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April and Australia

May 082012

Caroline is busy being adorable. Here are some pictures from April 21, 2012, the day before she was two months old.

One of these days I’ll get a good picture of her gorgeous smile. It’s so adorable! I treasure her little coo’s and goo’s!

Paul learned about his birth country, Australia, this month. Here’s the giant Australia cookie we made at the beginning of the project.

Beyond making a giant cookie, we didn’t do much other than reading lots of picture books about Australia. Are we There Yet? by Alison Lester was a child’s perspective of a month-long road trip around Australia. Paul enjoyed learning about the various landmarks and it was fun to show him the family picture in the Victorian mountains and a picture of himself with me by The Twelve Apostles when he was about six months old.

A number of books were about the animals of Australia. Koala Lou by Mem Fox, Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan, Snap! by Marcia Vaughan, Possum Magic by Mem Fox, and My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch by Graeme Base. I wanted to do more with the learning about animals, but Paul did not have much interest beyond reading the picture books. We did watch a brief documentary about the Great Barrier Reef and then we enjoyed watching Finding Nemo and making a Finding Nemo game based on the Great Barrier Reef facts he remembered. (He is already forgetting these facts, but it was fun making the game anyway! He will remember what a “predator” is at least.)

I also tried to give him a very basic introduction to Aborigines and culture, but it didn’t go over so well. We liked Big Rain Coming by Katrina Germein, which had Aborigine style artwork. We looked at the boomerangs we purchased when we lived in Australia and we talked about how the art of dots and lines created symbols. He didn’t much care, so we’ll have to return to that sometime! And we read a very silly folktale called Whale’s Canoe (by Joanna Troughton) which is supposedly based on a Dreamtime tradition.

And then he summarized all he learned in this video.

(Yes, Caroline is crying in the background. Ryan was holding her, so it wasn’t like I was just abandoning her. But my, it sounds pretty bad watching the video and hearing her crying!!)

It was fun! He wants to move on to Asia now, although I must admit, I’m not sure which direction to go in first as “Asia” is a huge continent!

8 May 2012
Posted by Rebecca at 11:04 am
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A Child Grows, Audiovisual, Birth-6 months, Early Childhood, First Year, Home Learning, Motherhood, Movies, Photos, Playtime, Preschool Age

One Month Old

Mar 222012

All day long I’ve been close to tears: my baby is already one month old! I cannot believe how quickly that time passed by. I pick up Caroline and she is heavy (comparatively). Her tummy is chubby and her face is squishy. Today, I saw her eyes have tears for the first time when she cries. She is smiling more regularly at me and staying awake — happily — more frequently. Her going-home-from-the-hospital outfit is almost too snug for her. She’s almost no longer a newborn!

I just want to sit and cuddle her a long while. I can’t believe I’m losing the newborn baby stage so quickly! I miss her little crooked legs and her newborn innocence already.

Spring has sprung this week in Chicagoland. It’s been in the 70s and 80s all week, so Paul, Caroline, and I have tried to get out a little bit each day to enjoy it! Here Paul is telling about the city he drew on the driveway.

I know this is new Mommy emotion, but I’m choked up as I type this, thinking about how big my little girl already is getting. On to month two for her, despite my desire to cling to the newly newborn baby!

This weekend Grandma Peggy and Papa Paul and more family are coming to celebrate Caroline’s recieving a name and a blessing in church on Sunday. We’re so grateful that Daddy honors the priesthood and can give her that special blessing.

22 March 2012
Posted by Rebecca at 9:08 pm
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The Earth Game

Mar 192012

Paul and I have not done much “school” since I posted at the beginning of February about our “school at home” progress. Obviously, this was due to the fact that I was in the uncomfortable last stages of pregnancy and then actually having a baby and taking care of a newborn.

Never the less, we have read through a book about the Earth from a fabulous Early Bird Early Learners series by Lerner Publications (this particular book). It’s written for slightly older kids, but by reading together, one chapter at a time, Paul and I enjoyed learning how the Earth’s crust moves, what volcanoes and earthquakes are, and what all of that means for us.

Since neither of us have been in the mood for worksheets lately, I was trying to think of a way to make remembering and reviewing these details fun. We weren’t interested in sitting in the school room, but Paul always wants to play board games with me!

Voila! We turned Earth’s Crust into a game!

