Deep!

Ever have that, when you are made a liar just as you are saying something???
I was just admonishing Bethany to keep going without being afraid, because, after all, you never sink in past your knees -- when I sank right to my thigh! I was sitting on the snow, one leg kneeling and the other fully buried!
Frank took us up to the summit for our yearly springtime snow play -- it is really fun to play in the snow when it is already hot in the valley. Even up at top, the air is warm and the snow cool, creating perfect conditions (if you don't get too wet). It was a little meltier this year than last, though, and I went in deeper than expected! I was sure glad I was wearing my hiking boots, which were tied tight and didn't come off when I pulled my leg out!
More pictures in my picture gallery, see the link at the right. I didn't comment them yet, I will get to that after our trip.
PS I posted a few today, keep on reading until you get to an old one!

"Train!"

"Zane! Zane!" Every night between 8 and 10 pm we hear this word, accompanied by train whistles, ringing through our house. Carrie Ann is fascinated by transportation right now. This morning, she looked out the window and said, "Duck" (which might mean crow), and then Bike, Tar (Car) and Zane (Train) were her next three words. "Kuck" for truck, and "yeyitata" for helicopter, as well as "hot ah babayoon" (up-away!) for hot-air balloon, up up and away! have also entered her vocabulary, due to a DK Reader from the library called "On the Move" -- which she wants to hear at least three times a day!

I got out Matthias' old wooden train toy, and she enjoyed playing with it! Tonight, the train stopped on the tracks (it was around 8 pm, still light out). Carrie and I rushed out with the stroller, to see if we could get closer before it left. After two blocks, we saw a line of stopped cars (52 of them in fact). The engine had switched to another track and was dropping off four cars behind the seed and feed place in town. We watched it shunting back and forth, and finally waved goodbye as it disappeared down the tracks. We even got to wave at the two engineers, as the got on and off the train to switch the tracks back and forth. I hope they had a smile at the little baby who dragged her mom out at bedtime to watch a train! Maybe they appreciated their job just a little more than before!

On the way to the train, we saw the most incredible sunset, with alternating pink and blue lines streaking up from the top of the mountain. I wished I had my camera, but anyway, I stopped for a moment and thanked God for his incredible painting with mountains, clouds, and bent sunlight!

DMD Art

Darius Goes West vehicle

We ordered and watched this video about a boy with DMD, the condition we thought Matthias had at first (Matthias' is a less-severe form). I thought it was worth watching (language warning), but Frank wasn't as impressed.

They sent an email asking us to share their trailer ("vehicle"), which I thought was worthwhile.



As DMD art goes, the book I read a couple years ago was better: The Boys, or, Waiting for the Electrician's Daughter by John Terpstra. This one is actually by a Christian Reformed author, as I remember, so it comes on familiar ground for some of us.

Famous!

Remember this picture? Last year, our picture was in the paper after the Victoria Day Children's Parade. Well, this year, they used that same picture in the promotional material for the "Blossom Valley Festival" and also the Creston Valley Tourist Guide!

We went to the parade again this year. It was fun dressing up for it, but then Matthias tripped on the way there. We had to rush home (thankfully only a block away, still) and bandage his knees, and then we rushed up to town for the parade with Matthias in the stroller and Carrie Ann on his lap! He was not so brave last night when I took the gauze off the scrapes (a big one on one knee, a medium sized one on the other knee, and a smaller one on his ankle), but this morning he bravely took off the bandaids all by himself.

Bethany was a long-haired princess, and Carrie Ann was just enthralled with all the flowery bicycles, dogs, and even a fire truck!

For more pictures, see my picture gallery (link at right). I haven't added comments yet, I'll hopefully get to that next week!

Singing

Matthias is humming and singing away while he washes dishes! I love it when my kids are happy while they work (okay, it took him almost an hour to stop procrastinating and wash... but now he's really happy!).
Carrie Ann brought her her "There's a Spider on the Floor" board book yesterday morning and started singing -- "pida fow" -- in other words, "Mommy, sing the "Spider on the Floor" song with me!" When she wants to eat, she climbs in her chair ("Zit, zit!") then holds out her hands and starts humming -- "For health and strength..."
We have been teaching the kids to play the harmony line for one of our rounds on their melodicas (a blow-in keyboard). Bethany picked it up really well! (ccccffggccccfgc.... not too complicated, but she's only 5!)
This picture is from about a year ago, but you can see what a melodica is.

Bubbles

The kids have been learning to help with the dishes lately, and the best part (of course) is playing with the bubbles for a while (Carrie Ann loves to help with this part).Bethany was happy with this tiara she made. (Later she took the beard off, but this was the best picture of the tiara anyways.) Last night, I let her and Carrie Ann have a bubble bath, so they could both play with bubbles for a while!

By the way, there are more new pictures up on the website, but I haven't written the comments for them yet.
PS be sure to read the next two new posts as well.

Biking!

Matthias has been practicing biking without training wheels, and this week he managed to bike for 20 Mommy paces without me holding on! The next day, he did 30 paces! (I didn't tell him there was a car following us.) I am so excited that he can get his balance. He has improved a lot since we started working on it in March in the school gym. Here is a picture of him on his bike:
Bethany figures she is ready to learn to bike without training wheels too, but I want her to wait until Matthias is going strong. (I can only do so many things at once, you know.) Carrie Ann can't reach the pedals yet, but she loves being pushed around on her tricycle wearing her "bike hat" and cries when I take her off.

Cute Baby Talk

Carrie Ann has been talking a mile a minute, lately. Sometimes she will come out with a phrase that almost sounds like a complete sentence -- as if she has learned the sound and the meaning, but not the separate words yet. Things like "It's over there" will be "Is o-eh da" for example. "Num-num-num" means "Yummy!" or sometimes, "Yes, I would like more." When she sees letters, she reads it as, "I O I O I O" (eye - oh). She learned "My!" or "Mine", and now we are teaching her to say please when she wants something instead of grabbing at it and saying Mine! She is good at Please, but it comes out as "P'sss" "B'sh", or at best "Peesh." Not bad for 17 months! Like the other kids, she has some combination words: "Sh-yi?sh" doubles as "slide" (like in the playground), and "lights." (? is a glottal stop like in ?uh-?oh. It often still replaces final stops like the k in bike and the t in light.) Another favourite word is "guck", which means "stuck" -- this is for anytime something is too tight or heavy for her to move. She has gotten good at "that" -- "dat" as in "Mo dat!" for "I would like some more of that!" No comes out "O-oh" (often two syllables) when she says it, and Yes is "Ya" or "Yesh." "Dada" is one of her favourites, and she has also finally started saying "Mom-mom-mom" for me! She still calls Matthias "Dada" as well as Frank. Bethany is starting to come out more like "Beba-y" -- at first it was Baba, the same as baby, barbie, and dolly in general.
It has been hot here, so I made some mint-ade for the kids to drink (I had some too, of course). Carrie Ann didn't like it much, but she wanted to nurse lots because of the heat. In the evening, I asked her if she was getting much milk, because it didn't feel like she was sucking very effectively. She shook her head no. I asked if she was finished nursing, and she said no again. I asked if she was getting water, since I know the milk gets watery when I drink lots, and she nodded yes. Then it occurred to me that oils transfer to the milk, so I asked if she was getting mint water -- and she gave me a big smiley nod! Then Bethany wanted to taste the mint water breastmilk, so I squirted some in my hand for her, and tasted a couple drops myself. Carrie Ann was right -- it tasted way more like the mint water than like milk!

Wawa

I first came across the word Wawa when, as a child, my family drove north of Lake Superior to Thunder Bay. Wawa is the much needed rest stop with the giant goose statue! Little did I know that word would have so much significance later in my life!

It is amazingly flexible: to Matthias, "wawa" meant water -- large or small, from, "I need a drink" to "Look, an ocean!"
To Bethany, "Wawa" was the sound of a baby crying, and it became the name of her beloved doll which she dragged around by the hair from the age of 1 to 3. At bedtime, she would look around saying, "Wawa? Wawa?" until she found her dolly and attached her fingers to its hair.
Carrie Ann uses the word almost as often, but to her it means "Flower". After bikes and dogs (woof-woof), the next thing she spots is flowers! And guess what? At this time of year, there are a lot more flowers around than bikes and dogs! "Wawa! Wawa!" In fact, it will do for anything green and leafy! Tulip leaves? Dandelion greens? A budding lilac tree? "Wawa!" Whenever she has the opportunity, she climbs on the table and pulls all my flowers out of their vases!
Long live wawa!

Linux!

Welcome to my first post from my new Linux Mint set-up. Yay for alternatives! Well, it's taken most of this week to get most things working, and I still need to copy over all my files. However, it is the first time we've gotten Linux working for us, so it is definitely coming along.

Remember my post about Carrie Ann and her "bike hat" theme? Well, she still wakes up every morning with the words, "Bike--bike--bike, hat--hat, owie" (pointing out the window on bike, patting her head, or mine, on hat, and pointing to her toes on owie). We did some biking this week -- Matthias managed 5 Mommy strides without me holding on (no training wheels), and Carrie Ann was ecstatic to get her turn. At bedtime she found the bike helmet again (which didn't make it into the shed), and wanted to wear it a bit longer:

She got me this week once! I suddenly noticed that the Carrie Ann noises from the other room had stopped a couple minutes ago. When they didn't start up again, I went to check on her. After looking in the living room and bedroom, I headed upstairs. When I didn't find her there, I checked the bathrooms and laundry room. Then I made sure the house doors were closed! A little nervously, I started on my second pass through the house, this time calling her name. As I stuck my head in the bedroom calling, "Carrie Ann, where are you?" I heard a little snicker. Sure enough, when I looked a little harder I found her hiding in the closet! Bethany has played hide and seek with her before, and that is one of their main hiding places -- but she has never played it all by herself before! And who told her to be so quiet when she was hiding? Life is sure fun with imaginative little ones around!

Matthias also surprised us today. We went for a hike up Balancing Rock Trail, and he practically zoomed up and, when it was time to go, zoomed back down again. He complained a little bit about cramps, but he still kept going so well it was hard for me (shepherding Bethany) to keep up with him. Go Matthias!

Marble Run and Number Fun

Matthias got himself one of these for his birthday (with his leftover birthday money from last year):

I think this is what he is thinking of:


One of Bethany's favourite questions lately has been: What's the biggest number you can think of? I have tried to explain the idea of infinity to her -- that no matter what number you can think of, you can always think of one more. Matthias caught on to this concept no problem when he was about that age, but Bethany asks it over and over! Once I explained, infinity is like if I started with a one, and then wrote zeros until I filled the whole line -- then the whole page -- then the other side -- then another page -- then another, until I had a stack that reached up to the ceiling -- then another stack until the whole living room was full! Here she caught on and said, "And then the whole house?!!" Last night she started by asking how many sticks she had to pick up, so I said, "As many as the number of years you want to live in heaven." "How many years are there in heaven?" she wondered. "Think of all the blades of grass in the lawn, plus all the hairs on our heads, plus all the sand in the sandbox, plus all the stars in the sky..." "Wow, that's a lot! Do you think it's 286?" 286 981 is the biggest number she can think of, and comes up whenever I try to explain infinity. (Sometimes the numbers are switched around a bit: 986 281, for example.) She doesn't say the "thousand" -- it's pronounced "nine hundred eighty-six two hundred eighty one." Last night, after I explained "all the..., plus all the..." and said it was a bigger number than I could even say, she said, "But it isn't really the biggest number, is it? Because the numbers keep counting on and on and on." So she is getting it -- kind of.
So I wish you 286 blessings and 981 love!

Done! and Fun!

Yay! Yesterday, we finished all our homeschool work!

Matthias actually had about a week of his Map workbook left, but when he heard that Bethany was done, he decided to finish it all! So he did 5 days worth of work in one day! It was long, but he persevered, and now he is done until September (though we will keep reading together). We all worked really hard this year, so we finished a whole month earlier than last year. Last year, Matthias was pushing to finish by his birthday. So now we get to celebrate the beautiful weather!

We went to the park, and Bethany had her own milestone -- for the first time, she managed to pump hard enough on the swing to keep herself at the same height for quite a while! Wow!

Carrie Ann had fun chasing a friendly dog around. It tried to ignore her, but then it went over by her stroller and lay down. She came up and squatted in front of it, and it obligingly licked her all over the face (which is what she wanted all the time, I think). When I got there, she was sticking out her tongue to give it some doggy kisses back!

Her favourite words recently are "bike" and "hat" -- which means, don't forget to wear your bike helmet when you ride your bike! She spends at least an hour a day evangelizing everyone in the vicinity about this principle! She also showed signs of trying to colour in a shape at colouring time today -- the circles had a lot more ink in them than the rest of the paper, and the other letters had parallel lines around them, rather than scribbles in any direction. Amazing! She's going to be an artist like Bethany. One day I'll have a scanner hooked up again, and share some artwork with you.