Rachel's First Day of Preschool!

Trying to keep opportunities equal between my children, Rachel went to her first day of her preschool program today. We hadn't really made a big deal of it beforehand, mostly because she had seen Laura being dropped off a million times and I would often have to pry her away from the toys when it was time for us to go. I didn't anticipate any problems dropping her off, and she marched right in like a trooper. Daddy, Laura, and I said our good byes and she was on her way. When I picked her up, they said she had a bit of a rough time transitioning from play time to circle time and that she had asked for bottle and bed and also to go in the car. :( Poor Bee has had such a busy week with our visitors and messed up scheduling/ sleeping that it didn't really come as a surprise. It did hurt my heart a little bit though. <3
I'm sure she will grow in confidence, and once routine is restored and she is properly rested, I'm sure she will rock it. She seemed happy as a clam when I picked her up, so that was reassuring. I love love the staff at their preschool, and am confident she is in good hands. <3

Leaps & Bounds Part II

I posted a little while ago about a spurt of independence Laura was going through, but she has continued to blow me away for the past couple of months! She has been doing well in the self-regulation department and really been trying to use strategies to calm herself when she is feeling upset (a big step for her!), learning to read, dressing and undressing herself, choosing her own outfits (and most of the time they even match pretty well!), folding and hanging her own clothes and putting them away, brushing her own teeth (and hair to a lesser extent), getting her own snacks and drinks, and basically just needing me far less than I am used to. 95% of me is extremely happy about this, but 5% is a little sad about this punch in the face of independence.

Welcome, Rikako!

     We have hosted exchange students before, but since having Rachel we have not had a free room to offer, and so we haven't had one for a while. However, the girls are sharing a room now, and although the nursery was supposed to become a craft/ homeschooling room, we were approached by a company we had formerly worked with who were desperately looking for a few more host families for their Japanese exchange program over the summer, so we decided to help them out and keep it a bedroom for a few more weeks. We had to use one of the girls' big girl beds and subsequently Laura has chosen to sleep on a mattress on the floor for the time being. Anyway, the girls are at a good and fun age now to host someone, and I think they will gain a lot from having someone from a different culture in our house. We are looking forward to the next 2.5 weeks with our student, Rikako!

Road Trip!

     My mom's cousins live in St. Louis, Missouri, and we have been in contact with them via facebook for several years now, but haven't seen them in person in ages. She has grandchildren of similar ages to my kids, and her one granddaughter even looks very similar to Laura. So when we got back from our trip to Disney, I was hankering to plan something else, and after talking to another mom about her road trip to Florida with her little kids I thought, hey, we should go and meet our cousins! We could probably do it for pretty cheap, and a road trip seems like a fun idea in theory. 
Then I started researching it, and as it turns out, a lot of people have negative things to say about road trips with little kids. But I read many blogs with tips & tricks and suggestions, and got some more tips from my mommy friend, and thought it would be doable. Josh was not convinced that it was a good idea, and opted to stay home, but thankfully my up-for-anything mom agreed to come with us. (They are her cousins, after all.) I used roadtrippers.com to find interesting places to see along the way, and off we went for the July 4th weekend!

We packed up the car on Wednesday night and Mom slept over so we could get an early start. We were on the road just before 5am Thursday morning. The girls didn't go back to sleep, but I was well-armed with things for them to do. I brought:

• a lap desk 
• a binder of laminated activity sheets 
• colouring books and crayons
• story cubes
• laminated travel BINGO cards
• a quiet book I made
• a MagnaDoodle-type board and an Etch-a-Sketch (these were both new to us toys)
• a baby doll with new feeding accessories
• DVD player and DVDs 
• books on CD and kids' CDs
• a cookie sheet and magnets
• books
• pipe cleaners and a book on how to shape them into things
• lots of snacks!

     We didn't even end up using all of the things I brought, but the kids kept themselves entertained the whole time. We stopped just on the other side of the border at Belle Isle in Detroit. We went to the Children's Zoo there and stopped to see the fountain. The "zoo" was small and there was not a lot to see (which I was aware of beforehand) but it was free and just the right size for the amount of time we had to stop. We had planned to do the whole 13 hours of driving in one day on the way there, so we didn't have too much time for stops. We left there just before noon, and headed through Ohio to Indiana. We had planned to stop in Indianapolis for a late lunch, but it ended up being more of an early dinner. And the place I had chosen to eat at was only for 21+, so we ended up having to eat somewhere else. After dinner Rachel fell asleep for a couple hours through Illinois and it was after dark when we rolled into St Louis. We were hoping to catch some fireworks over the Mississippi, but we didn't quite make it on time, so we just went straight to our hotel. It was about 10:00 when we arrived. 

