"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!