Hey folks! Many apologies to anyone who has been waiting for an update (mother!). I can't believe that it's been 2 months already. Be sure to scroll down. I added a bunch of posts tonight. We are in the middle of "birthday month", so hopefully I will be better at keeping this up to date. We have been busy - we continue to go to gymnastics, but we also started going to a dance class as well as a preschool co-op with some families from church on Fridays. We had a few weeks of nasty car troubles, but seem to be past that now. There is always some kind of cooking project to be done. The women's brunches have started back up again and community groups are starting to meet again, too. Phew!
The big issue now is working through an allergic reaction that Erica had to something. At this point, we're thinking that it was the amoxicillin that she just got done taking for a sinus infection, but it may also be food related. The poor thing is covered from head to toe with itchy hives. The steroid medicine and bendryl are both pretty strongly flavored and she has a real hard time taking them. I have had some success with mixing them with a strawberry milkshake and putting a Twizzler on the table as incentive. :) It may be the only time she will ever hear her mom say, "Ok honey, let's finish your ice cream so you can have your candy!"
Erica is starting to talk. She just started say, "Steph" this past week. So cute. Daddy has started her on some Jedi training. She isn't even 2 yet and can make a better Chewbacca sound than I can! She knows most of the main characters of the original triology. She still loves Nemo and likes to act out the part where Nemo first gets taken. So she'll sit there and frantically say, "Nemo! Nemo! Nemo! ... Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" over and over again. She says, "Do-do" for Dory. Very cute. We have no clue what to do for her birthday. Who knows what she'll choose. We may need a mixture of Spiderman/Iron Man, Star Wars, Princess and the Frog and Nemo. Ha ha. She is also really working on learning her colors.
Stephanie is definitely 4 now. We are working on obedience and using her nice voice/words. She is such a nice big sister to Erica and they are spending more and more time playing together. They have been having "tea parties" lately with their play food or playing restaurant. Stephanie has finally started playing with her doll house. She is also finally enjoying paper/magnetic dolls and dressing up the dolls in various fashions. She is showing a lot of interest in reading/telling stories and really trying to learn songs. She is enjoying preschool and is learning her letters and numbers.
I have enjoyed helping out with preschool. I have been assisting in the classroom for this first month and have been contributing with my passion for cooking. The first week, I made fresh pasta dough and had the kids cut out shapes using playdough letters and numbers cutters. Then I put them in some chicken soup I made that we ate for lunch at the end of the day. The second week, we started with "A", so we made applesauce. The third week was Stephanie's birthday. We read the Little Bear story where he makes Birthday Soup. So, I made some Birthday Soup to share for lunch and brought in cupcakes for the kids to decorate themselves. This last week, we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in class and I put together a fun sampling of the various food the caterpillar eats. I decorated one paper plate to look like the caterpillar head (just like on the book) and then laid out plain paper plates behind the head to look like a caterpillar. On each plate, I put a different food - apple, pear, plum, strawberries, oranges, cheese, salami, chocolate cake, pickles and lettuce leaves. It turned out so nice and the kids responded so well to it. I also made some muffins that I called my "ABC" muffins since they had apricots, bananas and carrots in them.
We had an interesting experience in a restaurant last week where the girls saw a girl a little older than them with a severely disfigured face. The girls have been very aware of the scary Halloween decorations in the stores we go in and were comparing her to the monster decorations. For the next couple of days, we had some great conversations about how she is just a normal little girl just like them and probably likes Strawberry Shortcake and princesses, too. We have been praying for her and Stephanie reminds me if I forget.
