What the Children in Our Nursery Learn

I am the nursery leader in my church. For my readers who may not know, that means I "teach" the 18 month to three year-olds. Here is the art project I put together for the little munchkins to do in nursery today. Can you see what it is? After I finished cutting them out I showed Scott and (not yet realizing what I had done) said, "look, the birds and..." (the rest of the sentence was drowned in laughter as I at last did).

Breakfast Baggy

March 25, 2008
Susanna has recently found great interest in cooking. Well actually she has been trying to get in on the cooking for quite a while, but only in the past month or so have I given in to the determined pleas ("Mommy uh uh uh (uh = up). Mommy!") she made whenever I started making something. When I finally picked her up and found ways for her participate, I discovered that cooking with Susanna is great fun and, thanks to my new IKEA stool (is that word always in all caps?) not nearly as difficult as I had imagined it would be. Here Susanna is making pancakes (which she pronounces baggy) in her pajamas. Hopefully it won't be long until she's making me breakfast in bed.

St. Patty's Day Visit

My father had a meeting in Seattle this morning (Monday 3/17-- St. Patrick's day), so he came in town Friday night enabling us to spend a little time with him. We went to a couple of great local parks (including Ballard Locks, pictured above), did some projects around the house, and spent time chatting, playing games, and catching up. Scott and I had a great time watching Susanna get to know and love her grandpa (baba). This morning, after a plate of green waffles and a series of airborne kisses, we dropped him off at Union Square for his meeting, then Susanna and I walked to the downtown library for song and story time.

Push-ups

Susanna likes to participate in our exercise. For example, she'll come sit on my stomach when I am doing sit-ups. When I am doing push-ups, she enthusiastically yells "pu-pu," and when I am done she'll ask me to do more, and then more, and then more (she has even pushed me onto my hands and knees to help get me going). This gets very tiring, so I was glad when she started doing them herself, allowing me to distract her from betraying my weakness by telling her to do them herself. The top photograph shows what she does when it is her turn (there is no movement involved); the bottom is her resting between repetitions. As a variation, she will reach her arms straight out to the side parallel to the ground, rather than have them help support her weight alongside her head (sorry, no photograph of that). She even counts as she does them "two, one, eight, nine," although her pronunciation isn't as perfect as my dictation would lead you to believe.

A visit from mom

My mother came to visit February 21st (also Susanna's 18 month birthday) and stayed until the 26th. What a treat! (especially since Scott had to spend Thursday and Friday out wooing potential graduate students to UW's department of Immunology) Among the things we did were paint a table and chairs for Susanna (finished project pictured above) and go for a walk on the Washington Arboretum's beautiful Waterfront Trail (also pictured). Not pictured were trips to favorite restaurants, mom's help with a current knitting project, a walk along the beach at Golden Gardens and the Union Bay Natural Area (although the latter isn't really a beach), a couple days of shopping, and a couple batches of ice cream in our new ice cream maker. As you can probably guess, it was, as we said in high school "a blast."