I need some education...

We're in the process of setting up the new Montessori materials that we've received. Elena is very excited about learning to use all of them. Of course, this means that my mother and I have to learn how to present them (though I suspect that my mother will gravitate more toward doing some of the read-aloud and craft stuff on the more Sonlight side of our curriculum rather than the Montessori presentations, but who knows). One foundational thing I'm trying to get a good grasp of is the "Three Period Lesson." http://www.infomontessori.com/sensorial/three-period-lesson.htm is a good, relatively detailed description of how it works, but here's the summary I'm trying to get solidified in my head:

1. Naming: "This is an ovoid. This is a square. This is a triangle."

2. Recognition: "Point to [hand me] the ovoid. Point to the triangle. Point to the square."

3. Recall: Instructor points, asking "What is this?" (Requiring the child to come up with the name).

1. This is... 2. Show me... 3. What is this?

I'm prepping to do this with the new teen bead materials ("This is eleven..."). See http://www.infomontessori.com/mathematics/skip-and-counting-teens-quantity.htm

We've also been looking at the new puzzle maps. I haven't looked up the official presentations for these yet, but have allowed Elena to take out (and then put back) the pieces on the continents map while I give her the names and have her repeat them (I suppose in a sense, this is step one of the three period lesson). What this has really highlighted to me, though, is my general lack of good geography skills. I did know all the continents, but I had to look up some of the countries on South America (the easiest continent, in my opinion), and that was the only continent I was even CLOSE to knowing all the countries on. But this is part of the joy of homeschooling--getting to learn along with one's child! Because there's no shame in 1. not knowing everything and 2. showing your child how you find out information.

Familial relationships seem to have finally sunk in. Elena can now pretty accurately identify how people in her family are related to each other ("Your father is my grandfather." "Your brother is my uncle."). This is interesting because it demonstrates some of the fading of the egocentrism that goes with this (Piaget) stage of development. Strong egocentrism orients everything to the self ("Who is that woman?" "My mama." "Is she also Papa's wife?" "NO! She is MY MAMA!"). Along with this, as one would expect, we are seeing the development of theory of mind, though this is far from complete in her. No examples come readily to mind right now, but I do remember noting them.

Part of me also wants to note her understanding of familial relationships because I think there is buried somewhere a desire in me to prove (to myself?) that she's learning things at home that she would be learning if she were in school. But I actually have very little idea of what kids learn in the early school years. I'm confident that things like language, math, and geography are covered, but lately it's occurred to me that were Elena in a more traditional school, it might also cover things like learning the seasons of the year, making a family tree, and maybe even stringing a necklace (which she learned to do recently, much to her delight).

Even though my stated philosophy is to not worry much about what she's learning because she's naturally driven to learn and because if left uninhibited and provided with a rich atmosphere, she'll pick up on what she needs to, there's still a part of me that wonders how what she gets here at home compares to what she would be getting elsewhere. More out of curiosity than any sense of doubt that we're doing the right thing by educating her here.

And because I know that once we reach school age, we'll have to be "proving" regularly to the state that she's learning at home what she'd learn at school. So I think that's the source of this desire to practice extracting out of the million things she does during the day some of the things that might be considered "school activities."

Breathing

We were reading about sharks and how they draw water over their gills and extract the oxygen from it. This led to a discussion of how humans get oxygen from the air when they breathe. I asked Elena, "Have YOU ever breathed before?" She looked at me and a smile spread across her face as she exclaimed, "I just did!" Then she spent the next several minutes giggling and saying, "I just breathed AGAIN!" It was a hoot.

mycology lesson

We have some interesting mushrooms growing in the yard that Erich suspects are some edible form of ink caps (Coprinus comatus, "Shaggy mane inky cap"). Elena is participating in the identification with Papa. They went out and got a couple fresh mushrooms. They're making a spore-print and are drawing the mushroom, all in the effort of accurately identifying it so as to determine whether it is safe to eat. I'm not entirely sure what Elena will pick up from this exercise, but it sure seems educational. Though part of our teaching philosophy is that just about everything she does is "educational." Still, the mushroom identification is a fun lesson.

Science Lesson

We have been trying to go to the library more often. On our most recent trip, Elena picked out a book on bones (among other interesting books). Reading this with her has led to a discussion of how the brain is protected by the skull and the spinal cord is protected by the spine, but what Elena seems to have latched on to the most today is how the brain sends messages to her body through her spinal cord. Now, every few minutes, she'll say, "I just moved my leg again! My brain sent a message telling my leg to move!" like this is the most miraculous thing. Which, I suppose, it is.

Materials

We decided to take the plunge and purchase the rest of the primary Montessori materials. KidAdvance has the best prices by a large margin and we got a good deal by getting a classroom package (http://www.kidadvance.com/productdetails.asp?pid=255&catid=7). KidAdvance let us cut out the elements of the package that we already owned and substitute in other materials that we wanted. All the materials have now arrived. We checked through them looking for damage and missing parts. Instead of allowing Elena to open all the boxes like presents, though, we're going to set up the materials on the shelves and unveil her new "school area" to her for Christmas. This is in order to reduce the temptation to misuse the materials or to treat them as toys. In the mean time, we're going to turn the large boxes into a fun tunnel house. :)

"How do you spell 'bleach?'"

Lately, Elena has been asking how to spell things. We've found it much more effective to write things out for her rather than to verbally tell her how things are spelled. Often, we use her chalk and slate to spell things out. She has happened to ask for several words lately that use the "ea" long-e sound as well as /ch/, so she's slowly getting more comfortable with those. I haven't seen her read them in a book yet--I suspect that she'll be excited to see them in writing when they come up.

Agenda

Above are two examples of Elena's written agenda (I struggle with this word, because "agenda" is already plural, but it seems to have become, over the years, a singular noun like candelabra. But double-pluralizing it ("agendae"?) still doesn't seem right...). I had found with Elena that she really responded well to having a written agenda for parts of her day, particularly if there were some activities that I specifically wanted her to do, or to help her understand MY schedule so that she wouldn't be upset during the times that I needed to be doing something that wasn't directly attending to her (which is often, actually). So we started out with us collaboratively writing out an agenda (see, I just treated it as a singular without even thinking!) but with me doing the writing. I would put a word or phrase to describe the activity we were planning on doing, then draw some simple icon next to it for a clue. But very soon, Elena decided she wanted to be the one doing the writing. Now, she comes initiates agenda-making without any prompting (the top picture is an example of that).

