I think it looks pretty cool! We may do new pictures every year or so because I think bigger canvases would look good. I actually prefer the more abstract artwork, but Hannah really wanted to paint a 'picture'. Maybe next time I can get her to do something with less structure.
I got a great idea from my friend Renee. I've been wanting some artwork for our living room for a long time, and I'd thought about buying a huge canvas for Hannah to paint. Renee's artwork inspired me to do something a little bit different. I bought three small canvases and three colors of paint and let each kid paint a picture. They are currently drying, but when I figure out how to mount them I'll be posting a pic of the wall.
Clean baby...
PAINTY baby!!
By the way, I don't recommend this sort of painting with a 10 month old baby if you are the only adult at home!!
Here are a couple of pictures of the kids earlier in the day
I was so impressed with this picture that Hannah just drew, that I scanned it and blogged it! I'm not even sure where the inspiration for this surfer pic came from... I guess when you're an artist these things just happen!!
Elijah got his head shaved for the summer. He HATES having it cut, so I decided to do it extra short so it would last a few months. Here's what he had to say about it.
"I have no hair! I not have a hair cut, I have a NO HAIR cut!!"
His noggin looks even bigger than usual...
I got up from the computer to get something for Hannah, and this is where I found Leah!! I guess I'll have to watch her a bit more closely now...
This is what happend the other night when I was getting Leah's bath ready.
Leah is ten months old today!! Wow. Her latest trick is getting into EVERYTHING.
Here she is after she pulled everything in her reach off of the hearth, including the 'baby proofing' padding along the edge.
I woke up this morning and decided I needed to get my hair cut (all of them). I was tired of the way it looked, tired of Leah yanking on it, tired of putting it up for my yoga class... you get the picture! I'm very happy with it :) I may go get it highlighted in a few weeks, or I may just see what the sun does to it this summer.
Self Direction - Hannah's love of art -- cutting and constructing things is very healthy for her fine motor skills and creativity. The time she spends doing art projects will need to be limited her kindergarten year. She will need to do a lot of math and language assignments next year. After her academic assignments are completed, then she will be free to choose other activities.
Organizational Skills - Hannah has good organizational skills.
Concentration - Her ability to concentrate on her chosen or assigned work at general work time is very good. In group situations, Hannah's focus sometimes switches to her friends from our current business at hand. A verbal reminder is usually sufficient to pull her attention back.
Self Esteem - Hannah's self-esteem is good.
Self Control - A simple reminder of what is expected is all that is needed when she forgets to be silent or attend to the activity at hand.
Social Skills - It goes without saying that you are well liked when three classmates (Aditi, Madeleine, and Daniela) argue about who gets to sit next to you. Hannah gets along well with her peers.
Community Awareness - Hannah's job assignments have been limited by her 1/2 day schedule. The job she seems to have enjoyed most would be sharing -- but even that job has to be completed in the afternoon by another student. Overall, Hannah understands how our community functions.
Hannah remains a student who is a pleasure to have in class.
Motor Skills - This is an area of strength for Hannah.
Creative Expression - This is a passion of Hannah's. Her zeal for making things is quite contagious, spreading to whomever her workmate may be.
Science and Geography -There are many interesting science and map works for Hannah yet to explore.
Sensorial Mathematics - Hannah has practiced bead stairs & numerals, patterning & numeral formation work, the teen board & the ten board with ten's only. She has not been observed choosing these works independently of my direction.
Language Literacy - I have guided Hannah through all the word building, the picture books, and she is now on the third introductory book. I am confident that she is ready to proceed to our first set of ten books which will painlessly build her reading proficiency. In sequence Hannah constructs 6 sample words, then traces and writes the same words, then has a one-on-one practice run through the book with me. She then takes the book home to practice it until it is very easy for her to read. A final reading to me is a check read through so that I can be sure that all is well. I want Hannah to start initiating her progress through the series instead of waiting until I tell her to go on to the next step. I am looking for Hannah to start taking initiative. This is very important in her progress.
I am hoping Hannah will be joining us for her kindergarten year. Becoming self-directed and moving forward in ways that will assure her balanced growth academically will be assisted by the use of a goal sheet. When she is challenged, I believe Hannah will enjoy coming up to meet that challenge with enthusiasm.
