Tot School – Letter A

For a few months now I have been looking into starting some kind of very relaxed and easy home school preschool activities for Liam and I to do. Although we do puzzles and read books the large majority of the day I wanted activities for us to sit down and do that will help him learn letters, numbers, shapes, colors, etc. After weeks of searching the internet every night after he went to bed I finally fell upon a program that I fell in love with, it was exactly what I had been searching for. The best part is that all of the printables are FREE!! Score! If you have a little one that you are interested in starting something like this with you have got to check out 1+1+1=1

  

Last week we worked on the letter Aa, the color red, object – apple, and the shape of a circle. I saved all of the printables to my computer and printed out the ones that I thought Liam would enjoy the most, one per day. Next week I plan to try a few different ones that I didn’t last week just because he did enjoy it so much I think that we could do a little bit more than I had anticipated. What I love is how they stress that each child is differant (and actually each day is different); where as one kid may sit and do a project for a half our, another may sit and do it for 3 minutes and that is okay. It is all about focused 1:1 time to develop early learning skills through “play”.

Every day when he would finish his project we would hang it on the fridge and almost every time he would walk through the kitchen he would point and either say “A” or “Apple”. It is amazing how fast they pick up on things. He also learned to draw a really great circle :-)

In addition to the printables we also came up with a fun apple game of putting fake apples that i have on my dining room table in a cupcake tin. He loved lining them up in their. (Wish i had a picture).

Our lives lately, courtesy of phone pictures

Alex took a random weekday off last week (love those) and we took Liam to Barnes and Noble to look at some books and play with the trains. He must have enjoyed it because he kept his cute hat on the entire time which does not happen.

One of our local orchards harvested some of their apples last week and we got some to enjoy. Liam LOVES tart apples, the more sour the better to him!

   

Playing the “drums” … gotta love the mass mess that can be made in 2 seconds with a toddler.  BUT having a toddler that for the most part listens when you say “ok now lets put everything back” totally rocks!

 

Last week Liam painted as an art project. He is so weird about getting his hands dirty so i knew traditional finger painting was not going to happen so i gave him a brush with his finger paints and he went to town. He absolutely LOVED it, i have never seen him more focused on something. We hung his canvas on the wall and he points to it so proudly multiple times per day. We will definitely be painting a lot more!

 

My nephew, Evan, is staying with my Mom this week while my sister and her husband are on a little vacation and Liam has had a blast hanging out with him.

On Friday they washed my Moms car together and then their bikes.

Ok….make sure you are sitting down for this one…my kid …he ate pizza! and he said “mmmmmmm” major progress!!!!

Our double stroller came yesterday and Liam was very anxious to try it out (literally hitting the box all day for me to open in so he could see it). Once Alex got home we got it all set up and Liam climbed in faster than we could put him in. He even cried when we took him out so needless to say he loved it. 

and today we started to welcome Irene….we are boarding ourselves (not literally) inside the house and watching movies in our pj’s all day tomorrow!

 

35/35

35 weeks down 35 (hopefully less) days to go!

 

Total Weight Gain/Loss: right around 20 pounds

Maternity Clothes: yes and and i have outgrown some that are not too short, that is just wrong!

Gender: it’s a girl! Lucy Anne

Movement: she is still flipping around between breech and head down….. oy

Sleep: still not great, it is just so hard to get in a position that makes is easy to breath and rolling over is just HARD!

What I miss: being about to move like a normal person LOL stand up, roll over, ect without the need of a crane … I am getting so excited to shop for fall clothes!

Cravings: yogurt and granola again this week and still cereal

Best Moment this week: hitting my 35 / 35 mark…she will be here soon!!! thank goodness

(almost) 34 weeks

(will update with picture tomorrow)

Total Weight Gain/Loss: just under 20 pounds …i feel like i got huge this week! Alex had definitely made it clear he agrees LOL

Maternity Clothes: yes and even some of them are getting short

Gender: it’s a girl! Lucy Anne

Movement: she is a flipping machine! two weekends ago she was breech, that tuesday at an ultrasound she was head down, the next tuesday (this past) at my doctors appointment she was breech again, and now today I felt her feet sliding on my ribs/side all day so I assume she is head down again….. little lady needs to stay put in the head down position!

Sleep: yeah, i’d rather just not talk about it

What I miss: being about to move like a normal person LOL stand up, roll over, ect without the need of a crane

Cravings: cleaning LOL (major nesting going on at our house), yogurt and granola (vanilla, almond, and coconut…amazing)…i’ve eaten a lot of it this week!

Best Moment this week: ordering Lucy’s baby book, i LOVE it!! (i ended up getting one for Liam too, yes i am going to make him a baby book at the age of 2 LOL but i just loved it too much not to get him one too). I will post about the books once I get them!

Picture dump and then some

My boys playing football, Liam would much rather play quarterback than catch the ball.

Score!

 

Summer time and the livings  easy…..

 

Country life!

 

My big boy!

 

The best thing ever!!

 

Flying high!

 

In May Liam got a swing set from Alex’s parents but because our backyard isn’t completely level we have yet to put it up because it needs to be leveled. Alex’s Uncle is helping us out because he has lots of big fun machinery which provides great entertainment for a toddler boy! We are also digging out our front step area to put in a new step and a sidewalk. Liam was all about helping the guys out the other night. And yes, our outside basically looks like we could be filming Renovation Realities or some other DIY/HGTV show.

On Friday night we went to the St. Judes bazaar which has always been the end of the summer event in Mountaintop. It was nice to go for the first time in almost four years and have some yummy food! Liam got to play the lippie pop tree game and loved his dum dum.

