Daddy turned 30

Daddy's birthday was this past Monday, and he turned the big 3-0. I had a family party for him at the house on Sunday, and we were excited to host our first real gathering ever! Our last house was just too small to entertain people in!!

All of our local neices and our nephew came over, and the kids and the dads spent the majority of the day in the pool. We also had a cookout, and after a few hours of pool time, we celebrated with cake and ice cream.

I thank God every day for bringing my husband into my life. He is so gentle and kind. He works very hard to provide for us, and always puts his family first. I am so proud to be his wife and I look forward to celebrating many more birthdays with him!!

Ocala Trip

For Memorial Day weekend, we went up to Ocala and stayed for two nights. Daddy's brother owns a property up there, and he let us stay in their large trailer for the weekend. Daddy's brother, his wife, and their daughter met us up there and stayed at their property, which happens to be just one mile from where we stayed. Daddy's mom rode up with us as well, as she had never been there before. We took Maggie too. The trip was a little bittersweet for me because we took both dogs up there last year and they loved it. Daddy and I had talked about taking them back again over the next year, and we just never got around to it. It made me sad because I know how much fun Thomas would have had...man I miss him!! Anyway...

On Saturday night, we went over to Tim's brother's place for dinner. They eat seafood every year for Memorial weekend, so they had steamers (either raw clams or raw oysters..I can't remember), and they fried up some fish. I wouldn't go near the raw food, and Daddy ate one, but T gobbled up four of them. They were so gross looking, and he just scarfed them down without a care in the world. I tried to get a picture but he was done before I could locate my camera.

On Sunday, we went to a place called Silver Springs. It is kind of an amusement park, but a much smaller scale. We rode on a glass bottom boat, which allowed us to see what the springs look like from the inside. We did a jungle safari in a jeep and saw some animals. We watched a bird show. T went on his first amusement park ride without us-boats that go in a circle. He went on with his cousin and loved it! Then he saw the Merry-go-round and was running over to it shouting "Hooray." He rode on a horse with Daddy behind him. They also had a nice jungle gym for little ones to play in, and he liked that too. We were there for about half the day, then went to eat at a BBQ place.

Once we got back, T and Daddy rode on the quads and the tractor. Daddy's family came back over to hang out and we had a BBQ that night at the place where we were staying.

We had a fun Memorial weekend and are so thankful to all the men and women who died for us and for our freedom!

The letter D

This week we worked on the letter D. Here are some of the activities we did this week:

Letter D Dinosaur
D is for Doctor Do a Dot Art
Colored Dinosaur pictures
Dinosaur file folder color matching
Dramatic play with dinosaurs

We do lots of other educational things throughout the week too, but these things go directly with the letter D. This week we pained alot and used alot of Glitter Glue. We also do Tot Trays, which I will explain in a future post.

Tristan knows all of the main colors now and will correctly identify them by saying their name. He knows red, orange, yellow, blue, green, purple, white, black, and pink. He can also identify about 3/4 of the alphabet by sight, and has started singing his ABC's. Today he attempted to count to 20 for the first time. He made it all the way from 1-17, I was pretty impressed!

A funny thing: Tristan hates getting his teeth brushed. Last night Daddy was holding him and brushing and T was throwing his usual fit, but this time he actually yelled out "Please Help." Daddy and I laughed so hard!!

Books we are reading:
The Nativity: a Touch and Feel Usbourne book which he loves. He points at the book and says "Jesus."

ABC I like Me: a positive reinforcement book that goes through the whole Alphabet.."A-I am Awesome, B-I am Brave, etc

That's Not My Tractor: a touch and feel book about Tractors

Puppies: He must have this book memorized, because he was reading to himself today and said the correct things on the correct pages. For example: one page features a puppy stuck in a water pitcher and the puppy says "Help, I think I'm stuck in this pitcher." Today when T got to that page he said "Help, I stuck."

Does a Kangaroo Have a Mother Too?

And the ever-popular Dinosaur Roar!!!

Let the BBQ's begin!!

Last Saturday, we went to a BBQ at my friends house. T and her son E are one month apart and have known each other since they were 7 and 8 months old. T enjoys E, but he especially loves Ellie, another toddler who my friend babysits for. Ellie is also very fond of T, and the kids all get together and play at least twice a week.

On Sunday, I attended a surprise baby shower for one of the ladies in the mom's group which we belong to. Daddy watched T for me so I could spend a few hours with some of the girls. Later that day, some of T's cousins came over and they all swam in the pool, and then we had a BBQ at their house.

Since our weekend was so busy, T and I just stayed home Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoon, I had a meeting with the Personhood Now! team. Personhhod Now! is a youth led pro-life group whose goal is to collect enough signatures to be able to put the Personhood Amendment on the 2012 voting ballot. The Personhood Amendment would declare unborn children as persons and would ensure them the same rights and protections as people who are already born. They will have one year to collect 700,000 signatures in the state of Fl. Out of the five team members, only one lives in locally. The rest of the teens live in Colorado and Texas. They are here to kick off the project, network, and recruit/train other volunteers to keep this effort going for the next year. We had a great meeting and I am excited to be involved as a liason.