On a related note, Erich tells me it's best to not directly correct her when she sounds out words and writes them how they sound to her ("teef") but to take mental note and present on the missing concept at another time. I've been trying to do this and it's actually been quite successful. Take as an example her learning to cross herself. I've tried to correct her in church when she does it incorrectly and she's decidedly NOT receptive to input then. So I tried to just do a seemingly unrelated presentation/explanation of how to do it when she's not actively trying to do it "her way." This has been MUCH more effective! She definitely incorporates the information in the next time it comes up. Thanks for the tip, Erich.

Also, he pointed out, rather thoughtfully, I think, that by sounding things out and writing them, she is doing exactly what she should be doing and that she should receive encouragement, not correction, when she is "successful" (with the idea that writing phonetically represents success, not a problem).

To explain briefly what the agenda items are: For the first one, her plans (with no input from me) were to 1. go pee, 2. find the missing pen, 3. have a tea party, 4. have a "sleepover" with her stuffed animals (which she chose to call a "nap")

For the second picture (which was actually done probably a couple of weeks before the first, and the items were based to some extent on my own morning schedule), her plans were: 1. brush teeth 2. do morning prayers 3. do yoga.

Child-led education

Not infrequently, Elena has some idea of what she'd like to learn about for the day. Recently, she said that she wanted to learn "what ten tens makes" (she's been on a multiplying kick lately, but normally with smaller numbers, usually just multiplying by two). In response to the question about ten tens, I tried to get out some materials to allow her to visually see and count ten tens, but was struck as we got going that she still has some trouble counting in her teens! (She counts accurately to 15, then jumps to 19, then 21, then is pretty accurate in the 20s. But this leads, obviously, to her ending up with the wrong final number when trying to count things numbered more than 15.) So it ended up being a lesson on counting in the teens instead--I didn't worry about getting all the way to a hundred, and she didn't seem too fussed that we didn't get there either.

A couple of months ago, when Erich asked her what she wanted to learn about today, she answered "clowns." In addition to answering her questions based on his current knowledge, they also looked up information about different types of clowns, how one goes about becoming a clown, etc. Later, when I came home from work, we painted each other's faces like clowns.

Today, without being asked, Elena requested to learn about 1. Elephants and 2. x-rays. Our typical way of doing this is to do our best to share what knowledge we do have (if any) about the topic in discussions (these conversations often happen in the car...). Then we also look up things online (the National Geographic website is great for learning about animals), finding descriptions, photos, and videos. I hope to start incorporating these interests of hers into our (planned-to-be-more-regular) trips to the library. So maybe tomorrow (if I'm feeling better; I've been rather sick lately) we can pick up a book on Elephants (or x-rays?) at the library to augment what we've got so far.

When possible, I like to be able to take advantage of her interests this way. I think this is actually at the heart of both Montessori and unschooling: kids learn (and retain) stuff best when it's self-driven and "presented" (or "discovered") when they're actively exploring it. The challenge for us is to provide the resources and guidance to help her in this exploration.

Not to Worry, Nonna

Elena went in the game cabinet, pulled out a box, this time it was Boggle. I asked her, "Whatcha got there, Elena?" She answered in a world weary voice, as if talking to a very tiresome child, "Just a game, nothing to worry about."

More reading

I tried a new reader with Elena and was pleased to note the improvement she's made since the last time I did a simple reader with her. She was naturally blending the sounds as she was sounding them out rather than doing them separately and was putting the words together much more quickly. She also seemed to be able to read some words on sight after seeing them a few times, which sped the process up a good bit. Also, we got a tip from another homeschooling mom toward Veritas press and some graded readers that have more interesting stories than many of the ones we've been looking at.

Recent "lessons"

Elena made a family tree with Erich. He's rather obsessed with ancestry lately and is drawing her in... (Just kidding, dear) I do believe it's useful and appropriate for Elena to know what it means to be an "aunt," etc.

Erich presented the upright stairs (is that what they're called?) with the number rods. This involves carefully stacking the number rods in order with all the colours matching appropriately, saying what each rod represents as you use it and as you put it away.

Erich taught a memory game using little cards. He set out six of them. They both named all of them together. Then she would turn around and he would take one. She would turn back and try to name the missing card. Then she would do the same for him (take a card with his back turned). Players get to keep the cards that they correctly identify as missing. This seemed to engage her brain in a useful way.

Regarding reading:
Back a bit ago, I mentioned that Elena now says, "I can read." She has a long way to go before she reads fluently, but something did seem to click in her mind such that now, she will attempt to read just about anything and it totally open to letter combinations making different sounds than she's used to. She really needs books at or around her reading level with more interesting stories than the Bob books. Erich has been reading aloud to her from Little House in the Big Woods (he'd never read it himself, so it's good for him, too). She seems to be tracking with and enjoying the story--much of what they do is actually similar to things we're currently doing at home (preserving food and whatnot). I think that there are now young-reader versions in this same story line, and I'm wondering whether they might be more accessible to her--she would be really happy if she could read the books more independently, but the straight Little House books are a little to advanced for her. If I recall correctly, I didn't read them until I was six, and I think the suggested reading age starts around age 8ish, so I'm not surprised that she's not doing them herself. I think they'll be great for her to re-read herself in a few years, but she really wants something that she can read more independently. Suggestions, anyone?

Shapes

I realized that Elena was solid on triangles and squares, but wasn't comfortable with the labels and concepts for figures with more sides. So this morning, we made shapes out of the counting spindles (triangle, square, and pentagon for now). I made labels on notecards. She was able to verbally label all the shapes and got to the point of being able to sightread and correctly place the written labels.

Also, she spent some time practicing pouring with a funnel.

Cutting workbook

So my mother gave Elena a cutting workbook lately (thanks Mom!). The first picture was a puppy. You're supposed to cut the picture out of the book, and then give it to the child to cut along the whiskers.

So I cut it out, and then Elena cut to the side of the whiskers. Each whisker was a wide grey line, and the child is supposed to cut on the line somewhere, but Elena was cutting pretty exactly just to the side of the line. She cut OUT the whiskers. Then she went for extra credit. She cut off the puppy's chin. And ears. And eyes. And tongue. This continued until she, with a dissected pile of puppy parts, exclaims, "I'm done! There's no more dog! Now I want to do the kitty!"

OK, honey. And you can cut off the picture this time.

Playing "soccer"

Some tidbits from Elena trying to play soccer:

"Here's how you play soccer. You sit there, Mama. I will dribble back and forth, and you say to me, 'Go, go, go! Good job!'"
She went off dribbling for a while at high speed while I did as she requested. But then while running furiously, she said, "Tell me to stop now, Mama! Tell me to stop!"