***
Brooke's comments: What it all boils down to is that if Hannah does not start choosing to do academic work on her own, she will not be chosen to go to the Montessori 1st grade after finishing kindergarten next year. The elementary teacher is hands down the best teacher I've ever met. We WANT her in Montessori. So, I let Hannah know what is expected of her next year. To be honest, it's not like she knew she wasn't supposed to sit at the art table all morning long. It *is* supposed to be her choice.
He is SO darn funny!
The other day Pete said, "I want to go back outside." Hannah said, "Me too!" Elijah said, "Me three!!" I had to laugh. I've never heard anyone say this around him, so I have no idea where he picked it up.
Just a few minutes later, he was trying to get Hannah's attention but she wasn't listening to him. He said, "Hannah!... Hannah DAVID!" (Elijah's middle name is David, and hears 'Elijah David!' at least once a day). I laughed again and told him that Hannah's middle name is Elizabeth.
We started having an ant problem upstairs in our bedroom, so we called the exterminator to come out and do something about it. Elijah started singing, "It's the spider man! Spider man!!" Now, he does recognize Spiderman, but doesn't really know anything about him. We laughed.
My little man can FINALLY drink out of a cup! He's a bit delayed in this area... I think maybe Hannah was advanced in her cup drinking abilities because she had no problem using a cup at 18 months. I hate to compare the two (though I do it all the time!), but this is one area where he just wasn't even close to her.
As for potty training... ugg! Today was the first day that I completely kept him out of diapers (until bedtime). He did pee in the potty a couple of times, but apparently did not empty his bladder. Each time he ended up with wet pants just a few minutes later. He went through 17 pairs of underwear today!!!!! He only has 9 pairs, so as I was doing laundry today, I just tossed in any wet undies. I may have to get out the Gerber training pants to fill in the gap while I wash tomorrow... I put old fashioned pull-on diaper covers over his undies (like plastic pants, but they are nylon now). Thankfully, they contain the mess almost all of the time. There was one puddle that got tracked around the house... I sure hope pee is good for hardwood floors!!
Elijah is 35 months old today! For all you math geniuses out there, that means next month he'll be THREE years old!!! Holy cow, how did THAT happen??? Here are a bunch of pictures that I've taken in the past couple of days.
Here's Hannah with the flower she gave me for Mother's Day. At school they put food coloring in the flower's water and a few days later they changed color. Hannah mixed red and blue for a purple tinted carnation.
Our pumpkin sprout is GROWING!!
More pumpkins!
We are working on potty training... We have an August deadline (when school starts). No progress yet, but lots of wet undies to wash every day.
I like to plant vincas because they are so hardy (that means it's hard to kill them!)
Here is Leah eating zweiback toast at dinner tonight. She was much ookier than she looks in the picture.
Leah's 5th tooth broke through the surface today. It was her right upper lateral incisor... the matching left tooth should make it's appearance tomorrow or the next day.
Elijah almost slept through dinner, and he was not amused by my picture taking!
Hannah just being Hannah :)
top view of our new favorite hair do, pixie flips
I'm currently moving this blog over to Blogger, so that's taking a lot of my free time these days... copy and pasting text, finding the original pictures and uploading them, etc. I have so many little projects I want to do these days...
This is what's left of one of our jack-o-lanterns. I left both out by our back fence to see what would happen to them, and maybe grow some pumpkins.
Here's a pumpkin seed that sprouted!
Our beautiful dogwood tree in bloom
Hannah and Elijah being wacky just before bed last night.
Here are the professional pics taken of the kids in their baby costumes
Here is the video from the dress rehearsal. Hannah's school play is tomorrow night, and no video or pictures are allowed then.
I'm a terrible mom, and I managed to video someone else's kid for the majority of the song... I picked Hannah out right away, but then decided it couldn't be her because she was dancing a little too well. So, I panned over to another possibility, and she really does look a lot like Hannah... since all you can really see are skinny legs. When the picture is out of frame, that's when I'm trying to scout for Hannah. Oh well, we'll be buying the DVD of tomorrow night's performance.
