JJ and school

I suppose it really isn't uncommon for kids in Kindergarten to love school. I mean, it's mostly fun...or at least it was when I was in Kindergarten! But today, kids in Kindergarten are learning what we learned in 1st Grade when I was in school! And yet he still loves it! He lives for work sheets, and 'home work'. Guaranteed that I won't be able to get him to do his homework this willingly in a couple of years! He is a very imaginative, and yet very fact based kid! Most of his library books are non fiction. He likes to know about things. I love that he is so interested in everything! He is especially interested in the human body, and animals of all sorts (including dinosaurs). Other favorites are any kind of construction type vehicle, any kind of rescue type vehicle, and space.
He is loving that he is learning to read and loves having us read him chapter books at bedtime. He is very into the Magic Tree House series. Soon we will have to head back to the Library as we have almost read all the ones he got for Christmas. He enjoys listening to them on CD as well.
He is starting to do math too. He brought home a simple addition worksheet the other day, and he did great. He enjoys music and art specialists the most during the school week. Here is one of his art projects he did recently (only a picture of a picture):


The other day, he came home all excited because he had a 'game' in his backpack. I credit his teacher with telling them this was a game, rather than work, because really it was spelling practice. He brought home a list of 4 sight words and he was supposed to have someone give the words to him and he is supposed to write them. We were supposed to use his favorite cereal as a reward. I told him I didn't have any, but that if he wanted to do it, we could use pennies from the penny jar instead. He was all about that...so we started. We went through his list twice....he had his 8 pennies and then he was trying to 'add rules' to the game so that he would get 2 pennies for each word. I told him he could get 2 pennies for writting words that were NOT on his list. He came away with 30 pennies all totalled, and he was so proud he was bursting!

I better refill the penny jar!

Conversations with Cari

Cari picks up an endless stream of things from the people around her...mainly her big brother, but others too. Some of her more priceless conversations:

When she gets mad her favorite line is:

FINE! If you want me to be 'imbisible' FINE! Don't talk to me, I'm MAD! (This is a paraphrase of JJ's favorite phrase, which is "FINE, if you want me to be miserable, FINE" See the correlation?

This this I say - "Well, my work here is done" neither of them thinks this is funny!?

The other night in the bath, I got two for the price of one in the way of priceless Cari-isms:

First of all, she was playing with a medicine syringe in the tub. She wants to pretend she is giving shots. So she says to me "Here Mommy, let me give you a shot. You're suppose to cry. Ok, all done! See that wasn't so bad!" Then a little bit later: "Now you need a vaccination mommy" I asked her about vaccinations and what they did. I knew she got the word from Sid the Science Kid, but wasn't sure if she knew they were really just shots too. LOL Apparently they are different: "So, this time it will hurt a little bit mommy, I think. Maybe not to much. It's ok, calm down, it will only hurt for a minute." I didn't think of it then, but I should have asked her for a sticker for being such a good patient.

And, saving the best for last......she is obsessed with private parts, mostly because of the endless potty training effort.....this one goes a little like this:

Cari: Mommy, boys have penises
Me: Yes, Cari they do
Cari: JJ has a penis
Me: Thats right he does
Cari: JJ doesn't like for me to see his penis, he likes 'pwivacy'.
Me: You are right. JJ is getting bigger. When you get bigger you will want privacy too.
Cari: Girls don't have penises
Me: Thats right, girls have vaginas
Cari: Vaginas? Thats funny!
Me:
Cari: So all the boys in the whole world have penises!
Me: Yep
Cari : AND all the girls have ................VACCINATIONS!


I almost fell into the tub!

Christmas time

Ok, so I know it was a month ago, but I have to post something about the holidays, right? Our holidays were wonderful, filled with friends and family and so many presents we have no idea where everything is going even now. We are truely blessed to have such loving and giving families. The kids had a great time with their cousins on both sides, spending Christmas Day with Jim's family, and then that we also went to see the Yogi Bear movie in the theater. It was Cari's first theater movie ever. She did pretty well, although I think she was a bit bored at times.....but she watched the movie and enjoyed it. We had a full weekend of fun and family over New Year's when we had Christmas with my family. The cousins all had a great time playing together. We arrived on Dec 30th and left on the 2nd, staying at Grandma's house that whole time. There was adult fun involved on New Year's Eve as we left all the kids to fend for themselves (ok not really....we had a sitter, and a really good one at that!), and went out for New Years dinner and celebrating. Unfortunately the night was cut a little short when the call came that one of the kids (one of my nieces) was throwing up. Great! ;o) Still not sure how, but our family escaped that one! The kids still had a great time, the next day was presents, and lots of good food and treats. Lots of Rock Band on the Wii and the kids played their stuff too. They also did all sorts of projects. Grandma got each of the grandkids (except the 2 littlest ones) Shrinky Dinks (remember those???), and you should have seen those 9 kiddos (poor little G wasn't up for it) around the table coloring and cutting those little plastic pieces! It was cute! It was hard to get back into a normal routine after having so many days off and fun days, but Jan 3rd brought back to work and back to school. JJ was ok with it, since he LOVES school, but mom and dad weren't so excited. And for the record...when JJ got home, Cari was still napping. She was asleep until I got home at 4:45 or so.....when she woke up, the first thing out of her mouth was "OH JJ Your HOME!" Gotta love that! Here are a few pictures from the weekend: