Sophia's 7th Birthday Party

Sophia is celebrating her 7th Birthday in June. We originally planned to spend her summer birthday outside at Cody Park Rides. Due to tremendous storms and almost cold, windy weather, we moved it inside to the Children's Museum. It was a good party with lots of friends and both sets of grandparents, plus three cousins (Ian & Olivia from Wichita, Cameron from Olathe)!

Here she is with her horse cake and sparkler candles.

As you can tell, she has recently lost two bottom teeth.

The very favorite toy was the Zhu Zhu Pets. She received several of the houses/tunnels, but only one little hamster, Jilly. We soon figured out that wasn't going to work with two brothers at home. So Grandpa K. and Daddy went out on an emergency Zhu Zhu Pet shopping trip so that every little person would have his/her own little, squeaky hamster.

Tooth Fairy

My 6 year DD lost her first tooth on Saturday. It was quite a full day for us as DH had just completed a 97.5 mile bicycle ride to the next town over. After dinner on the drive home, I noticed Sophia twisting the loose tooth. Sure enough as she was getting ready for bed she brought the tooth in to show us. Every one took a turn holding the precious tooth. Panic ensued when it dropped to the off-white carpet. Fortunately, she found the very tiny tooth.

We put it in her hand-made tooth fairy pillow from Grandma Anita.

The Tooth Fairy was pleased to find the coins she had stashed away for this late night moment.

Sophia was pleased to wake up to find a gold dollar coin.

Here is a picture of the newly lisping Sophia:

Sophia

Many of you know that we were married 4 years before our first baby was born. That three plus years of infertility was hard on us. I consider Sophia our miracle baby.

Here are some photos of my Little Miracle in honor of her 6th Birthday.

My Cute Kids

Here are some recent snapshots of the kids being silly and cute...

Will is practicing his weight-lifting & balancing while Sophia balances a tray.

Will absolutely loves to wear his black hat and cap while playing with his hobby horse. Probably the best $10.00 I've ever spent.

Sophia posing as a model ... in a t-shirt & baggy pants:)

I sure hope he doesn't have a future in acting...

Nicholas is just too cute with his curls and stripey sweater.

Letter of the Week ???

I am super behind on my Letter of the Week posting. We've actually not been keeping up with it as Sophia started coloring a new "Letter Person" each day after Christmas. Our entire back sliding glass door, front door and some of our coat closet has the finished Letter product posted on them. We play a "Letter Game of Mystery" in which the Contestant (Sophia or Will) must identify the letter and sound of each Letter Person as the Host (Mom or Dad) slowly unveil them WHILE speaking in a funny voice. It is a lot of fun and the kids get marshmallows when they are finished. Nicholas has quickly taken to loving mini-marshmallows!

She has begun blending sounds pretty well using magnetic letters. There are many she has already mastered and I add more each day. Mostly two lettered sounds and words, some three letter words like Mom, Dad, God. Another game we have been playing is for each letter flashcard or word/sound flashcard she identifies correctly, she jumps up a step on the staircase. I guess you can say she is getting her exercise too!

Back to School

Today was our first day back to school since the Christmas break. I'd like to say I have all sorts of additional things already planned, but I'm not quite there. Schooling between Thanksgiving and Christmas was very difficult. We just did the important items like Math, Letters & Handwriting and let the rest slide. Oh yes, Sophia did learn several Christmas songs like Joy to the World, Silent Night, Away in a Manger, and the ever-popular Go Tell It On The Mountain. Maybe we should have really called that Phys Ed because every time we sang Go Tell It... she thought she needed to skip & run in circles!

I am very happy to report though that we are back on track with our phonics study. Slowly but surely. We took a break from it in October as the text we were using just was not working for us. My DD would "fight" me every time I got it out. It was like pulling teeth! My consultant at St. Thomas Aquinas Academy suggested laying off of it until after Christmas. In the meanwhile we concentrated on a Letter a Week program, which is going very well.

Now, I am going to follow Ruth Beechak's A Home Start in Reading text. Basically, she'll be learning the sounds of the letters using homemade flashcards. We'll move on to blending the sounds, then proceed to the Bob Books, a cute little first reader set.

I do want to extol the virtues of some awesome Leap Frog DVDs, Letter Factory, Word Factory and Math Circus. At the suggestion of one of Michael's co-workers (former homeschooling Mom), we bought the Letter Factory DVD. It boldly states, Teaches Phonics, on the cover, so we thought for $10 at Wal-Mart - what could it hurt? WOW! It is only a 30ish minute video, but after watching it a few times, Sophia had learned the letters sounds and was teaching them to Nicholas!!! NO JOKE! It's just a cute little story about a beginning reader, Tad, who is touring a "Letter Factory." Great music too! The Word Factory shows how letters build words and Math Circus teaches beginning math (number recognition, intro to addition and subtraction). Both Sophia & Will really enjoy watching the movies. They even request them!

So today when we started back to our new phonics program, I whipped out my colorful homemade flashcards and Sophia whizzed through them. I am eternally grateful to Leap Frog!
Other items in the works post-Christmas include some fitness stuff I'm working on (got to read that book), continuing our Letter a Week along with the phonics, and some more Music study (from the library). Maybe even a gymnastics class...

Later this week, I'll post our "I" week books that we are reading....

a bad experience....

"Play-Do" Grandma & Grandpa are visiting us for Labor Day Weekend. Sophia has been has learned a new word: experience. She has learned that good experiences make you feel good, while bad experiences make you feel - well - bad. A good experience includes getting a treat at ShopKo because you behave well. A bad experience would include having tweezers inserted up your nose to retrieve the Kleenex you've stuffed into it.

Yes, we have fully arrived to parenthood as our five year old stuffed a foreign object into her nose. After discovering the wedged-in-there-too-tight said foreign object, she managed to push it up even farther up her nose in the short space of time that I walked into the bathrooom to get the tweezers and return. Daddy didn't think this merited a trip to the ER, so while I was checking Dr. Sears Medicine Cabinet , he laid her on the bathroom counter-top (aka the operating table) and used the the dreaded tweezers to reach up that small nostril to retrieve the Kleenex. Maybe he should have been a surgeon & not an engineer. What a crazy night!

Just in case you don't know, according to Dr. Sears:

If the object is still lodged far back in the nose and you are unable to remove it with the above measures, take the child to the hospital where a doctor can remove the object with a special instrument. Do not allow your child to lie on his back or fall asleep with a foreign object in his nose since it may be aspirated into the lungs.

All I can say is PHEW!