October 11th 2009

October 11^th, 2009

What a fun, busy weekend!! Rob was off all weekend, and the kids loved it! Friday morning Jase, Gabby, and I had a parents as teachers (PAT) playdate at the old value city building fox now owns (I think it’s called the roy wilde conference center?) We have been in there before, but in the main conference room part. The ESCE part is where they have the playdates, it’s an enterance off to the left of the bldg. When we walked in, it was so bright and colorful from floor to ceiling. It was like walking into a preschool, I wasn’t expecting that at all, I think they just made some improvements to this portion over the last year or so. Anyway, I was so impressed, there were at least 10 classrooms that wrapped around and down the hallway, each FILLED with toys, posters on the walls, fun projects hanging from the ceiling. I believe they also use these rooms for early speech therapy, physical therapy, and headstart type programs. We saw Jessica and Nathan Grimm at our playdate. There were around 25 other kids there, and it lasted about an hour, but it really went smoothly. The kids pretty much had “open play time” with a few activities parents could do with the kids there, or take them home. Most kids were 2 years old, the kids had a blast. We have many more PAT playdates coming up in the near future.

Saturday we (I guess I should say “I”) decided to finally clean the basement and make a play area for the kids. It actually only took a couple of hours. I found brand new carpeting and carpet pad at a garage sale earlier in the day right up the street, perfect for the play area. The kids LOVE the play area, it actually is turning out really nice. We have moved some toys down there, plan on moving the play house down shortly and some of Jastin’s bikes for the winter, the koala climber, as well as the sand table (this I just want to move inside, they’ll just use the top to drive cars on, no playing with sand in the basement, too messy!) Rob and I set up the big ball pit, and Jase actually remembered what it was as we were getting it out. He yelled “yay!”, and I asked him if he knew what it was for and he said “yeah, ball….pool” close enough.

Sunday was our visit to the pumpkin patch. It was a little cold in the morning, so we bundled everyone up, hoping to beat the crowd, but it was still pretty busy when we got there at 10am. The kids still enjoyed themselves, they really liked looking at the pumpkins and gourds. They had the tractor show as well, so of course, Jase spent some time over there looking at tractors. One farmer even let Jase sit on his orange tractor. I asked Jase if it was his favorite, and he said no, he liked the green and red ones better J They had fun mazes, slides, a fort, and bouncy houses. We even saw our friends the Grimms, and the Rhoads as well (for a few minutes before the kids ran off again) Once Jase discovered how much fun was to be had at “fort spooky” he didn’t want to leave that area. It got to be an hour past lunchtime, and nap time for Gabriella, so needless to say we left the pumpkin patch without a pumpkin and two crabby kids. Oh well, it was still fun!

Jase is doing amazing with his speech. I just got done putting him to bed, bedtime is my favorite time of day with Jase. We go into his room, we turn on his lamp and read lots of books. He really gets animated with the books and his vocabulary at this time. He definitely has his favorite books that we read pretty much every night. He is getting really good and naming things in the books, and naming more colors. He is also getting very good at singing his ABC’s (and recognizing them in books), I think he wanted to sing them about 5 times before he would let me start the prayer tonight! We always end with our prayer. He knows to say “dear god” and says things he’s thankful for (mommy, daddy, gabby, his grandparents, French fries, and of course, Thomas and Red the firetruck) and he always ends with “AMEN!!!” Then “night night mommy, I love you”

Gabriella is teething, so she’s a little crabby and not very giving with her smiles lately (unless she’s in the ball pit downstairs!) She’s up to almost 20 words, her favorites being “up, mama, dada, ba(ball), da(dog), baoon(balloon), hi, yeah” She still refuses to walk, which is fine with me. I keep telling Rob she is going to be reciting “twinkle twinkle little star” to her physical therapist when they are teaching her how to walk in a few months, LOL. She is just not interested, but she’ll get there….then we’ll be in trouble! She is SO independent (which we have known since birth J ) She goes down the steps on her own (with me right there, of course). She likes to wash and dry her hands, brush her teeth, pretty much everything all by herself. She has a very short attention span, I mean, it’s exhausting just watching her play around the living room. She also has a very short temper and loves terrorizing the dogs. Wait, that sounds EXACTLY like her daddy!