I found a mostly blank game board online. Paul found pictures in the book that he liked and I found similar ones online as well as a few clip art images to illustrate the game board. Then we added squares to correlate with the images: each of these squares gives or takes away an earth “token.” So, landing on a volcanic eruption may cost you two tokens, and the squares before and after it are labeled “volcanic ash” and may cost you one token. A “sleeping volcano” gets you a token.

And then we made questions, Paul reading me sentences he liked from the book and me rewording them as a question or as a true/false sentence. When we land on a blank space on the board, we have to answer a question. Right answers get us more tokens. Whoever has the most tokens when we’re done playing the game wins!

Paul and I have played this every day for two weeks now. He loves it! For the first days, he’d have to read the book to find the answer; sometimes I had to help him by finding the page or picture that correlated to the question. But now he knows the answers without having to look for them. How many four-year-olds care about magma (the name of a new imaginary friend, apparently) and lava and the plates of the Earth’s crust, which are moving? It’s quite fun to see him get excited about these things.

Caroline is usually on my team. She usually sleeps through our turn. Sometimes Paul wants her to play by herself. She sleeps through that, too, and Paul takes her turn. He loves to include her, though.

All pictures on this post taken March 8, 2012. Caroline, age 2 weeks, 1 day old.

19 March 2012
Posted by Rebecca at 6:00 am
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An Early Spring

Mar 182012

It has been an incredibly mild winter here in Chicagoland. Here it is, the middle of March, and it’s been in the 70s and 80s. Paul has enjoyed playing outside this week.

Three-week old Caroline has been outside with us too, of course. I’m a bit concerned about her being out in the sun, so we’ve been going out in the later afternoon. She usually stays under wraps in her carrier in the shade.

She is wearing a boyish outfit from Paul’s infancy. Most of Caroline’s newborn clothes are pink outfits, long sleeved and footed. I thought it would be cold this time of year! Silly me. So when it’s warm, out come the short-sleeved blue outfits. Again, who’d have thought that it would be so warm already?! Not that I’m complaining.

Ryan and Paul were sick with colds this week. Paul was still in good spirits for the most part, although he did have a day or two of temper tantrums and unpleasantness. Ryan was out with a flu-like cold for two days of not feeling well. So I tried to keep everyone else away from Caroline, which resulted in me be exhausted. I felt like I was in a daze all week.

And then, of course, I got sick too. So now I feel pretty icky. Caroline and I stayed home from church this morning and took naps.

Better this week than next, however! This week, Grandma Peggy and Papa Paul are coming. Next Sunday, Caroline will receive a name and a blessing during our Sacrament meeting! What a special day it will be.

I think it looks like she is smiling in the second picture here. It is said that babies don’t smile with meaning until six weeks or older. But, as happened when Paul was newborn, I am certain she has smiled at me because I am me. She sees me and smiles. It feels great to be recognized. She is so beautiful!

All pictures on this post taken March 14, 2012.

18 March 2012
Posted by Rebecca at 4:53 pm
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A Child Grows, Birth-6 months, Early Childhood, First Month, First Year, Movies, Photos, Playtime, Preschool Age

Caroline’s First Week

Mar 042012

My Brother and Me

Daddy and Daughter!

First Bath

Pretty as a Princess

Caroline has proven to be a very eager eater and a voracious pooper. Way to go, new baby!

She still has to learn that night time is for sleeping four hours at a time, while day time should be when we wake up every hour or two. But, she’s only a week and a half old, so I suppose I should give her a little longer to figure that out. *Yawn*

4 March 2012
Posted by Rebecca at 1:49 pm
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A Child Grows, Birth-6 months, Early Childhood, First days, First Month, First Year, Firsts, Movies, Photos, Playtime, Preschool Age

Christmas Activities

Jan 102012

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to update this page with family pictures in the same month in which the activities took place, starting with Christmas 2011. I especially want to be better since I posted 50+ pictures a month of newborn Paul and I want Caroline to feel she’s just as special a newborn.

I intended to post these pictures the last week of December. And yet, here I am well in to the new year, waiting for Paul to go to preschool to do so.

At any rate, Christmas was wonderful this year. I baked cookies and fudge to enjoy for a month and to give away to neighbors. Paul was incredibly excited to countdown until Christmas and he enjoyed the activities we did.

Before Christmas, I was able to attend Paul’s preschool holiday party. I haven’t attended any of his parties before so it was fun to be there to help and take pictures, etc. This was a rather chaotic party; I wonder if preschool is always like this? At any rate, they had some carnival games, a few craft projects, and then a gym floor covered in bath sponges that were called “snowballs.” They were encouraged to have a snowball fight. Put 20 kids aged 3 and 4 in a room and tell them to have a snowball fight? Um… Paul reacted much as I would have. He threw a “snowball,” then watched people for a while. Then threw another. It was a bit intense.

