middle reaching to the corners. But Nash's teacher says he's doing great with his name and since he's been able to read it since he started there they haven't needed to use the symbol. Of course when I got home I asked Nash to trace his name, and here's what he did:
Not too shabby!!
Also, March 7 is the first day I saw Nash drawing faces. Here are the pics:



He was drawing some heads himself, but since I know he can do circles and he wanted to practice the faces, some of those beautiful heads were drawn by yours truly. Pretty good, huh? Anyway, I'm proud of him.

I Exhaust Myself!

Margot Margot Margot the explorer! This little girl likes nothing more than to be "down" and not being told where to go or what to do and definitely not holding mommy's hand. The other morning it was the park. Ohh! Look at this leaf! Let me bring it over there. Ooh! There's a dog! Let's pet it! Hmm I wonder what's down this way! Where's Mommy going? Who cares, I want to see that thing over there. For about a month she has been putting two words together. Very often they are "Uh-oh Emmy" or "milk, Mommy" or "more, Mommy" or "more please". She doesn't call me Mama very often, which Nash did until he was way beyond her age. I've pretty much always been Mommy. Other words: Daddy, Dada, Nash, shoe (oosh), fish (ish), horse (hor), duck, dog and woof woof, balloon, ball, up (bup), milk, more please, down, banana, nose, hair, ouch, tickle, truck (uck), choo choo, no no no (accompanied by finger shaking), n'night, bye bye, hello (every time she hears the phone ring), hi, dolly. Will continue my list later. There's more. We're busy people lately!

Rolling is the new jumping

burned my hand.AVI

Recent photos

I'm long overdue on new description of everything Margot is doing and saying, but I have a running list, and soon soon soon I will post. For now, some pictures of the "little" ones. And below, finnnaaally posted earlier this morning, more about Nash and his Raintree.In matching Dwell backpacks *love*
Just like his Daddy, a Porsche man.
Trying to get the shoe ("oosh" as she calls them) to get on her foot! Sometimes Nash steps in to help out.
Margot is like Linus. This blankie goes everywhere with her, and she takes periodic breaks throughout the day and lays down on it, wherever she is, and breathes out deeply. This morning I was doing laundry, and she laid down next to the washer.
Miss banana face on her favorite chair.

Raintree- written three weeks ago...

It's been almost a month now that Nash has been spending half his day at his new school, Raintree. After not even a week of tears, he declared that he wasn't going to cry anymore. And every day since, when I pick him up her tells me "I didn't cry today!" And, I don't cry anymore either, though some days I miss him like crazy. It is such a neat little school and I'm so happy we found it! The school has kids from 3-6 years old, and the classes are divided by age. Nash is the youngest one in the school, having started the day before his 3rd birthday. His class now has 9 kids (2 are new in the last month) and they are called the Dinosaurs, led by their fearless teacher Mary Beth who Nash looooves. She calls him "Nashy" and sometimes I see her play with his hair a little, which makes me happy. He talks about her a lot. And she is wonderful. She is 2 years out of college, with special teaching certifications and one year previous experience. She looks like the kind of person a kid would like, and when addressing the class she calls them "friends" and says things like "friends, let's catch a bubble and close our eyes" which means they should pretend to catch a bubble in their mouth, which will make them quiet, so they can have rest time. The other classes are called the Butterflies, and the big kids are the G4s (like G force, I think.)
The school is based on this approach called Regiio Emilia. The school's website is here under the raintree. Here's a brief description, should you not feel like reading all about it. It's a project based school, so everything thing they study revolves around a theme/project and all the disciplines tie in. And this project can last from a month to all school year. The kids pick the project. So they talk about what they're into and decide what they want to learn about. Right now Nash's class is studying music. There are no toys in the room, there are only building materials, art supplies, lots of books, comfy places to hang out. His room has a full size keyboard color-coded to a key on the wall, to teach them to play twinkle-twinkle little star. Nash knows how to turn it off and on, change the volume and sounds, and he can play Twinkle Twinkle. There's also a CD player in the room, and a digital camera, all available for them to use any time they want. The lessons here are the CDs available, in different tempos and melodies and pitch, for different times of day. He is recognizing how music can create different environments and evoke different emotions. And they're capturing that on camera, and are making a "music video" for the other kids at the school to watch! He has learned Jaws da-na da-na da-na for suspense. And probably my favorite thing that he showed me after school is the rope dance! He was circling the lasso and throwing and drawing it in! And he learned the robot! And ballet and marching, among other things. They're also creating art to music - again, different emotions. They've had a dancer visit them and teach them some moves, they're reading books about music and dancing, they're showing their new moves to the rest of the school at a pep-rally. Everything they do is music music music.
Nash goes early, gets there at 8, even though class doesn't start until 9, because then he can see what Chef Scott made for breakfast and decide if he wants some, and play outside before class. Chef Scott makes wholesome organic food for breakfast and lunch that smells AWESOME! And Nash hardly eats a bite of it :) But maybe one day he will. Nash loves to wash his own dishes after lunch. And loves jumping on the tree stumps outside with his favorite friends, Gage, Sacci and Osmond. But he also talks about new kids everyday. Nash has always been pretty shy, but I've seen him at school playing outside, when he didn't know I was watching, and we've found a safe. happy place for him. What more could I ask for?
(Sorry this has taken so long to post.)