ER: "Let's play with teams now"
me: "Okay, shall I be on your team?"
ER: "Yes."
me: "So is Nonna on the other team?"
ER: (shocked at the suggestion) "No! She's on OUR team!"
me: "So... we're all on the same team? There's just one team?" (Thinking, "Basically, like we've been doing up until now?")
ER: "Yes. We're all on the same team together."

In my world, teams only make sense when there are more than one of them. An "us" and a "them" of sorts. But not in Elena's world...

You're HUGE!

I was tucking in my two lovelies to sleep. Elena, sitting up in bed, looks at mama and from out of nowhere says, "Mama, you're HUGE! You weigh a LOT!"

Aghast, I told Elena that you just don't say that to people. It can be a sensitive issue with some people. It's not polite.

"But, Papa, when I tell myself how big I'm getting, I tell myself, 'Elena, you are HUGE!'"

Educational potpouri

Again, not to be particularly interesting to anyone, but to help us keep track of what we're doing.

Though we don't have any of the elementary child materials other than the posters that Erich made, we have a full set of the teacher materials (descriptions of lessons and how they might be sequenced, etc). We do not have this for the primary materials. Now that I've been home more, I've been wanting to learn things to do with the primary materials. Since I cleaned up her school area, Elena has been requesting to use the materials a lot and I'm not a huge fan of just making things up (because when I read the real lesson... it's always better). So we've been trying to put together lesson materials (for the teacher) for the materials we have, as well as getting a way to track what lessons Elena's given and when she follows up on them other than just sporadic mentions on this blog. Before diving into the elementary material during his certification, Erich did go through a condensed primary training, so he had some materials tucked away that we found. He hadn't been required to make full books for each subject like he was for the elementary stuff, so they're not complete by any means. The other great resource that we've found is infomontessori.com, which has descriptions of the lessons and sequences for much of the curriculum.

We were feeling a bit overwhelmed with how to keep track of everything (as well as how to organize our own notebook of lessons for the teacher), but finally settled on doing it based on the materials that we actually have. I took an inventory of our materials and made a spreadsheet divided (by sheets) into the four major topic areas for primary (Practical Life, Language, Math, Sensorial). Then on each sheet I have the materials we have (including the non-montessori ones) and am hoping to get on there the appropriate lessons so we can note the dates they're presented and followed-up on.

What this highlighted were two big things: First, we really don't have many materials. For example, the only language materials we have are the print, lowercase, sandpaper letters and the laminated words cards that we made with pictures for matching games. (Fortunately, I think her language skills are progressing just fine, given the abundance and utility of non-official materials for language like, you know, books, paper, and writing utensils.) Erich pointed out that a typical Montessori primary classroom is about the size of our whole living room area. Currently, we have all Elena's school things in one small corner. Now, I think we can get away with a smaller space because we don't have to have out materials for all levels in a typical primary classroom. Things that Elena has mastered or moved beyond, we can put up until the next child is getting ready for them. But we will still be looking at expanding the school area significantly. We don't need that much "living space," especially since we get so much use of the outdoors here.

Second, Elena has moved beyond most of our current materials. Which makes sense, since we got them over 18 months ago. We still have some uses for some of them, but we're stretching it. For example, Elena is very comfortable with recognizing and naming numerals, which is a major goal of the counting spindles that we have (as well as the sandpaper numbers, which we also have). But I've been using the counting spindles lately to help her by providing a concrete aid for addition and subtraction, and they have worked well for that. (For anyone who's curious, we would look at the math problem in one of her workbooks, say 6 - 4 and instead of just using her fingers we'd pull out six spindles from the six box and then take away four... you get the picture. She really enjoys this.) Similarly, the main purpose of the sandpaper letters is to help the child get a sensorial feel for the letter while connecting it to the sound. She pretty much has the letter sounds down (for the short sounds), but the sandpaper letters have become useful again for helping her trace out how to write the letters. (In general, her reading and math comprehension is better than her writing--she recognizes and uses all the numerals, but can't reliably write them all--though I don't think this is a problem and may be pretty normal.) Hopefully we can convince some generous grandparents to help out with some materials for Christmas and her birthday (goodness knows she has enough toys. Besides, she loves using the materials and having "school time").

Other things she's been doing lately: While taking inventory of our materials, I realized that the only moveable alphabet we have are her bath letters (we may have a magnet set somewhere... hm...). She does a LOT of her word-building while in the bath. She likes to sound out words and spell them out with the letters, but she also frequently requests to build words that pull on spelling principles that we haven't gone over with her much if at all. In her last bath, for example, she wanted to build both "snake" and "snail," and thus got introduced to the idea that the /ei/ sound can come from both "a_e" and "ai." She also requested to build several anatomy terms. She's really into her anatomy, so I've been very grateful to have my parents around to answer all her questions about "what muscle is this?"

She was also given a sticker book almost a year ago when she was out with Erich visiting family in Iowa. It kind of made me want to vomit with all the pink and sparkles, but months later I was looking through it and found that it's pretty educational. And she loves to use it. The activities in there use the stickers to practice basic math (addition and subtraction), shapes, matching, etc. Plus there are some pages that are simply "decorate this how you please," which I also think is important. At this point, she's almost worked through the whole thing. I like that for many of the activities, I can read her the instructions, set her up with the appropriate stickers, and let her go at it. She then has me check her work at the end of each activity.

She also has a couple of pre-K workbooks that we've gotten for her. We've had them for a while now--at least a year, I think, but they're large and include a good variety of things. Lately she's been looking back through them and correcting some of the "mistakes" she made when she first went through some of the pages. Also, she is able to do many of the activities independently when previously she needed more coaching. For example, she can match the numeral to the picture with that number of objects without any help now, but she still needs some coaching in walking through the addition and subtraction problems. She does much of the work on her own, but can't quite be left to do the whole page on her own. She seems to be able to spend a lot more time on the workbooks now and enjoys them a lot. I think they're fitting nicely into her Zone of Proximal Development right now. :)

And I think I'll leave it at that for now.

Oh!--one last thought. In my cleaning, I found Sheep in a Jeep which was for a while a much favoured book. I think it'll be a great time to bring it back out, though, because she's doing well with the /ee/ sound being produced by two "e's" and may be able to read a good bit of the book herself now. We'll see. But I plan to try it soon.

A couple language ideas

I just suggested Elena write "list" at the top of a list she was making (scribbling). I broke up the word for her, since she wasn't doing it herself: (by sounds) L - I - S - T. She interpreted the "ih" as an "E", and had difficulty writing the "S" -- it came out looking like a misshapen "E".

Presentations to be used to help this:
* Sound games (middle sounds), to distinguish words that differ "i" and "e" short vowel sounds in the middle of the word. E.g. "pen" and "pin". "wit" and "wet". "Nick" and "neck".
* Sandpaper letter "S"

Progress in some areas

1. Elena has become interested in spelling and reading non-short-vowel words (bathtime letters help a lot with this--it seems to be a very receptive, relaxed time for her to learn things).