 

This afternoon Alex, his Dad, Liam and I  headed down to Bloomsburg for a car show. Liam was so good and well behaved! He LOVED looking at the cars and the “exhaust rap” (in quotes because i just asked Alex as i am writing this what that thing was called when the cars where being really loud. 

Since Lucy is due just a few weeks before Liam’s birthday I have been in full on party planning mode! I would like to get done with as much as possible before she is born so that all of the decoration and such are taken care of. What is his theme you may last….. Thomas, of course!

Cheeeeese

 

32 weeks 2 days

Total Weight Gain/Loss: around 15 pounds

Maternity Clothes: yes, only a few really long non-maternity shirts still fit

Gender: it’s a girl! Lucy Anne

Movement: oh my goodness YES, she is a nut! She loves to flip around too and this weekend she was breech and I really though she was going to kick her way straight through, it was beyond painful to say the least! So happy that on Sunday night she flipped back around to head down with her feet on the right side.

Sleep: yeah, i’d rather just not talk about it

What I miss: belly and back sleeping!

Cravings: cereal and chocolate peanut butter ice cream

Best Moment this week: I had my 4 week follow up visit with my high risk doctor and everything looked great! Lucy is measuring right on track and is about 4 pounds right now. The tech also said that he thought he saw some hair on her head?!? This will be a whole new revelation if we have a child with hair before the age of one.

Randomness

I really could have linked up with the What I am Loving Wednesday bunch because that is pretty much exactly what this post is going to be! So here are the things i am currently loving….

Scentsy

In all reality I should probably become a sales rep for Scentsy because i just LOVE their products and rave about them to anyone that will listen. A few months ago I saw that their month of July warmer was this adorable cupcake and hoped that I would some how be able to get it. I was so excited when Alex told me to go ahead and buy last week (he loves Scentsy as much as I do). It arrived yesterday and it is just as adorable in person! Next up, maybe for Christmas, i’d love a plug-in warmer and a Scentsy buddy for each of the kiddos rooms.

Lucy’s Room

I cannot wait to show you all Lucy’s room! I am just loving it! I am not into “themes” but if I had to describe her room it would be vintage chic and it is beautiful (it could also be called “thank goodness for pinterest nursery” because that is where so much inspiration came from! I am starting a handmade chenille blanket for her room and can’t wait to see the final product, it is going to be the perfect blanket for her room.

speaking of …. Pinterest

I am sure most of you have heard of pinterest by now and if you have not just close this window and open up pinterest and go…. (see you in a few weeks because it is addicting). I have ALWAYS been one to save ideas on my computer and “star” many, many,  many posts in my google reader with ideas. Well, pinterest is a website that allows you to “pin” aka store all of you ideas and inspirations with the original links to the sites where they came from; which is awesome for recipes and tutorials!

Here are some of my favorite pins from this week…. all fall related

Outfits for fall, I am so excited/ready to be in real clothes again!

I am totally making this for our door for football season!

I am loving these planters with pumpkins for our porch this fall.

 

Doesn’t this salad look awesome?! Pears, cranberries, feta, bacon and chicken …yumm!

Polkadot Posies

Seriously, I have no words to describe how awesome this shop is!! I was telling my Mom that the owner of the shop probably thinks I am a nut because of how many times I have praised her shop and work via conversations on twitter but honestly it is amazing! Obviously when I was pregnant with Liam I was still working and our income was double what it is today so needless to say we had a lot of money to spend on frivolous things for him. With Lucy it is based much more on need than everything we’d want. I knew that my little girl NEEDED bows, BIG bows and lots of them but everything I was finding on etsy was at least $8 each so i held off. I made her a ton of flower clips but just could not get the boutique bow style down enough that i was happy with. A few weeks ago a fellow blogger linked to the Polkadot Posies shop stating that all the bows were under $3, i was so there!!! I got my order three days later (and it came all the way from Texas) and oh my goodness I could not believe the quality of these bows! They are amazing! Lucy now has almost every solid color bow, a big Christmas bow, and a few corkers (which may just be my favorite that I purchased). So if anyone is in the market for bows you much check out this shop! I cannot say enough about it!

Liam’s Age and Stage

I am just loving the age Liam is at and all the fun things he is doing everyday, we have so much fun together and he is just constantly cracking us up with the stuff he comes up with. He loves to play baseball by getting his ball and bat, pretending to hit the ball by throwing it, then drops his bat and runs and then slides….oh and we didn’t teach him this…so it must be genetic to be wired to play baseball! He has to gather up all of his cars before taking a nap, they don’t leave him sight. He is starting to repeat things right after we say them which is so cute but we quickly learned we have to be extra careful.

 

Visits

The Saturday before last my brother graduated from Ball State with his masters and moved a few days later to North Carolina where he will be a doctoral student at East Carolina State. After my parents helped move him in he came back to PA with them for a visit. We went from seeing him almost every other weekend when we lived in Indy to not seeing him since March so we were all super excited for him trip this week. Liam has just been over the moon to have Uncle Matt home. Pop, Liam and Uncle Matt all “plugged in” haha gotta love living in 2011.

Home Stretch

31 weeks….hopefully only 8ish more to go….. yeah the white flag has been thrown and if i could wake up tomorrow and make in the end of September I totally would. I will say that I am super excited that I passed my 1-hour glucose test with flying colors this time (i failed with Liam and had to do the 3-hour test). I totally owe it all to my Mom for being my walking buddy!! I have been 10 times more active this pregnancy than with Liam!

Yesterday I actually googled “can an overactive baby break your water” because I was that concerned that Lucy was going to kick her way through. Holy cow, i thought Liam was active…I think Lucy may give Liam a run for his money once she is here. I have a feeling there will MANY games of tag in our house :-)