New words

Lucas has been talking so much lately, which is awesome!! He was such a late talker, but I think he has finally caught up with where he should be. And he has been adding some entertaining new words to his vocabulary:
fantastic
abstract
perfect
deserve
special
treat
And he uses them all properly, in context. The last three are often used together. As in 'I deserve a special treat.' I love it!! And it's so hard to argue with. He's such a sweet, well behaved boy- he usually does deserve a special treat :)

And little tiny Gwendolyn talks an amazing amount already! She says:
Mama (her first word!)
Daddy
Mel (Lucas's nickname - tho Lucas insists she can say his real name, too)
Heide (aunt)
Dan (uncle)
Rod (our neighbor)
hi
bye
cat
dog
monkey
bowl
bottle
'a' (yup, the letter)
book
baby

I know she says more than that, but it's all that I can think of for now :) These are all words that she uses consistently and seems to attach the right meaning to. It's all sorts of awesome that she can say so much already! It amazes me that I have an 11 month old walking, talking girl :)

A petting zoo

The library had a petting zoo for the last week of story time. The kids got to pet all sorts of fun animals. Gwendolyn was so excited! She kept saying 'dog! dog!' in this tiny squeaky little voice. She thought that all of the animals were dogs, and that made her so happy! Lucas had to be gently coaxed into petting the animals, but he still enjoyed. I think he just likes animals that are smaller than he is. Rabbit? good. Ferret? good. Llama? not as much. Gwendolyn LOVED the llama! Or 'dog!' as she insisted :) She really liked the small pig, too. She called it a 'baby dog!' Oh, she is adorable!
Lucas loves doing the 'sand castle' puzzle at the library. And Tim loves doing it with him :)

Clothespins

Gwendolyn discovering the clothespins that Tim left clipped to her swing :) She loved them!

A boy on a table

Lucas says his art table is his new bed. I've been trying to convince him to sleep on it :) He just pretends.
Lucas and I were laying around and Gwendolyn came over to cuddle me. She stayed for a bit and moved on to pet Lucas. She's such a lovely little girl :)

Lucas photographs

::his finger. This is what a vast majority of his pictures look like :)


::this is my absolute favorite - a picture of my foot on the sidewalk.

Lucas has a renewed interest in taking pictures - woohoo!! He still doesn't really get the concept of aiming and taking a picture of something. He mostly walks around clicking the shutter button repeatedly. But it makes him oh so happy!

Sleep

It is 3:46 a.m. And I'm awake. Why? Because I tried to go to bed at a reasonable hour. How silly of me.. I usually stay up late. And it works out just fine. But tonight, I fell asleep when I put Lucas to bed at 9. I woke up at midnight to tend to Gwendolyn. And couldn't fall back asleep.. I was so excited, thinking I would get a good long night's sleep. How silly of me. The kids will be up for the day in about two hours. I'm debating if I should even try to go back to sleep or just wait up for them. And the icing on the cake? We ate pizza for dinner. Eesh. I can't eat real food like pizza without getting sick.. I'm on a bunny food only diet these days. So I'm sick and awake.
I don't think I'll be going back to sleep
But at least I'll get to see the sunrise.
And greet my tiny ones in the morning, fully awake. :)

A morning at the park

::Gwendolyn peering through the bars at me :)::Lucas just jumped off the platform behind him. The one with the red rope. Yes, it is much taller than he is. He loved it!!::Lucas running off to jump off the platform again :) My little adventurer.::Gwendolyn exploring::Lucas watching Gwendolyn explore.::She found something interesting. ::And she drew a crowd. The kids have so much fun playing together. Especially with Daddy!::Gwendolyn is actually glaring at me because I told her she couldn't eat the garbage off the ground.. Oh, but she's still adorable.::Gwendolyn wandered off down a sidewalk. Lucas was quick to follow and take the lead. The kids led us on a nice walk :) Gwendolyn walked for two entire blocks by herself before she got tired.

A matched pair

Both kids in their pajamas. Waiting for the garbage man. On a cushion. They are such a sweet matched pair!

Random moments

::Gwendolyn running around at the library with Lucas and a friend of theirs. The boys were quicker than the camera, she wasn't.
::random clothespins on Gwendolyn's swing waiting for her to come and take them off.
::random clothespins on the clothesline waiting for Lucas to find them.
::Lucas. On his bike. In the garden. He really likes the brussel sprouts...