2. Elena came to me and recited almost the entire Our Father by heart. She couldn't think of the last phrase ("But deliver us from evil") but had the rest of it. She seemed to fake some of the words, though, not quite pronouncing them right or glossing over them a bit. But it's good progress.

3. I was very proud of Elena recently. She came up to me as people were socializing and kids were playing after church and said that two girls had said that she couldn't play with them. Rather than getting upset, she explained the situation, said that she didn't know why they didn't want her to play, but simply, "I'm going to find some other kids to play with instead."

Olfactory bulbs

In another discussion, Elena and I discussed some of the differences between dogs' sense of smell and humans. She said that "dogs smell everything!" I talked about the olfactory bulbs in the brain and how dogs' olfactory bulbs are much larger than humans' olfactory bulbs. When I asked her later if she could tell me the area of the brain that processed smell, she was able to answer correctly. (We didn't get into the role of the orbitofrontal cortex--I feel like that's a bit advanced for her)

Congestion

Today's morning lesson was on nasal congestion with a smattering of heredity/genetics. Elena awoke because she was having trouble breathing through her nose and inquired why. I explained that the two most likely explanations were illness and allergies. We discussed the difference between these--how one is a helpful effort to fight off a problematic foreign invader and the other is an immune system over-reaction to something that really isn't dangerous.

She inquired why she would have allergies (since I don't think she's sick and genuinely think she may finally be developing allergies like the rest of the family) and we discussed what genes are briefly and how they code for different aspects of the phenotype, including allergies.

Bible stories

Elena eats far more slowly than the rest of the family. As she was finishing up her food, she handed me a small bible and asked me to read to her while she ate (she very firmly stated that she wanted me to read out of the adult bible, not the kids bible). I asked if there were anything in particular she wanted me to read.
"When Mary was born."
"That's not in the bible. The bible doesn't have everything in it."
"Read to me about when Mary died!" (She's been thinking a lot about this since Dormition.)
"That's not in there, either."
"What about when Jesus died?"
"Yes, that's there."
So I read to her about the crucifixion from Luke. She had questions at several points, but she did NOT like it when I paraphrased rather than reading straight from the bible. She enjoyed being able to anticipate the resurrection. She still has trouble with the idea of the soul being separate from the body, though, even in Jesus. She has been thinking a lot about death lately and asking lots of questions about it.

"I don't want to die!"

Our evening discussion last night centered around death. Elena felt her ribs and asked if they were indeed her ribs. I confirmed. She then asked, "This is all dead people have? When you die all your skin gets ripped off?" I investigated where this idea came from (likely seeing skeletons in pictures and icons) and tried to explain that it's not that your skin gets ripped off--it's just that your bones are the last thing to decompose (she really didn't seem to grasp this and held on to the skin-ripped-off idea). We then had a discussion of the state of the soul after bodily death. The idea that one's soul would continue living after the death of the body was very difficult for her (as, I suppose, it should be--it is an unnatural state). She was comforted by her previous discussion with my mother about Jesus walking the earth again and her getting a new resurrection body after the Second Coming. But she kept insisting that she doesn't want to die. I tried my best to explain that everyone dies (well, almost everyone) and that, God willing, what awaits her is better than this life. She wasn't really having it. I'm not sure if she's truly concerned about her own mortality or if she's just concerned about her skin being ripped off. Regardless, it was an interesting discussion.

Schoolish stuff

Elena is starting to get better with the days of the week. I have a hard time thinking of this as a school activity, but kids have to learn it somewhere, right? And maybe it's something they work on in traditional preschools. Regardless, she shows a LOT of interest in it and is always asking what day it is.

Today, when Elena requested to play a game, we played a modified version of dominoes. At her level of development, I think this is an educational activity. Actually, the initial sorting to sift out the double-six set was particularly educational as she evaluated each domino to determine whether there was a side that was more than six. Up to this point, we haven't worked on "more than/less than" much, except incidentally. She was able to enjoy the dominoes game, though she was disappointed that it was a game with only one winner.

The Great Commission

Elena: My nose is an /m/. It goes up and down and up and down just like an /m/. Let me see yours.
Me: I can't show you right now. I'm driving. All human noses are like that. God made them that way.
Elena: (NO pause) Can we see God moving? Walking?
Me: Well, we can't, but the people who were around when Jesus was on the earth did.
Elena: Yeah, well, I want to.
Me: He'll be back.
Elena: Yeah, then He can keep me and walk with me and take me to the playground. I love God and I want to see Him. (pause) You need to tell everyone this story. They will love it. Tell EVERYONE at home. Tell EVERYONE. When you run out of people, find more people.

Water Displacement

Elena initiated a lesson in water displacement today when she asked why the water level went down when people got out of the spa at the party yesterday (I love how she remembers these things she's curious about and asks us the next day). I showed her the basics of water displacement using a glass full of water and various objects. She seems to get it pretty well.

Puberty

Elena has been getting lessons in puberty, sparked by her questions about how exactly her body will develop to look like a woman's. I will not go into detail in the blog about this because I don't want our blog to show up when people search for prurient terms. Suffice it to say she asked questions that got her a fair bit of detailed information.

No voice update

Elena has gone from having a deep smoker's voice to having almost no voice at all. Since she's still in good spirits, this has been a good learning opportunity. We've been discussing vocal chords, how they work (including watching videos of actual vocal chords) and the swelling that is currently keeping her from being able to produce sounds. Fun science lesson!

No Voice

Elena is sick, and has lost her voice. She sounds worse than a smoker. It's very strange to hear this relatively alto voice coming out of my three year old.

She's generally cheery though. It isn't wearing her down very much yet.

Castle Park

My parents took Elena to Castle park, a nearby smallish amusement park, while Erich and I were busy singing at a wedding. She LOVED it. She was very enthusiastic about the rides, though she preferred the physically exciting ones to the psychologically exciting ones. My parents mistakenly took her on a dark "shoot the bad people" ride that was not a hit. My mother tried her best to reassure her that it was all pretend and that the bad people weren't going to hurt them. Elena's response at the end was "If they weren't going to hurt us, why were we shooting at them?" Good girl.

"How do you spell that word?"

Elena has recently been asking us to write words down, asking us how they are spelled. In particular, she does this whenever she can tell that she is mispronouncing the word. For example, for a long time, she has pronounced "communion" as "minion." Recently, when I tried to correct her by getting her to repeat it after me, she asked me, "How do you spell it? Write it down." I wrote it down. She looked at it, pronounced it correctly, and hasn't turned back with the pronounciation. I don't think that she's really able to read the whole word, but she can see that it starts with a /c/ sound, and that's what she needed. She's also using this to better pronounce the word "spaghetti."