I know you can't read Leah's shirt in this picture, but it says "Lil Tree Hugger". In honor of Earth Day, Walmart is selling some cute, Earth friendly shirts. I'm not really a fan of Walmart, and have been known to refer to them as "The Evil Empire" (well, I call McD's that too), BUT they are starting to carry Earth friendly products. I don't think their reasons are noble, but I do appreciate it anyway. These shirts are made from "transitional cotton" meaning the farmers are transitioning to organic cotton (it takes something like 7 years of no chemicals before the ground can be considered organic). Now, they only cost $3.50 and are made in the Philippines, so obviously they were sewn in a sweat shop... Leah is also wearing a cute cloth diaper as well, which is my tribute to Earth Day.
Here's a picture that shows how Leah "crawls", well scoots is a more descriptive term. I tried to help her by putting her on all fours, but it just made her mad...
At 10am there was a 2nd earthquake (4.6)! Somehow, I didn't feel it... I'm not sure how that happend, and I'm trying to figure out what on Earth I was doing to distract me. I blogged at 9am, and I left a message on a friend's blog at 10:45. How could I miss the ground shaking??????
I started looking at times of the emails I read this morning, and it looks like I was sitting at the computer. Weird.
I was awoken this morning at 4:30am because my house was shaking. I said, "What IS that?", and Pete responded, "That's an earthquake. They usually last about a minute... Oh, and that's not a 2, that's a 5!" He was right, it was a 5.4 earthquake with an epicenter about 40 miles from us.
At Leah's well baby visit today, the doctor asked about Hannah's tummy troubles. I told him that we'd had the allergy testing done, and it was negative, not to mention the allergist didn't think it sounded like allergies anyway. I mentioned that a few weeks before her stomach aches started, I'd found the kids drinking rain water... so maybe a parasite was to blame. He said that was pretty easy to test for, so he ordered me some collection kits from the lab. Now, I have to collect poop on three different days. Doesn't that sound like fun?? So, Hannah's bathroom is set up to collect that, and she's to use a different toilet if she needs to pee... Should be interesting!
18 lbs 2 oz (50 %tile)
27.25 in tall (50 %tile)
44 cm head circumference
Leah is the same weight as Hannah at 9 months (18 lbs), but 1.25 inches longer... Elijah weighed 18 lbs at FOUR months.
Leah scoots around the house now, mostly on her bottom. The hardwood floors make it easy to scoot, but not so easy for her to get on her belly. One of her legs gets stuck and keeps her in a sitting position. When she's upstairs on the carpet, it's easier for her to get on all fours.
Her third tooth just came through and her fourth one is almost through the gums. Her gummy smile will soon be a thing of the past.
Hannah had an allergy test today to test for food allergies. About 6 weeks ago she started complaining about stomach aches. They progressively got worse and started occurring more often. Two weeks ago, they were bad enough that I took her to the doctor. He didn't find anything, but gave us a referral to an allergist to test for food allergies. A few days later, the stomach aches were so bad that Hannah was unable to sleep at night. Out of desperation I took her to the chiropractor (we had to wait another week for the appointment for the allergist) to get her adjusted. Within 24 hours Hannah was back to normal with no stomach aches! Today was the appointment with the allergist. After listening to my description of Hannah's ailment, he didn't think it was an allergy. We went ahead with the test just to make sure. She was tested for the most common food allergies: milk, wheat, soy, peanuts, egg, and 3 others I don't remember. They all came back negative. I'm glad she doesn't have any food allergies, but we still don't know what's causing the problem which seems to be slowly coming back. We have a referral to a pediatric GI too, but I have no idea when we'll be able to get in to see her. The allergist thought it sounded like reflux... Leah has her 9 month well baby visit on Thursday, so I'll see what our regular doctor thinks then.
Hair cut!
Big Eyes!
Thumb sucker
It's official. My third child is mobile... nothing is safe anymore!!! Granted she scoots backward at this point, but it's just a matter of time. She has achieved this milestone a full month earlier than either of her siblings. I was sure I had another month!! Not only does she scoot (backward) on her belly, but she can scoot any direction while sitting on her bottom. I left Hannah to watch Leah while I went to the bathroom... During the 60 seconds I was gone, she not only moved into another room, but she'd moved a good 20 feet!
I wanted to take a picture last night before she went to bed, but Pete had the camera... so, I had to take the breakfast shot.
Wow! I really didn't think the curls would stay so tight... She looked so cute, I decided not to comb through the curls.
Matchy matchy for a second week in a row :)
Doesn't Hannah look beautiful, and so grown up!?!
Here's Leah, being her typical charming self.