     Friday we had planned a paddlewheel riverboat cruise on the Mississippi for the 4th, but once we got down to the waterfront, we discovered that the boats were not running due to the river flooding. That was disappointing, but we looked around at the waterfront and the Arch for a little bit. We got some fries from a riverside chip stand and then headed back to the car. On the way, we passed a helicopter landing pad used for tours, and the girls were very excited. We discussed how expensive we thought it would be, but when we got closer we saw it was only $35 for a short flight, so we decided to do that instead of the boat cruise. The girls were very excited and loved it.

After that we headed over to our cousins' house to spend the afternoon with them. They had lots of fun things set out for the girls to play with, and they all got along really well. They treated us to St. Louis style pizza for lunch and a BBQ for dinner. We had a great time with them watching the kids play, etc. They also bought home fireworks to set off which seemed to be a much more common thing to do in the States than it is here. The girls were all getting tired and we headed back to the hotel around 10:00 and got to see all kinds of fireworks displays on our way back. 

     Saturday the girls still woke up at 7:00, so we had a nice buffet breakfast at the hotel and then met up with our cousins at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. We first went to the children's area, but it was very crowded and it was hard to keep track of each other with four kids going in every direction. We decided to go for lunch instead and then to the fountain. The girls really enjoyed running around through the fountains and got thoroughly soaked. We walked around for a bit more after that and got to feed the koi. They were very tame and would come right up and open their mouths at the surface of the water. We saw a few more things, but people were getting tired again, so we all headed back to their house for a tea party. Laura fell asleep on the car ride over and refused to wake up, but Rachel played with the bigger girls while tea was being set up. Eventually Laura woke up and joined us for tea, and we had a nice time. We even got to see an old doll my grandma had made for our cousin that she still had. We went back to the hotel around 5:00 or 5:30 and laid low for the night. We had contemplated going to the fireworks put on by St. Louis, but everyone was pretty burnt out by then.

     Sunday morning we stopped at Target for a few things on our way out of town and let the girls each pick out a new toy to keep them occupied in the car. We took the longer, but beautifully scenic drive on the Great River Road along the over-filled Mississippi. Then we headed back toward Springfield to Cozy Dog, a Route 66 icon, for lunch. Unfortunately it was not open on Sundays, although the restaurant was unlocked (?) and we were able to go in and look around. We found somewhere else to get some food and then continued on our way. We stopped in Atlanta to visit Bunyon with a Hotdog and in Pontiac to visit the Route 66 Museum, although we were running a little behind schedule and the girls had both fallen asleep, so we decided against going in. Mom really liked all the murals and would like to go back some time to see the museum. We were headed to Chicago and were hoping to hit up Navy Pier before it closed. When we arrived in Chicago our GPS lost reception due to all the overpasses and tall buildings, and we ended up at the wrong Embassy Suites (there were two within five blocks of each other), so we decided to just go straight to Navy Pier instead of trying to find the correct hotel. We had fun looking around at the pier, and rode the gigantic ferris wheel and the carousel. It was getting kind of late at that point and the girls were hungry, so we found a little place to eat called Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. that was themed after the Forrest Gump movie. It was really cute and served seafood. Laura tried a bowl of clam chowder for the first time and enjoyed it. By the time we finished dinner it was dark out and we had to find our way to the other Embassy Suites. We ended up having to ask for directions since our GPS could not get any reception, but we did eventually find it. The wi-fi was not included at this hotel, so we pretty much went straight to bed. In the morning we enjoyed another nice (free!) breakfast buffet and hit the road once more.

     Monday we had planned to drive the Dunes Highway across the bottom of Lake Michigan, but the beginning of it was closed, presumably due to fallen trees/ tornado damage. :( We still ended up at Silver Beach in St. Joseph, which was a lot bigger/ cooler than I had thought. We spent longer there than I had anticipated because there was more to do/ see than I knew. We all enjoyed ourselves there and wished we had more time to spend there. We had ice cream there to tide us over for a late lunch/ early dinner in Grand Rapids. After that it was a long haul drive all the way home. We crossed back into Canada around 9:00 and headed up the shore of Lake Huron hoping to catch  the sunset over the lake. We didn't quite get to see it though because the road doesn't run along the lakeshore there. It was still nice to watch it setting over the trees, though. The girls eventually fell asleep around 10:00 as we drove through southern Ontario in the dark. We made it home about quarter to one and had to unpack the car so my mom could go home. It was a late and tiring night (especially since the girls woke up when we brought them in and wouldn't go back to sleep until after 3:00am!)