Opposites

I have neglected to do anything with opposites with Elena up till now. It seems she grasps the concept quite well. Or at least, when she doesn't want to rhyme the word instead. She correctly came up with acceptable opposites for dirty, loud, wet, happy, and fast.

Does anyone have any ideas as to similar thinking/categorization games I could play with Elena?

Math

I asked Elena a couple days ago, "What's one plus two?"

She replied, "Three!"

"Good job!" I replied. "What's one plus three?"

"Four!"

"Good!" I said, impressed. "How about two plus two?"

"One!"

Hm... we'll need to work on that one...

On a different occasion, I wrote for her "1 + 2 = " and she wrote "3".

So, she's getting it. It's starting to come. But I must get bead material soon, or at the very least, some form of manipulative. It's just so expensive. Even making it from scratch. I wish I had the ability to forge spherical 6mm glass beads, but I don't.

Reading progress

Remembering that the primary purpose of this blog is to give us a place to track Elena's academic development...

Elena has lately been reading Bob books. The first series of Bob books makes a whole story using only short vowels, which are largely in her grasp now.

She has also been loving going to Starfall.com and doing the reading activities there. Lately, we have been working on the idea that sometimes letters don't make the sounds she's used to, focusing on what happens when a silent E is added ("rat" versus "rate"). She has had a difficult time making this leap, but yesterday, she made significant progress with this and was able to do a number of silent E words in the Jake's Tale story. "Find the silent E!" has now become a fun game for her. And it helps that starfall has a nice song for each one ("The silent E at the end of a word makes the [letter name] say [long vowel sound]" to the tune of "Here we go round the mulberry bush").

Elena has also recently picked up on of her Spanish language books and was going through it with me. She would ask "What's 'dog' in Spanish?" when looking at a picture of a dog and I would suggest sounding out the Spanish word to find out. It seemed to make a fun detective game that she was largely able to solve herself. This is not at all the sort of language immersion that I would have hoped for, but she is at least starting to learn that everything has a name in other languages. It's also an interesting multicultural compentency exercise for her: sometimes, she will give me a book to read to her that's in Spanish or Italian, but when I start to read it in the language in which it's written, she'll say "No! Don't read it in a language, just read it normal!" Lately I've been trying to explain that what she speaks is a language, too, just like Spanish and Italian. It seems to be sinking in, at least to some extent, though it's hard for her to understand that English, which comes so easily to her now, could be equivalent to another language.

She says the funniest things

Me: (gnawing playfully on her arm)
ER: Papa?
Me: Yes?
ER: Don't press on my skin, because it has bones inside.

Playing games

Go fish, crazy eights. She loves go fish. We got into a good rhythm, and she's able to tell when she has pairs. After a while, I didn't have to look at her hand to make sure she was doing it right.

Gardening and composting

I have not paid much attention to our worms. I have not really fed them very often (I'm estimating that I give them a new tray of food about 1x/mo, if that). But they seem to have survived quite well and have done their work making the super-concentrated compost that we need to augment the incredibly poor soil we have here. In the areas that have been my parent's traditional gardens, my mom has typically bought store-bought gardening soil to add in, but we're working on expanding our edible plantings into other areas of my parents landscaping, some of which have never had any soil amendment. We're trying to get more nutrients into the soil (hence the compost), and we're also trying to help water stay in the soil rather than running off of it (it's rock hard!). So Erich's been aerating as much as possible, and we've been mulching a lot, too.

We got a free truck-full of mulch from a tree-removal company, and have been spreading it in the orchard. It's working wonderfully. The orchard is happier, we're getting some healthy groundcover, and we actually don't have to water it as much.

First a some notes on the worms:
1. Theoretically, the worms are supposed to leave the tray with the finished castings to migrate to the tray with fresh food and bedding. I haven't really found this to be how things work. This is probably due at least in part to the fact that I haven't given them a new tray and then left them for a while to migrate. But even when there are five trays in use, the oldest one still has quite a few worms in it. So I have to get them to leave the finished compost "manually." Actually, I don't have to pick them out or anything like that. What I have been doing that works GREAT is pulling out the tray I want for its compost and putting it on top of the tray that I want to worms to move to (say, the new tray full of fresh scraps and bedding). This is somewhat contrary to the directions that have the worms always migrating upwards to the fresh tray. I then expose the finished tray to bright light, and the worms scurry downward to escape the sun (this is rather fun to watch... I picture them all saying, "Run away!"). I then pull off the top layer of relatively worm-free compost, exposing them again. They scurry further down, I pull off more worm-free compost. Eventually, they scurry all the way to the next tray. Mission accomplished.
2. Previously, I had been using shredded paper as bedding for the worms. I have not been doing this as much and have been using coconut coir instead. It seems to work much better, producing a more uniform compost without weird clumps where liquid turned the paper into a papier-mache barrier that the worms can't get through. Also, I do wonder with all the chemicals that super-white paper is treated with whether the resulting compost is quite as... "healthy" as compost made with coir. I still may continue using some paper, particularly the brown paper, but I won't be using it exclusively for bedding.

3. It's really worth cutting the food up first before giving it to the worms. Thanks to my mother's newfound interest in composting (see her blog at lonimania.blogspot.com for pictures of her super indoor composter), we now have nice compost pails and are getting into the habit of cutting up our scraps before putting them into the pails because the indoor composter really needs everything to be in bite-size pieces. Well, the worms do much better with bite-size pieces, especially with fibrous stuff like corn husks. In case it's not obvious (I guess it wasn't to me, at first), cutting up the scraps BEFORE they start rotting in the pail is WAY more pleasant than waiting until you're about to add them to the composter to cut them.

4. Our worm trays have another species in them besides the eisenia foetida (red wigglers) that we bought. They're supposed to have other creatures, but this one other species has become rather prominent. I don't know what they are. I thought at first that they were maggots of some sort, but I'm changing my mind because even though they are short, whitish, and segmented, they are flat and may have feet. I'm not sure about that--I haven't taken a close look. I was worried about them going into the garden because what if they were the larval form of something that would eat our plants (or what if they themselves would eat our plants)? But they, like the worms, run from the light, so they don't end up in the compost that I put in the garden. If any fellow vermicomposters have any idea what they may be, do comment! They're about an inch long.