Here are some of the best pictures of my little guy. The full album of the preschool is on flickr with a guest pass.

Reindeer bowling

He's proud he knocked some bowling pins down.

We are low-key about presents (I do not want to raise a spoiled or greedy child who says “I want that!” for every toy he sees). I gave him a (plastic) kids microscope, books (which is what he asked for), and an inflatable globe, among some other smaller things. Grandpa Sorenson gave us a book of silly stories that he wrote and Grandma gave him a Thomas the Tank Engine puzzle. Grandma Peggy sent Trio blocks, which along with our Legos, have given me lots of time as Paul slips downstairs to create yet something else. (YES!)

We enjoyed the true spirit of Christmas. At the beginning of the month, he loved selecting some clothes for a “poor boy” from the library’s giving tree and talked for days about the boy who was too poor to get his own clothes. (He was particularly excited because the boy was FOUR just like he is so he knew just what the boy would like.) He loved selecting gifts for his cousins (we do a family gift rotation among my siblings). He loved the excitement of wrapped presents and waiting for them. I don’t think he was tempted to open them, he just loved shaking them and counting them and wondering. He was fascinated by the mystery of magical Santa (although *cough* the reindeer forgot to eat the reindeer food that Paul left on the front step. How’d I know he’d check that FIRST?! even before looking under the tree?).

And most importantly, Christmas was, for our family, about the true meaning of the season, the birth of our Savior. I love having Christmas on Sunday, because then church reinforced the real meaning of the season. I wish we had services every Christmas morning, but of course, that’s not how it works.

The not-so-materialistic goals we have worked well this year: we got to church at 10:30 and someone asked him what he got for Christmas.

“Ugh….I forgot.” he responded. (But he did remember to say that the reindeer forgot to eat the reindeer food he left for them…). So, at any rate, I know Christmas for Paul was not about the presents. Mission accomplished!

We also got to spend the afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa and Paul’s Sorenson cousins. It was lots of fun to watch the kids playing, and it was great to gather with family on a special day.

After Church Christmas Day

31 weeks pregnant

Cousins

Grandpa Reading The Grinch

Merry Christmas!

10 January 2012
Posted by Rebecca at 12:06 pm
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Thanksgiving, 2011

Dec 062011

I’m now two weeks late with this. And I feel we’re well in to the Christmas season. But here are some pictures of the cousins having a blast swimming with Grandma on Thanksgiving. Somehow, I didn’t get a picture of the fabulous feast that my Mom created! We visited pretty much all day and Paul loved having so much time with his cousins, Daniela and Jessica (and baby Noah).

Browse six pictures (larger) at Flikr with a guest pass here. To see all the photos we have online, be my friend on flickr (for free). My email on flickr is rebecca[at]reid-family[dot]org.

6 December 2011
Posted by Rebecca at 3:57 pm
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Paul’s Fourth Birthday

Oct 252011

Paul has been playing “birthday” with imaginary friends for months. He will stir up a bunch of toys in a bowl with a spoon to make a “cake,” then he’ll spread out a blanket, wrap a toy in another blanket (to be the present), and then invite me to celebrate with him. His imaginary friends regularly turned two or maybe 10, and I have had dozens of birthdays since my last special day in January.

So needless to say, I was rather excited to help him celebrate his real special day. Although we don’t plan on having a friends birthday party every year, this was definitely a year to plan something fun.

I was told that a theme is not necessary, but I chose one anyway. Paul loves the concept of Super Why!, who is a superhero for preschoolers because he can read. Besides, Paul has learned how to read, so playing on the theme of reading, alphabet, and phonics was just what he liked. My games were rather loosely based on the show — but it didn’t really matter, because Paul went around for days telling everyone he was Super Paul because he knew how to read. That was the idea in my mind.

A few fun things about planning a party with a kid who is really excited: As I began making lists, he was jumping around the room.

“Can we play Duck Duck Goose?! Don’t forget we need decorations! I need a party hat!”

(He insisted on the party hat. He wore it for about 10 seconds and then told me he didn’t want a party hat. Sigh.)

Below, I have a video that has collected still shots from the birthday party, plus us singing to him as well as still shots from the rest of the birthday party. If you’d rather, you can browse the Flickr collection of photos here.