Isa has happy feet

Isa can't really stop dancing. Not even for a minute. After watching the movie Happy Feet, she got inspired to see if her own feet could be that happy. The cuteness and determination with which she dances is awe inspiring. I just couldn't keep it to myself.

Christmas Merriment

The clown suit was recently found at the RRFM. She hasn't really wanted to wear anything else since we brought it home. So, she wore it on Christmas Eve.

homeschooling begins

Today was my first attempt to sit down with Isa and do some structured-type learning. I bought her some workbooks at education and art supply store nearby. These books are for teaching writing letters and numbers and sorting same and different objects. She understood the concepts well. She could easily identify both upper and lower case letters. She recognized all the numbers. She did decently well holding back her excitement long enough to listen to the directions for each page.
She had a harder time forming the shapes for the letters and numbers than I thought she would. But then, that is why I bothered to get these books in the first place. She seemed utterly disinterested in me teaching her letter and number shapes before. Now that we have a tangible format in which to explore, she was more interested. We worked for about 30 minutes or so this morning and completed about seven separate workbook pages. She was bored with the handwriting lessons, but wanted to keep on with the coloring. So, I cleaned up her workbooks and offered her some coloring books instead. I think it went well, for a first attempt. Here are my goals to work toward:

• More focused energy and less scattered mind while we work.
• A clear distinction between time to follow directions and time to play or draw freely.
• A more easy going me so that I can remain patient with her while she learns.
• A fun spirit that knows when to bend the "rules" and when to follow the instructions.
• An enthusiasm from both of us that will carry us into more fun learning.

gift exchange

just a laugh for this lovely holiday season...

Holiday Cookie Baking

We needed some lemon zest for our citrus-y lemon cookies. Amazingly, when you give a piece of fruit to a kid and tell them to zest it, they get the hang of it pretty quickly.

Isa once told me that she was a little kid and I was a big kid. What kid doesn't want to lick the spoon?

10 reasons why I love being a full time parent...

Loving the Self

Do you ever just look at yourself
with this kind of look
and smile at yourself, cleverly, knowingly,
like you do to your best friend?

Can you breathe in your own breath
and accept yourself as you are
whilst keeping your eyes focused above on The Divine?

Do you love yourself enough
to give yourself a great big kiss or hug?
Because once you can do that,
you're finally so full of Love
that you have enough to give away.

It's good to have friends

This is Isa and Davi. They played together ALL day today... which was wonderful for the kids as well as being wonderful for me. Sometimes I run out of ideas for stuff for Isa to do. That's when we get into video time or computer game time. Today she only spent about 20 minutes on the computer all day because she and Davi kept each other quite busy doing things like:

jumping on the bed,

flopping on the bed,

spinning,

and playing ring around the rosie.

They also did some painting, clay shaping, block building, doll house play, and dress up. Man, if someone would have told me it would be this easy to take care of two at once, I would have adopted a second child at Isa's birth. When you get two kids who play well together into a groove, the caretaker needs to do very little to keep that groove going. Not once did I have to break up a fight over a toy, or tell them not to hit one another, to remind anyone to use their words. *sigh* I wish it was this easy with all her playmates. THere are only a few for which extended playtime gets to be too stressful to be fun. But today reminded me that there are good friends out there with whom Isa can build relationships and learn how to play together, rather than against.