Happy birthday 3-year-old!!!!

A very origami snow storm

Reporting live from day 2 of snow storm confinement. Sweatpants? Yes. Toys and unfolded laundry everywhere? Yes. Ears now deaf to the sound of two girls making each other screech? Yes.

Fortunately we're snowed in with and ample supply of origami paper. I'm not sure who made more of this folded paper blizzard here on the desk, Molly or Jim, but I think it helped everybody keep their sanity yesterday.

Molly folds a paper crane. She's wearing her very own fashion creation. I call it the No-Sew Flannel Disney Princess Gown.

Pigtails!!!

100th day

Happy 100th day of school! What, haven't you been counting? Teachers and kids do that now. Today there's a party!!! Kate and I are even going to make an appearance (I'm volunteering and Kate promises she'll be a good helper).

Molly had a 100th day homework page last night that asked, among other things, whether she's 100 inches tall and if not, how tall is she? This led us to discover that, according to the marks on the wall, she's grown 3 inches since the last time we measured! I'm not sure when that was, but we haven't lived here even a year. Wow!

Yodel-ah-hee-hoo!

Ta-dah!! So many school projects sent home this month.

Kate's portrait of Molly.

In other big kid news, Molly has been going out to the bus stop by herself for the past few weeks. This is a wonderful development, particularly for me because I just give her a hug at the door. No bundling up, no standing in the cold, no bundling up Kate or leaving her cranky in the house while we wait for the bus. Just a kid getting a free ride to school. 

It almost makes up for all the "Down Down Baby" and "Don't drink whiskey, I know karate, I'll punch you in the body" rhymes she has picked up on that bus. For a month or two her bus friends in the afternoon (when the big, bad 1st and 2nd graders are in the mix) have been trading. It's really amazing how they've developed a mini economy around things like fishtail bracelets, bits of dollhouse furniture, balloons and plastic jewelry. I really wish they would give out a list of the kids on the bus with contact info the way they do for her classroom. I'd really like to be in touch with other parents about these sorts of things.

Love this Valentine's Day card...

Meanwhile, we just got Kate all signed up for preschool in the fall. Coincidentally we were in the church that shares the kid rooms with her preschool and she stayed with the volunteers playing in the rooms during the service, no separation issues at all. Woo hoo! Also, our neighbor Ellie across the street is going to the same school on the same days. It's going to be lovely fall, I think.

February break

Technically most of these pictures were taken before Molly's February break but here's some stuff we've been up to.

Dressing up in princess costumes. (Had enough of "uppy pose" yet? We haven't!)

Making valentines for Molly's kindergarten class.

Kate drew a bunch of people.

Our bunny stopped eating and drinking a week or two ago. I thought it was probably the end for this little guy, who turns 11 this spring. But fresh veggies magically revived him and now he's back to his normal fluffy self.

You never know around here when you're going to look up from what you're doing to find two matchy girls standing there silently staring at you.

This actually is our February break, photographed just moments ago. Kate has a nasty cold that kept her up most of the night. She was such a mess that this morning Jim turned on PBS Kids, which oddly settled her right down. All these years we've been avoiding TV. Who knew! Now Molly's in there zoned out. I'm pretty sure nobody knew our TV even did that. :) There you go, kids. Happy vacation!

 

To The Moon

Molly: [Relaying random facts about the moon learned in school with varying accuracy]
Kate: I want to go there
Julie: Where, the moon?
Kate: Yesss
[Pause]
Kate: Do I have to keep my shoes on?
Julie: On the moon? Yes.
Kate: Oh [shrugs with disappointment]

Dictionary

About once a week Molly's teacher assigns the kids a letter. They're supposed to draw or cut out magazine pictures of things starting with that letter and stick them on a half piece of paper. The teacher collects them and then they have a discussion at some point where they look at them all together.

Since the beginning Molly has been doing these almost entirely on her own, usually in the mornings before we're even out of bed. She always draws and the words are usually spelled as she sounds them out, so they take a little deciphering.

This past weekend the assignment was Q and U. When I woke up she brought in her paper and said she could think of only one Q word ... "qeschin" and drew a ? next to it.

I suggested she get out the dictionary that Beppe gave her for Christmas. Well. Now the dictionary is like a game for her. She ended up drawing a quail, a queue, a quiz and all sorts of Q things I never would have thought of.

Even so, I wasn't prepared for what she showed me on her U page when I got out of bed this morning:

She was stuck on the drawings. She told me she didn't know how to draw an umpire. I was surprised that she did seem to have an illustration for unaccountable. Turns out she had read it as "uncomfortable" and drew a person sitting on a floor. We discussed what unaccountable means and she drew a person holding a glass of milk then pouring it on the floor and smiling.

She ended up drawing a baseball for umpire, plus later something that she told me was a mask that he wears.

And then there's ultraviolet. She told me she didn't even know how to pronounce it. After my long-winded and confusing explanation that involved lots of gesturing and finger waving she settled on a drawing that I'm sure she doesn't understand.

I made her promise to tell me what her teacher's face looks like when she holds up Molly's U paper to discuss this week.

Dancers

Parent observation again at ballet class...

Molly on the far right

Kate joined Molly for free dance, which gave them a chance to perform their special pose for an audience.