Our Little Gymnast

A friend introduced me to this great gymnastics center that opens its gym for toddlers and preschoolers to use as a playground.  It has been raining all day so we went today, and I brought the camera so here are some photographs.    

My kid could paint that

We did some painting today; here’s a few shots of Susanna at work.

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

       

From Susanna and her babies.

Update

Our biggest news is that I am pregnant, and child number two (who we just found out is going to be a boy) is due to arrive around August 4, 2009.  We are very excited.  Despite her constant assurances for the past couple months that we would be having a girl, Susanna is very excited about having a little boy and greeted us this morning with a song about the little guy.  It’s lyrics were “baby brother, baby brother, baby brother…”  She has also been “making milk” for him (she does this by pumping a glue-stick in it’s cap for a few minutes).  Sometimes it’s chocolate milk, lucky guy!  And she has even set aside one of her old pink sleepers for baby brother (it’s out because one of her dolls is often wearing it).  I guess we’re all set!

As the milk example illustrates (she’s also got a stock for her soon-to-be-born cousin Milo), Susanna’s time is dominated by pretend play, and the scenarios she acts out continue to get more complicated, extended, and surprising. Gibberish has also recently become very, very funny to her and (on an unrelated note) she loves the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah and is always asking us to play “Forever, Forever, Hallelujah, Hallelujah”).  Here is a photograph of her playing in our tent. Scott put it up for kicks on Saturday; she was delighted.

Scott is always coming up with things like setting up the tent (what a great idea!).  And he and Susanna tell the best stories together before she goes to bed, and I always feel bad when he’s working too late to put her down because my stories are very boring.  He spends a lot of time in the lab, but has also started playing basketball with the Elders’ Quorum very regularly and enjoys that.  Susanna has really gotten into the spirit and talks about basketball a lot.  We finally went to watch one of his games and Susanna yelled “go dad” the entire time (well, the parts of it that she couldn’t go play basketball herself).

I decided a while ago that I would make a quilt for Susanna’s twin bed (this was well before we had the bed) and then, thinking we might someday have a son, that I would make a baby quilt that is more masculine than the pink tulip one we were given for Susanna.  I’m not sure what spurred my sudden interest in quilting, or my completely unfounded belief that I could successfully make a quilt (perhaps it has something to do with my amazing and generous quilting neighbor), but I’m pushing forward.  I’m a little behind where I hoped to be at this point, we’ve had a twin bed for a while now (although Susanna will only “sleep” in it for a minute or less and then ask to be moved to the crib), and I have only just finished cutting the squares.  The lady at the fabric store told me the cutting is the most time consuming part though, so maybe there’s hope.

Our Crazy Family Home Evening

As mentioned in a couple of previous posts (1/28/08 and 11/19/07) we try to gather every Monday evening for a “Family Home Evening.” Tonight our FHE was particularly colorful, so I thought I’d share it with you all (or, at least, record it for myself).

Pre-FHE activity: Sleeping Bag Tantrum. Susanna somehow got one of Scott’s sleeping bags down from the hall closet. She spied it while putting away the broom after helping me “sweep” the kitchen floor (she un-swept the pile of dirt I had gathered in the kitchen when I set aside the broom before finishing the job myself, distracted because I noticed she was throwing her play food off our deck, “Mallory will gobble it up,” she explained—Mallory is the one-year-old who lives one floor down). “Let’s go camping!” She happily called after pulling out the sleeping bag. Scott suggested we go another time but said we could use it as a place to gather for Family Night. She was delighted until we tried to join her, when she blocked our access saying (with increasing intensity) “this is my sleeping bag” and “get your own.” Our living room is about the size of the sleeping bag so we really did need to join her. We therefore used our wonderful parenting skills to calmly explain that it was time for family night and we needed to be together; she threw a tantrum.

Opening song: Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah

Opening prayer: Me

Lesson: “Jesus Showed Us How to Love Others.” After talking about three examples of Jesus showing love to others and discussing how they can be good examples for us, we presented a three piece puzzle I made out of a picture of one of the examples. Susanna’s job was to name one way Jesus showed us how to love others for each piece (we even gave her the three pictures of the examples we discussed to jog her memory) and then put together the puzzle. Here’s what she came up with: 1. Jesus showed us how to jump (jumping). 2. Jesus shoed us how to crawl like a crab to our bedrooms (crawling like a crab). 3. Jesus showed us how to jump on our dads (tackling Scott with a bound). She loved the puzzle.

Scripture: Ten Lepers story

Closing Song: I’m trying to be like Jesus

Closing Prayer: Scott

Treat: Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (made with flaxmeal, rye flour, buckwheat flour, extra oats, extra pecans, maybe wheat germ – anything I could find that seemed like a decent substitute for flour because we were out).

This is a video of Susanna singing "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" in her big girl underwear. Susanna prefers to watch the video in double speed (and, to be honest, so do I), so that's how you're going to get it. This was not filmed during family night and Susanna is not potty-trained (although she does wear a pair of underwear now and then).

If you want to hear Susanna's real singing voice, you can take a look at this post