That's it on the composting front. In related news, erich bought a flat of strawberry plants that I'm working on getting into the ground. My parents have some ornamental strawberries as groundcover in a couple of places, and we'd love to slowly replace them with edible strawberries. I hope they survive. The blackberry plants that we recieved from a friend seem to be surviving well. I'm hoping they grow and spread and someday bear fruit. We also have an olallieberry plant that a former supervisor gave me. It's still alive, but it doesn't look as happy as the blackberries. Even though berries require a lot of water, we decided it's worth trying to grow them ourselves, because my family goes through a ton of them from trader joes and they're really quite good for you.

Our tomato plants (and we have a lot of them, what with all the volunteer plants that came up from one batch of compost) are doing well and putting on tomatoes, but when Erich planted them, he didn't think to put up supports, so we're having tomatoes sitting on the ground. I'm trying to go around and prop them up on things.

It's a joy to finally be able to attend to the garden on a weekend like this. My weekends have been swallowed in the black hole of my dissertation for so long, I'd almost forgotten what it's like to have a real weekend. It's been wonderful.

I'm going to have a sister!

So, lately, Elena has been insisting that she's going to have a baby sister. Sometimes it's a brother, but most often, it's been a sister. I would say, "Well, maybe someday dear, God willing," and she'd say, "No, I'm going to have a sister!" And I would respond back, "Well, not yet, unless you know something we don't."

Kids are always wanting siblings.

Except that we just found out today that we're expecting! We told Elena. She wasn't surprised. It was old news to her. She went back to what she was doing. It seems to me that the time of conception (about three weeks ago) was about when Elena's intense interest in her sister picked up. Sure it might be a coincidence, or maybe God told her already, but either way this time I'll be particularly interested in what the sex of the child will be. I want to see if she's right.

Attachment parenting at night

Most of you know (whether you agree with our practices or not) that we generally cosleep and have generally avoided any "cry it out" when it comes to going to bed. My typical practice has been to take Elena to bed with me when I hit the sack around 9. This has worked quite well because
1. I go to bed relatively early (for an adult)
2. Elena doesn't need to be up at any particular time in the morning and can thus sleep in as late as she needs
3. In the past (when I didn't leave for work first thing in the morning) this gave me several hours un-interupted every morning to do whatever non-baby friendly tasks I wished. And I'm a morning person, so having this time in the morning suited me
4. This also gave erich several hours in the evening alone to do whatever he wished without me or the baby bugging him. This also suits him well. He needs regular alone time.

Lately (for perhaps six months or so), we have been altering this routine and encouraging Elena to fall asleep even when there's no one sleeping next to her. (Previously, whenever she needed to go to bed and no parent was also going to bed, we rocked with her until she fell asleep and then laid her down. But lately she has been requesting to "rock for a little bit" and then will just go lie down.) We've been working on this because 1. due to my dissertation, I have been needing to stay up past her (and my!) bedtime and 2. Erich has been getting frustrated and worried with "will she ever go to sleep alone?" thoughts. Erich was actually tempted to just switch to cry-it-out, not realizing that there are intermediate options (because he hadn't read the Sears Sleep Book).

So lately, we've been using one of the options mentioned in the Sears Sleep Book. It involves putting the kid to bed (or even laying down with them for a bit, though we don't do this much anymore) and essentially saying "you stay here, and I'll check on you in a little bit." Then you go in every five minutes (or an interval that works for the kid) and "check," saying each time (unless they really know the drill) that you're coming back in just a little bit. Until you come back and they're asleep. Or, for me, I come back and it's just time for me to hit the sack myself (Elena still sleeps with me because Erich strongly prefers sleeping on the bunk bed by himself... something about liking the mattress for his back...).

This has worked surprisingly well, and had almost no "adjustment pains." She seemed really ready for the change.

Anyway, the whole reason this came to mind to write about is something Elena said last night. Erich was off playing games with the Griffins for the evening. Elena was sitting with me a bit before going to bed (while I was working on my dissertation, of course). At some point, she seemed ready to lie down, so I suggested that she just head to bed to lie down and I would come check up on her "in a bit." She said "Papa checks up on me a lot."
I said, "Do you want me to check up on you a lot, too?"
"No. You just check up on me a little."

And, some 15 or 20 minutes later when I finally got around to checking up on her, she was fully alseep. That was that. Yet another example of how healthy kids tell us what they need--and as she grows, she does this telling more and more verbally.

"I don't want to run in circles. I want to run in squares."

Elena has been going out walking with my mother lately. Instead of going in the stroller, though, she has just been walking herself, typically about two miles. She greatly enjoys this. Most recently, she's been running for large portions, particularly through parts of the park where there is "flat dirt." She's been looking forward to going to a place where there's flat dirt just for running (my mother promised to take her to a track). I asked her if she wanted to run in circles.

She said "I don't want to run in circles. I want to run in squares."

April Summary

So we've apparently neglected to document anything in the entire month of April. Wow. I'm going to chock this up to a very busy end-of-Lent and Holy Week. We did have two birthdays (mine and Erich's). Erich and I haven't normally celebrated our birthdays much, but given Elena's enjoyment of the festivities, we've stepped up our celebration of our own birthdays at my mother's prodding. For Erich's birthday, we made another whacky cake. This time, I cut out the letters "PAPA" out of fruit leather to decorate the cake. The Griffins gave him a gift of a strategy card came that he's been enjoying since. And the kids made him birthday cards. Young Liam Patrick's card included a rather good drawing of Saint Patrick on one side and Wall-E on the other. And it had shamrocks on the front of the card which were coloured red. ("Do you know why they're coloured red? For the Blood of Christ!" Liam told me.) For my birthday (in bright week this year!) my mother took us out to sushi (a birthday tradition from my childhood) and we got to have the Griffins over for cake that evening. Highly enjoyable.

We experienced our first Holy Week and Pascha with our current parish, St. Andrew's. It was a glorious experience that reminded me in a very pleasant way of our first parish in Illinois. We also had the joy of watching our friends the Griffins be baptized. They've been at this parish far longer than we have (two and a half years, I think), so it's strange to be reminded of how new they are in the faith--I forgot many times over this past year that they were catechumens. Elena slept in on Holy Saturday and missed seeing the baptisms per se (she arrived for the chrismations). She was highly upset to miss this experience and asked several times whether they would be baptized again so that she could see. We tried to explain that it just doesn't work that way... She was relatively consoled once we were able to show her pictures. And she very much enjoyed being able to hear the story of her own baptism.