Overall the trip went really well, and much better than I had braced myself for. We even discussed doing another road trip next summer! 

Sharing A Room

School is officially done for the year, which means we have nowhere to be in the morning! And that means that the long awaited switch to sharing a room can happen! I have been anticipating this as much as they have, probably. They both sleep for about 11 hours at night: Rachel usually from 8pm - 7am and Laura 9pm (or later) - 8am, so I would really like them to go to bed at the same time so I have more time to get things done. Hoping to find a middle ground; from 8:30pm - 7:30am would be ideal. Tonight is the first night the girls are going to sleep together in their shared room. They didn't go to sleep until after 10pm. Tomorrow may be rough. But we don't have anywhere to be!
Will come back and post updates on the progress.

(note: still need to finish painting and matching duvet covers to come)

Three days in:
The girls are still going to bed ungodly late and keeping each other awake, but they have mostly stayed contained in the room, at least. Laura fell asleep this afternoon on the couch, so that hasn't helped going to bed at a reasonable hour. Rachel seems to have transitioned pretty seamlessly to sleeping in that room. She hasn't asked once to sleep in the crib, though we haven't taken it down yet. They've been pretty grumpy all weekend, too, but I suppose that is to be expected. ;)

Three months in:
We have taken to putting the girls to bed at different times because they did not end up self-regulating into an age-appropriate sleep routine together. Rachel is now put to bed between 8 and 8:30, and Laura usually about half an hour after that. Rachel still wakes up at 7 most days, and sometimes Laura will wake up with her, and sometimes she sleeps a little longer. This was not the ideal outcome I was hoping for, but at least we have a craft room/ office/ extra room out of the arrangement, so I guess we will still call it a win.

Preschool Graduate

Yesterday was supposed to be Laura's preschool graduation ceremony, but all of us were up all night the night before with a terrible, disgusting puke virus that allowed for very little sleep. So we missed her celebration. Thankfully the preschool runs two ceremonies to accommodate the students in all of the classes, so Laura was able to attend today instead. It was kind of bittersweet since she didn't get to celebrate with her regular class, but I would have been heartbroken if she didn't get to go at all. And really, she didn't even mention that most of her friends weren't there, so maybe it's just me. ;) Either way, we are very proud of how far she has come in the last two years at nursery school, and are looking forward to homeschooling in the fall while Rachel gets a turn to go to nursery school.

A Year of Afterschooling

     I originally started keeping track of all of my ideas, activities, and lesson plans in this blog post last year. I had planned to incorporate all different subjects (music/ reading/ math/ etc) into each weekly theme. And we had a lot of fun, especially over the summer with our weekly themes as they provided a nice cohesive element for me to work with. However, in October, we all got sick for a couple of weeks, and in that time, my energy and motivation were derailed. I was burnt out. We continued half-heartedly with themed learning here and there through the winter to varying degrees, and although there was less structure, I still feel that Laura gained a lot. I always try to capitalize on it when she shows interest in something, so she is now able to write her own name completely unassisted, is learning to read, can count to 30 (though needs some help through 14 & 15), has a good vocabulary, and people often comment on how well she speaks. She is strengthening her fine motor skills (and her patience!) learning to use the track pad on my laptop to play phonics games. We still work from her workbooks occasionally, and we try to read something every day. Sometimes that leads to more inquisition and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it provides us a jumping off point for new ideas, and I find it so much more memorable when the learning and inquisition happen organically. And so our afterschooling has more or less morphed into unschooling. I intend to continue providing opportunities for Laura (and Rachel) to expand their horizons on their own terms this coming year.

(For those interested, these were the themes that we have followed/ worked with:)

Teeth

Canada

Berries

Fairytales

Dinosaurs

Outdoors

Beach

Zoo

About Me!

Apples

Fall

Squirrels

Thanksgiving

Pumpkins

Remembrance Day

Frozen

Christmas

Willy Wonka

Valentines

Oceans

Olympics

Disney

St. Patrick's Day

Spring

Easter