headbands

greta needed a headband at dinner to keep her hair out of her face (and her food). otto asked for one to keep the hair out of his face, so i obliged.

no piggies on the table

grandpa hansbauer likes to play a game called, "no piggies on the table". the kids think this is hilarious. after one extended stay at grandpa and grandma's, it took us about 3 months to convince the kids that this game was fun to play with grandpa, but that we don't play it anywhere else. poor otto had his chair pushed away from the table many a night because he kept sneaking his little toes onto the table.
anyway, here is proof of that little game. gross, i know. but that old grandpa....he's just one big kid with an extra big heart for these kids. so piggies or no piggies on the table, he's pretty great.

hold your head up

she's getting pretty good at that tummy time stuff.

seeing red

so our kids dress themselves. and on this particular day, they were going to the REDs game. clearly, they take supporting their home team very seriously. monochromatically, some might say. wow.....

natural reader

sound and letters have been greta's 'thing' for some time now. when she was little, she was constantly asking us what the sound and name of letters was. by the time she was 2 or so, she knew the names and sounds of every letter in the alphabet. she was able to memorize parts of books and repeat them easily. after she started school this year and started composing words with the Moveable Alphabet, she began to read. she was able to read 3-letter, phonetic words (cat, mud, tin, etc). we checked a set of early readers (BOB books) out of the library, and she could read them. however, she wasn't all that interested and would get frustrated easily. i mean, come on, she had just turned 3 and was READING. so we let it be. we knew she was getting the stimulation at school to encourage her skills, so we just let it be. this was tough for me, but i knew it was best not to push.
lately, we have noticed her reading words more and more. words in books, on signs, cereal boxes, everywhere. so when school let out this summer, i thought we'd check out those BOB books again and see what she thought this time. these books are very simple text, starting out with one or two words on a page.
so....we're at the library. i'm looking for the simple books when greta says, "hey! we have these books at my school!" and points to another set of books. also early readers, mostly phonetic, but definitely more advanced. she pulls them out and starts reading them. not sounding them out, not that halted, slow reading that beginning readers do. but READING THEM. flying through them. my jaw dropped.
so we checked them out. and she read all ten of them as soon as we got home. and it was like a gate was opened....and she (and we) realized she could read. and now she's reading everything. in the first video below she is reading a book from that set of books from the library. the second two videos, she is reading the book 'big dog little dog'. two things about the video....first, sorry for the HORRIBLE fuzziness of the video. and also, i left out the middle section of the book that she read. so if you're trying to follow the plot of the book, you might be a bit puzzled. :)
and tonight at bedtime she read a 'frog and toad' story. she still needs help with words but she has an amazing ability to remember words.

i know everyone thinks their own kid is the smartest, the cutest, etc. and i know i'm her mom, but as an educator i am also truly amazed by greta's skills. everybody has their something....i think this is hers.

three's a crowd

my mom took the day off today to accompany the kids and me to the zoo. i wasn't sure i could manage the outing on my own with all three kids, and boy was i right. the zoo is just so much....in and out of the stroller, holding kids up to see animals, snacks, etc. i am SO thankful my mom was able to go. and that our kids are such troopers. maybe i could take them to the zoo on my own, but i can't really wrap my mind around how that would go.
we got there right when they opened, which was great because it wasn't yet too crowded or too hot. fast forward 2 and a half hours later and we were all pretty toasty and ready to head home. but we got to see a ton of great animals. usually i avoid the children's zoo because it always gets so crowded, but we were able to get in there no problem.

selma had her first ride in the stroller, and let's just say she was less than thrilled. i guess she really just wanted to be pressed against my sweaty body in the baby bjorn.
all three kids went right down at naptime and all three slept for 3 hours!! and even grandma joan took a nap.

selma speaks

here are a few videos of selma talking. i think baby talk is amazing. and i like these two videos because in one she's pretty calm and serene and in the other one she's almost yelling, and starting to get all worked up.