Speaking of stories, she has been very interested in hearing stories lately. This started with "The Story of Mama in the Ambulance," which is the story of when I was hit by a bus and taken to the hospital in an ambulance. I'm not sure why Papa chose to tell her this story, but it has been frequently requested since then. I tried to take advantage of her love of stories during lent as well. Normally, when combing her hair after a shower or bath, we let her watch Ni Hao Kai Lan or Word World, but during lent I tried to tell her stories relating to the current happenings or recent feasts at church. She enjoys hearing about Lazarus being raised from the dead about as much as the Mama in the Ambulance story (although I think the most popular church story is the presentation of Mary in the Temple).

And the memory that prompted me to make a post in the first place: for a while (though not too much recently), when Elena would sing a song like Twinkle Twinkle, but when she would get to the end, she would end with...

"Now and ever and unto ages of ages, Amen."

Hide and Seek

One of Elena's fun games lately is Hide and Seek. But she doesn't have Theory of Mind, yet. So, she still goes and hides by:

• scrunching down into a rock-ish shape
• standing in another part of the room, looking away from you
• hiding in the same place you just hid

We were in the car on the highway a couple days ago, and she wanted to play hide and seek. Hm... well, ok.

ER: I'll count and you go hide.
Me: (scrunching down in my seat to try and get out of view -- Serena's driving)
ER: 1, 2, 3, 10! I found you! Ok, now I hide and you count.
Me: (I count all the way to 10). Ready or not, here I come!

I look back and... well... what can you do really when you're strapped into a car seat with nothing in reach to throw over yourself. She's hiding her eyes behind her hands. She would have kept going and had a blast. I just couldn't maintain the farce of it.

Social Protocol

Lately, Elena has been fascinated by rules of politeness and social interchange. An example:

ER: Papa?
Me: Hm?
ER: No. I say, "Papa" and you say, "Yes"
Me: Yes?
ER: No, not now. First, I say, "Papa" and then you say, "Yes"
Me: OK.
ER: Papa?
Me: Yes?
ER: (smiling with gratification, she has to think of something to continue the discussion past this point) What are you doing?

Another example: We received a nice book which teaches many internal lessons in terms of cookies. Today, walking around the lawn, she says, "I say, 'May I have a cookie please?' and then I say, 'Thank you.' I am polite."

Stats

I've been spending more time recently working on my dissertation, which means less of my usual evening time with Elena. Tonight, as I'm cranking through data cleanup and stats, Elena volunteered to go to sleep lying next to me on the couch instead of rocking or going to bed with me. She told me, "While I'm sleeping, you do your stats, okay Mama?"
Okay, sweetheart. I will.

A video on farming

I came across this video. It introduces well many of the principles of farming, gardening, caring for our Earth, and living in general that I have been slowly adopting. I aspire to do what's in this video. Check it out: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4152340418943461860&hl=en

Playdough recipe

This is a big recipe that makes about three cups of playdough.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
4 tsp cream of tartar
2 cups warm water
2 tsp oil
Food colouring

1. Mix together the dry ingredients (I mixed them straight in the pot they would be cooked in).
2. Slowly add 2 cups of warm water while stirring to avoid clumps.
3. Mix in 2 tsp oil (We used lime oil. I've also heard great things about mint oil. Or you can use a more neutral oil)
4. Stir in your food colouring. I found ten drops to be a good starting place. Keep in mind that the playdough will darken up a bit as it cooks.
5. Cook over medium-low heat while stirring. Make sure you're scraping away the stuff that clumps up at the bottom of the pan. The playdough will thicken and you will see less and less of the whiter liquid that you started with. You can take the playdough out of the pan before all of the white is gone, but I would wait until you get a large glob that all holds together.
6. Use a spoon or spatula to get it out of the pot and onto a surface (we used the granite countertops).
7. Knead until smooth and uniform. It will be hot, but I found that I was able to knead it pretty much straight out of the pot, and my daughter was able to knead it soon after.
8. Put it into an airtight container. You may want to let it cool first a bit; otherwise you'll get condensation in the container.
   

Elena writes her name!

Previously, Elena has gotten stuck after "ELE," but when decorating her birthday hat, she was able to write her whole name by herself.

Birthday pictures

1. Making playdough
2. Our first finished products!
3. Our lenten birthday cake
4. Everyone enjoyed playing with the playdough. On the table, if you look closely, you can see a pascal's triangle that Erich made of playdough.

A commercial-free birthday party?

For Elena's birthday, we had a very low-key event which was only mildly birthday-themed. Erich's parents are out visiting for the entire week, which is already quite a treat. Today we had another family over to play. They have three children (ages 7, 5, and 2.5), all of whom Elena enjoys playing with. We served bagels and fruit salad. We made colour-your-own hats. We played with playdough that my mother, Elena and I made the day before (we made 18 cups of playdough in six colours, so we were able to send our friends home with some). We had whacky cake (thanks, Olsons!) frosted with maple frosting and decorated with Elena's name spelled out in almonds and dried cranberries. Our friends brought the most wonderful non-toy gifts: 1. a beautiful pot with dirt and seeds for Elena to plant 2. a small vase with some hand cut flowers that smell like honey (Elena loved this and carried it around, finding various decorative locations for it) 3. the eldest girl brought two books that she likes to read and sat down with Elena and read to her (always a cherished activity for Elena). All this in addition to coming over and playing with Elena! I will add pictures soon, but I wanted to jot down the basics of the party, which, was a big hit for all involved. (It would have made Mothering Magazine proud!)

Searching for plants to grow

It seems that, in most areas of my life, I tend to like things that not many other people do. I play go. There are chess players like mad in the US, but hardly any go players. I like plant keys. You can't buy them at Barnes & Noble. I like permaculture. You can't find any permaculture books at Barnes & Noble.

Now I'm looking for loganberry bushes or seeds, which were supposedly developed in California, but I can find no online suppliers other than the UK. Same goes for the actual variety I want -- LY654, the thornless loganberry -- only in UK and Australia, it would seem. I'm also considering a kaya tree for the nuts (and maybe the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-etc---grandkids could make an EXTREMELY valuable go board out of it). But the ones good for the nuts are the shibunashigayas ("gaya = kaya"), which I would guess are only available in Japan, from the looks of it.

My moringa seeds are here though! The seedlings died en route, so I'm planting seeds. I put them in the ground a couple days ago and waiting with eager anticipation for any sign of life.

And then there's licorish mint (anise hyssop)... I wonder if that is sold somewhere in this hemisphere. Oh, yeah, there it is. Fairly common. localharvest.org

And the banana yucca seedlings were easy enough. Weird. You hit or miss, I guess.

Is she even related to me??

Erich's trying to occupy Elena to allow me to work on my dissertation. He's also trying to clean up a bit for my inlaws' arrival. He called to Elena from her room, "Do you want to clean your room with me?" Her face lit up with glee. "I clean it?"
"Yes."
"We can get it all clean?"
"Yes."
"That sounds like a GREAT IDEA!!"
She was so excited. She loves having a clean room, and she's perfectly content to contribute to that end.

