Reading Star!!

We've been working with Amanda for quite awhile on reading, but it's never been a huge thing - we wanted her to come to it on her own, rather than forcing it down her throat. She has known her letters and the sounds they make for a long time, and she was starting to read simple things well before her fourth birthday. We also bought some Bob Books, which are great first readers, and would practice with them once in awhile. However, she would get very easily frustrated and we left it for awhile, figuring eventually it would come.

Several months ago, she got very interested in her Word Whammer. Over the past couple of months, we've been asked many times a day "How many letters does XXX have?", since she knows that if it has 3 letters, she can spell it in the Word Whammer. She started with the settings that help you spell the word, but now she does it completely on her own. And if she wants to spell something that doesn't fit in the Word Whammer, sometimes we will play along and sing the song for her..."The word, yellow, is what you see, you made that super-duper excellently!". (Oh yes, we have the whole schtick memorized.)

A few weeks ago, it was like a light bulb went on over her head and all of a sudden she is really reading! We revisited the Bob Books and she can read an entire book completely on her own! She also is reading everything she sets eyes on: road signs, newspaper headlines, ads... The frustrating thing is that we're now starting to realize how crazy the English language is. The poor kid remembers pretty much every rule we throw at her, but then the next word she tries to read will negate that rule. It must be so frustrating for her! But she is just so excited to be reading that it doesn't seem to bother her too much. Of course, once she gets to Kindergarten we'll probably find out we've been teaching it all wrong and she's messed up for life!!

I'm going to try to get a short video of her reading, because I think it would be something cool to have and look back on later...if I can get it filmed I'll post it!

Sharing a quiet moment reading with Dora, almost exactly two years ago

Lest We Forget

Doodle by Lee. The code for this doodle and other doodles you can use on your blog can be found at Doodles.

Remembering 2008

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Originally uploaded by JenJeff

Wet, Rainy.. and a day off... Sometimes we forget to thank those who gave their lives so that we can live the way that we do.

Amanda and I were able to head down to the local cenotaph and place a poppy onto a wreath. There was a pipe band and a marching band as well. The highlight of the day was the WWI cannon.

I think that the day is special to us as Amanda and Sam's great grandparents were both in WWII and their great grandad on the other side was also in the war. It was also a great chance to remember and honor them as well!

Enjoy the day off.. but remember why we have it.

Busy Weekend!

Phew, we've been busy this weekend! Every year it seems the Christmas rush gets earlier and earlier...well, I guess it's not technically a Christmas rush since it's not really Christmas-related stuff, but it feels like the busyness of the holidays moves up every year. If that makes any sense (probably not).

On Saturday morning Amanda had a birthday party to attend for one of her friends from her old daycare. I roped Jeff into taking her - it was at a local community centre so all he really had to do was supervise. She had a great time and was thrilled to see her daycare friends again...she talks a lot about how much she misses them. In the meantime, Sam and I decided to check out the Archbishop Carney craft fair - I mean to go every year but this is the first time I've managed to get there. I was pretty impressed! Admission is only $1 and there were over 100 vendors, all juried...a lot of the stuff was quite cute and very reasonably priced! I went with only $20 cash and had trouble figuring out where to spend it as I could have spent a lot more. There were a lot of cute kid things, homemade cards, and baking items. Definitely worth the $1 admission! Parking was a bit of a zoo but it was very well-organized and I did manage to get a spot right in the parking lot after about 10-minute wait. Worthwhile when carrying a 3-month old in a Baby Bjorn in the pouring rain!

Saturday evening we ordered Nando's takeout and Jeff and Amanda picked up the Tinker Bell movie for us to watch. Amanda was quite taken with it and it was pretty good for us, too. It was cute how they tied the story in with Peter Pan (not that I remember much about Peter Pan...it's been ages since I watched it). The best part was just having family time snuggling together on the couch. After the movie, we watched the music video that came on the DVD:

Amanda had a great time dancing around the room to this song...she is really good at capturing the mood of the music with her dancing. This song got some lovely princess-like twirls and a princess demeanour to match. :)

This morning Amanda had yet another birthday party to attend, this time for one of the boys at her preschool. It was at the pool and they did about 30 minutes of pool games before heading back to the party room for lunch, cake, and gifts. She had a lot of fun! She prefers to wear a bathing cap in the pool, since it keeps her bangs out of her eyes, so at least it's easy to find her white latex head bobbing around. I was the only parent who didn't go in the pool (a bit hard with Sam in my arms!) so I was the dedicated photo taker, which meant I didn't get any photos with my own camera. Sam decided he didn't want to miss any of the party and woke up as soon as we got there, so I definitely had my hands full with him for the duration.

Finally, tonight we headed out to Swiss Chalet for dinner with Jeff's parents and his aunt and uncle. Auntie Nora recently celebrated a big birthday, and since we weren't able to make it to her birthday party, this was another chance to get together. Plus, Jeff's parents were quite thrilled to introduce them to Sam and show off Amanda a bit! Mmmmm, festive specials all around. (And the best part is that we still have our Lindt truffles to enjoy later!)

Now we're gearing up for another busy week. Tuesday is a holiday, but I'm going to be going to the Circle Craft show, our annual kick-off to Christmas tradition, so Jeff will get to spend the day with Amanda. (Sam will again have to come with me...it would take me months to store up enough milk to leave him for an entire day, the way he eats!!).

A Really Boring Day

So, today was kind of a lousy day. Amanda has been fighting a cold and was home from preschool on Wednesday. I was pretty sure she'd be OK to go to school today, so I got myself up at 6:45 am as usual and got ready to go, then got her up at around 7:30. But while we were eating breakfast I realized she really wasn't well enough for school...she would have been fine but all the other parents would have been mad at me for letting her spread her germs around!

There was a slight panic as the other thing I was supposed to do this morning was take Sam to our Roots of Empathy classroom visit. ROE is a program that brings babies and parents into school classrooms for an entire year, to give kids a chance to see how babies develop and thereby help develop empathy for others. The program has been shown to decrease bullying in schools. Amanda was an ROE baby and we enjoyed it so much that when I realized Sam would be born over the summer (and therefore would be the perfect age for the program) I contacted the school district about volunteering again. We've been placed at a local middle school with a grade 6/7 class, and have only had one visit so far, during which Sam screamed (and I mean SCREAMED) the entire time. Oh well, at least it will make those kids think twice about having babies any time soon!

I purposely scheduled our visits for preschool mornings, since technically older siblings aren't supposed to come to ROE visits, but I figured I'd call and explain and see if I could set Amanda up with a colouring book off to the side. But when I got hold of the coordinator, she said that the class teacher wasn't in today, which means they're not supposed to hold the session! So we postponed until next week. So it all worked out OK, except that I'd gotten Sam all dressed up to go out for nothing! We did head out to the mall for awhile to run some errands, but other than that, it turned out to be a pretty lazy day. Part of the reason for this was that Sam slept terribly again last night - for a baby that's always done long stretches, these 2 hour "naps" at night aren't working for me!! Hopefully things will get back to normal soon or I might go crazy!

So there you go, a really boring recap of our day...

We have a very busy weekend planned - Amanda has birthday parties to attend on both Saturday and Sunday morning! Quite the social butterfly. We'll try to post some pictures.

And just for a dose of cuteness to counteract this boring post...here is a picture of Sam from a couple of days ago, on his way into the bath. He was so cute that I had to pull out the camera!