Organization

We have been slowly accumulating more toys and such for Tot School time. It somehow failed to occur to me that I would need a place to put it all. *ahem* The stuff may be overtaking the house... Until tonight I was convinced that it just needed to be organized a little bit better. I tried to organize it. The piles laughed at me. Maybe I need a bigger bookcase. Or an extra room... For now, our Tot School stuff takes up the kids bookcase - with a big milk crate on top, a three drawer rolling cabinet, and two big bags hanging on our coat hooks. Messy? yes. Cluttered? yes. Ah, but the kids sure do have fun and learn a lot. Worth it? Absolutely!!

Sleeping babies

We went out grocery shopping tonight after dinner. Because I *needed* canned peas. (I have the oddest pregnancy cravings..) And both kids fell asleep in the car on the way home. Bliss. Tim and I carried them in when we got home and they stayed asleep. It doesn't get much better than that!! It's 7:30 now and they are tucked into bed, soundly asleep. I hope they realize that this is bedtime and not naptime. :) Sometimes we tend to confuse the two around here...
Yesterday we watched a Baby Einstein movie and saw a really cool toy in it. It was a set of wooden stacking rings. And each ring had a small hole in the bottom and a little nub on the top, so that they can stack together, but there's no big long wood rod. We have a set of wooden stacking rings but they come with a big long pokey rod. And I always think that Lucas is going to seriously injure himself when he runs around with it (yes, I may be slightly paranoid). I was planning to look up the toy on the Baby Einstein website tonight to see where we could order it from. We went to the thrift store this morning and found a set of stacking rings just like the one in the video!! For a dollar! I'm thrilled! Both of the kids have loved playing with it today :)

A broom abandoned

Gwendolyn was helping me sweep the living room. Until she saw Lucas get out a hammer.

Random pictures

Tot School

Lucas is 33 months. Gwendolyn is 11 months.

(We had a pretty slow Tot School week. There was lots going on, so we didn't have much time for sitting down and learning - it was mostly Life School. We went berry picking one day, had a surprise visit from family another day, and went on a day trip/had a doctor's appointment the next day. It was a great, fun-filled week!)

::Games we play
jar bowling - Lucas stands the jars up in a line and throws a ball at them. With a lot of enthusiasm :)

cap jump- We line up the caps from Gwendolyn's bottles in random patterns and jump over them. Kind of like hopscotch with caps :)

ball in a jar - need I say more??


::New toys
a felt board with some random felt pieces for it. So far, Lucas will take the pieces off, put them in a neat stack, then ask me to put them all back on. Gwendolyn pulled pieces off and chewed on them. They both seem to like it.

:: Fine motor skills
Gwendolyn is taking blocks off of her stacking train. And taking the train apart. She keeps trying to put the blocks back on, but can't quite get them on yet. But it's still good practice :)

Lucas is still loving his nuts and bolts set. He plays with it just about every day. We got him a toy screw driver to use with the bolts. He LOVES it!! He is really starting to get the concept of turning to the left to take things off and to the right to put them back on. He rarely turns things in the wrong direction any more. He's still working on holding the nut while he turns the bolt, though.


:: Fun with pasta
Lucas is filling up a recycled sugar container with penne pasta. (He's sitting in his highchair rather than on the living room floor so that Gwendolyn can't reach and lick every piece of pasta)
I set up an activity for both kids on the living room floor with just a few pieces of pasta. Gwendolyn took an interest as soon as I set it up :) I barely got a picture before she crawled over to investigate. Mostly, both kids liked eating the uncooked pasta. But there was a little bit of putting the pasta into the straw holes of the cups from Lucas. And Gwendolyn liked dumping her open top cup on the floor and refilling it one piece at a time. After she licked each piece.


:: Life skills
Lucas has been practicing buckling and unbuckling his new car belt. And trying to put it on himself. He's getting so good at it! Gwendolyn is a pro at unbuckling the belt and taking it off of Lucas whenever he's not looking :) Right after I took this picture, she snuck up on him and tried to play with the belt.


::Random play
we have an entire bucket full of bracelets that Lucas has made. Both kids love dumping it out and looking at the bracelets and wearing them. This activity helps us work on color recognition (what color is this bead?) and counting (how many bracelets do we have?) and practical life skills (let's put all of the bracelets back in the bucket because we're done playing).


::ABCs
Lucas colored Hh with a horse and house. And Ii with an igloo. We cut out the letters once they were finished and glued them to a piece of paper. And hung them up to look at. We talked about these letters all week and pointed them out whenever we saw them.
we also played the Starfall game on the computer often. It has become a frequent request of Lucas's. Gwendolyn even sat in for a few letters earlier today.

::Spanish
we checked another Spanish book out from the library(I can't remember what it is right now..) and read it many times. And worked on our Spanish word for the week (book/el libro).