Modern Girl

Elena has been loving imaginary play. Today when she was upset and cranky from not sleeping since she's been sick, I knew that Garin (the stuffed monkey) and Gorilla would be able to talk her into playing with them instead of crying. So we had a four way hug and went into my room, found and emptied a cardboard box, and we were set to go. (Thanks to all our online shopping, we ALWAYS have cardboard boxes around.) So, I put the box on the floor and put the animals in.

Me: This is their house.
ER: (grinning now) Oh, is there a TV in the house?
Me: Of course. (I took an imaginary TV and put it in the house.)
ER: What about the remote?
Me: Oh sure! (another imaginary object went in)

We continued to furnish the house with imaginary objects. I just cracked up about the "remote" since....ok...here come the mothballs and cobwebs...I remember our old TV when I was a kid that had a tuner like an old radio dial. My Papa used to yell for me as a little pipsqueak to come tune in Channel 7 for him, since he didn't have the patience to fiddle with the brown dial with the gold letters and red needle to get it to come in.

Then I remember our first color TV and the NBC peacock.

Anyhow, it is the 21st century, and Elena's imaginary TVs have remotes.

Favourite letters

Elena has taken to calling "E" her favourite letter. Today, as we were about to sound out the word "pets," she pointed to the "e" and said "That's my favourite letter." She then pointed to the "s" and said, "That's YOUR favourite letter, Mama. /s/ for Serena." She wants Uncle Steven to have a favourite letter, too, but isn't sure what it is...

A budding mathematician

Me: Are you ready for bed yet?
ER: No
Me: What do you need to do before you're ready for bed then?
ER: Can you please play catch with me?
Me: You need to play catch first, and then you'll be ready to go to bed?
ER: Yeah.

So off we went to her room to play catch with her tennis ball. I discovered that she's become pretty good, with a decent overhand throw. Mama came in and joined and naturally we started passing the ball in a triangle. I started a counting game wherein each of us would count off the next number in sequence as we caught the ball in turn, as such:

Me: One
Mama: Two
ER: Three
Me: Four
Mama: Five
ER: Six
... (Elena kept this up successfully)
ER: Eighteen
Me: Nineteen
Mama: Twenty
ER: Eleventeen

...
Me: That's very good Elena! Good extrapolation! It's not quite correct, but good reasoning nonetheless. Full marks!

Writing her name

Yesterday, Elena spontaneously got paper and an orange highlighter and said "I will write my name." She then wrote "ELE" but got stuck on the last two letters. I should take a picture of it to add to this post...

She gets the caution from Erich

I was traveling in the car with my mother and Elena on our way to church. As usual, my mother and I were talking. Elena became a tad agitated, saying, "Stop! Stop that!"
"Stop what, Elena?"
"Stop talking!"
When we queried further, she explained very clearly that talking while driving was "dangerous." She has also expressed concern about taking curves too quickly being "dangerous."

I hope this means that she'll be a safe driver instead of an agoraphobe.

better than the man on the street

I got Elena a small stuffed gorilla. So of course we had to look up gorillas on the National Geographic website for kids. We got to see pictures of gorillas, lots of info I read to her, a cool video of mountain gorillas in the wild, and an audio recording of live gorillas. In the meantime some random picture of Obama came across the computer screen while we were looking things up. She saw this small picture, stared at it closely, and said, "That's Barack Obama. He's the President!" Later Serena asked her where he was and she said, "Washington."

Overheard in the kitchen today...

"When I was a baby I had breastmilk. But now I'm not a baby, I have regular food. I have mangoes and berries."

I'm assuming she got the idea that babies consume "breastmilk" from my mother, because I don't think I've ever talked about nursing in those terms.

Putting sounds together

For a good while now, Elena has been able to tell us the sounds that a number of letters make. But whenever I would try to put together some of the letters she knows into a word, she was completely uninterested. I told myself not to push it, that she would be interested in it when she was ready to learn it and I should just wait it out.

She is now showing interest. Saturday morning, she brought me an alphabet book and wanted me to sound out all the words with her, letter by letter. This morning (I'm home due to a federal holiday), Elena wanted to do some letter work while eating her morning mango. I wrote a word ("CAT") and said that if she could figure out what the secret message was, I would draw it for her. I asked her what sound each letter made, and she told me without difficulty (She knows those three letters well). In general, she can get to this point, but she still has difficulty putting the sounds together into a word. But today when I asked her to put it together, she said, "Cat! But I wanted a dog..."

We then got out the sandpaper letters and did some other "-at" words. The only other one that she was able to put together into a word by herself was "bat," but she still enjoyed the process with "mat" and "pat." But soon she requested to switch activities to trace letters in the sand, so we did that for a bit as well.

Also, as a related sidenote, Elena has taken ownership of the letter "E." Now, when she sees it places, she says "That's my letter!" I ask, "Why is that your letter?" She answers "It's /e/ for ehhh-lena!"

I'm lacking sleep and am grumpy

Apparently, my body doesn't think that good rest consists in having a two year old burrowing into your back, trying to snuggle for hours on end. She just couldn't quite get settled ever. I think I spent a whole five hours putting her to sleep three times last night, and it would have been more so if my wonderful wife hadn't taken Elena for the rest of the night (thank you!).

Jesus needs fiber

Me to Elena: "So, I hear you were learning about the Bible with Papa. What did you talk about?"
ER: "Jesus!"
Me: "Really? What about Jesus?"
ER: "Constipation!"
Me: What? "Jesus is constipated?"
ER: "Yeah!"

Erich, what are you TEACHING her??

(For the record, Erich says he has no idea where she got this constipation idea. We do know that she has been talking about the digestive system a lot lately, so it does seem to work its way into many conversations...)

I have a girly girl

Elena and I have been visiting Iowa. Relatives have given us many presents for Elena. Most of them are pink. But Elena is not like her mother -- she loves pink.

Today, there was an incident where Elena did NOT want to take a bath, even though she olfactorily needed one.

ER: NO NOOOOOO!!
Me: But, you need a bath. It will be fun!
ER: I don't WANT one!!
Me: But you need one. We're going out to go shopping and out to lunch, and you need a bath if you want to do that.

(one second pause)

ER: I want a bath! ... C'mon, let's go!

Later, Elena had forgotten the reason for her reversal, and was fussing about getting her hair washed. Amy reminded her that we were going shopping, after which Elena remembered to be extremely cooperative.

We're getting ready to go out the door...
ER: We're going to eat!? And then we're going SHOPPING! Yay! I LIKE going shopping!