Update

Thanks, everyone, for concerns! The garbage truck actually worked!! Hoorah! It didn't work perrrrfectly, but I think we're really on the right track to good sleep. He is still coming into our room sometime in the 5 o'clock hour, but I'll take that any day over once an hour all night long! And the first night he went back to bed until his clock said 6, came in my room and was very proud of himself - my clock said 5:59 so I'm guessing he didn't go back to sleep, just waited until 6, like Mommy and Daddy asked him to. This morning he was up before 6, but so was Ray. Can't expect him to stay in bed if he doesn't want to, when he hears Daddy moving around. Even so, no garbage truck today because he was in our room before 6. He definitely understands what he's supposed to do, and what will happen if he does it.
SO, we'll see how this goes. I'm happy with the progress so far. Maybe he's just become an early riser. I hear that's just how some kids are wired. For now I am going to let happiness flow through me that he stays in bed for the night once he's tucked in, no more putting him to bed multiple times, and he's just about completely sleeping through the night! I repeat, HOORAH!

Why won't you sleep?

We are having some very long nights in this house. At 5 months old Nash decided he loved to sleep, and from then on he did not wake us up one single night. Until a few months ago. I can't remember exactly when it started, but for the last few months Nash is out of bed multiple times a night. The first time is around 1:30. He very quietly opens our door and doesn't say a word, but stands there until I get up and bring him back to bed. I hear him opening the door and sniffling a little, or whatever, and I don't talk to him because I don't want his "visits" to be "social". I just bring him back to his room and silently tuck him in and leave. And that's fine. But then he gets up again, and that's when the trouble usually starts. It could be as early as 4:45. And he comes into our room and when I get up to put him back again he protests. Either starting to cry or throwing himself on the floor. It gets hard then, because even if he's back in bed sometimes he'll kick off his blanket, and he won't go to sleep unless he's tucked in by mommy or daddy. My goal, of course, is to get him settled as quickly as possible so I can go back to sleep! Sometimes I can get him back in bed without much trouble, but then sometimes he's up again and in our room 10 minutes later, just as I've fallen back asleep. And this can go on and on. Of course we're worried, also, that his screeching and thumping protests will wake up Margot. I can't say that I've heard her wake up because of him, but she does seem pretty tired some mornings and I wonder if she's been up because of him too. 6:00 is really the time we've deemed OK for Nash to be out of his room. Before then, I am just pretty tired. I always start out patient, but that's hard to continue on those mornings I've been up 7 times with him in a night, and basically haven't slept since 4:45AM. Ray helps by either bringing him back sometimes or letting me sleep in on the weekends when it's been a bad night. But I am first to hear Nash when he comes in our room, and sometimes he says he wants his Mommy, so Ray is really getting up for no reason.
I probably didn't write about this sooner because it didn't really bother me for a long time. I guess I should have tried to fix it earlier, but I thought it was just a little phase he'd grow out of, and he was peacefully going back to sleep. But it's getting worse now and he is in school now and I don't want him to be tired. So time to try and get the kid back into a good sleep habit.
The first book I read about sleep trouble in 3 year olds suggested something that seems obvious that I hadn't thought of. Bribery. Why not? For the last 4 nights before Nash goes to sleep we tell him he needs to stay in bed all night until morning and not come and check on Mommy and Daddy because we're asleep. We're in our room and he's nice and safe and we'll see him in the morning, after a good night sleep, when it's light outside. AND if he sleeps all night long we'll be so proud of him! And he can have chicken nuggets from McDonalds. He seemed to understand and be very very excited. But it didn't work. So we've upped the ante and gotten him a huge awesome garbage truck he picked out. In NO WAY does this kid need another truck, but I'd buy him just about anything get my uninterrupted sleep back. And along with the truck we bought him a clock. Last night before bed we had lengthy discussions about what was to happen last night. And there was illustrations.
This did not work perfectly, but I think we're heading in the right direction! Nash slept until 4:45 this morning! And then when I tucked him back in he did not protest, and he went back to sleep until 5:50! At that point I didn't want to worry about those 10 little minutes. BUT, with all the emphasis we put on the 6 I am definitely disappointed that that little guy wasn't on the clock when he got out of bed after all. So send me happy thoughts of Nash (and myself) sleeping peacefully! And also send me any suggestions you've got!!
Though this is totally unrelated, we've done some work on Nash's room. He wants his walls orange. So far there's only one orange wall, but it's really cute.
And Ray made these totally awesome cubbies for him out of these heavy cardboard and wax tubes from Lowe's. Aren't they cool?
XXX