On Wednesday, we took our weekly trip to the library. We always play at the park right there and have snacks, and then go inside to do puzzles, color, and look at/check out books.

We stayed home again Thursday and Friday and just went swimming in our pool both days. We are loving having a pool!!!

This weekend we are going up to Ocala, about a two hour trip from here. Daddy's brother has a house up there, so we will be staying there and meeting some of his family that will also be up there for the weekend. We are having a BBQ Saturday night:)

Hope you all had a good week!!

The letter C

Back in Feb. we worked on the letter C. Since it has been so long, I can't remember much about it, so I will have to go from the picture:)

We made a caterpillar C using pompoms, we made a sprinkle letter C, and we also made a counting cupcake.

Because of the move and being so busy, we have gotten out of the habit on working on one letter per week. However, I am going back to doing that. I've been organizing our things and getting some supplies that we need, and we should be back on track next week.

T is talking!!!

I've been so busy I haven't even come on here to update about everything going on. We just purchased our first home and I will be blogging about that in a future post. I wanted to come on today and jot down the progress that T has made over the past month. As some of you know, I was becoming a bit concerned that T was not talking as much as other kids his age. I was seriously considering having his hearing tested, and thoughts of speech therapy had started to flood my brain. I have been praying for him, that the Lord would help him build his vocabulary. For the longest time, T would ramble on with these long sentences but I couldn't really understand any of what he was saying. However, within the last month, his vocabulary has grown and his articulation has improved by leaps and bounds, and I am so happy and relieved.

He has been saying some of the words in this list for a while now, but many just popped up recently). (and in the right context, like while pointing at the object) ball, rock, sun, moon, sky, cup, fla-flop (flower), baby, bye-bye, cheese, juice, nano (piano), gop (guitar) doggie, GiGi (a cartoon he watches), Bob (as in the tomato from veggietales) wop (yacht), all-da (all done), array (hooray), crying, boat, cop (helicopter), bubbles, tickle, whoa, oh my, oh no, hi, hello, eye, digall digall (he uses this word for bicycle and motorcycle, but he also uses this word when he sees a bird), wow, wawa (water),good, egg, mow (cat), star, and he can count from 3-6 (I have yet to hear him say 1 or 2). He has been saying baby for a while, but he would just walk around saying baby baby baby and wouldn't say it if he saw a baby (he would actually only do the sign for baby until about one month ago). He has also started verbally imitating me and others, another thing he never used to do. Yesterday was the first time that he linked two words together and I understood them: more cheese. He also says "set, go" and then takes off running.

He can also now identify and say the capital letters A, Y, and N,. I have not been working with him like I was because of the transitional way we are living right now. We are literally living out of boxes, and everything is everywhere. All of his craft supplies are at the garage of the old house, and I just want to get everything organized before we proceed. I am excited that we will be in our own home soon so that we can get back to work because T is interested in learning and he is picking things up quickly now!

Edited to add on 5/21/10: T's vocabulary now is incredible and he is talking in 2 and 3 word sentences very easily. I am hearing new words every single day, and he has gotten compliments from others on how well his articulation is.

Letter B

This past week led up to Valentine's Day on Sunday, so we did lots of activities involving hearts, as well as things that begin with the letter B.

Crafts: We made a caterpillar out of hearts, a pom pom heart, and did the sprinkle letter B (he remembered this from the previous week and knew what to do right away. He likes craft time and really enjoys making glue dots!

Activities: I bought 6 plastic tumbler cups at the Dollar Store (6 for $1.00) and four packs of conversation hearts (four for $1.00). T really enjoyed dumping the hearts in and out of the cups and also putting the hearts (and the cups) into muffin tins. I tried to get him to sort the hearts by color in the muffin tin, but he had his own sorting method in mind:) I printed a counting sheet and attempted to play a counting game where we placed the correct number of hearts onto the corresponding number, but T was having none of this either!! We also used the tumbler cups for pouring practice in the bathtub. He is good at pouring and can usually dump one cup of water into an empty cup without spilling too much!! Finally, we played a find the heart game where I dumped little foam hearts all over the carpet and T collected them and put them into a container. He loved this one and kept making sure daddy was watching and clapping for him every time he "found" a heart.

Favorite books of the week:

Good Night Gorilla-he got really into this book this week and especially liked the part where all the animals say goodnight to each other.

My Big Animal Book: He loves this book and just likes to sit and watch as I point to the animals and identify them. For a while he would point out specific animals when I asked, but lately he seems annoyed with this and just wants to hear me say them.

Dog Food: This ended up being his favorite book for a while, but I think he is getting tired of it. I can tell he is memorizing the order of his books though, because he anticipates certain parts of them. At the end of this book, we always say "SHHH" because the dogs are sleeping, and now he starts to say "SHHH" about 2 pages prior to the end.

God Made You Special: This is a Veggietales book that we have had ever since he was an infant, but he has gotten really into it lately. It's actually a long book for a little one, but he happily sits through it every time.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar: This is the first book I ever bought him, I was six months pregnant when I bought it. He loves this book and always gets excited when it gets to the food part.

I am so glad that T loves reading. It makes me so happy that he brings me book after book and sits there totally focused on it as I read to him. I pray he will always love to read!!