June.

A photographic sampler of the month of June.

June 1: Water Play

June 2: Chuck'E'Cheese

or, More On Potty Training  Reinforcement

Elora, while fully capable of using the potty, has consistently shown a lack of enthusiasm for doing so.  Why gt up and go to the bathroom, when it doesn't seem to bother her in the least to have wet pants?  So, we've been trying to inspire the proper enthusiasm in her, both punishing her bad choices and rewarding her good ones.  This reward chart is actually something that I made for her back in January, but that I never blogged.

Note:  I made this exclusively for our own personal use.   I do not own the rights to any of these images.

These are the counters.  

I made 3 for Chuck E Cheese, 5 for the ice cream, and 7 for the movie.  I printed it all out at home, then took them to Office Depot to have them laminated.  I cut out all of the counters, and used Velcro in the squares on the chart and on the backs of the counters so that they could easily (and repeatedly) be moved around.  Then I hung it all on the wall right next to the potty, right at her eye level, with the card board sleeve from the movie hanging over it all so that she would be able to see that, too.

Based on advice I'd received and articles I'd read, I thought it might help to give her something to work toward, and for her to be able to see it and be reminded of it every time she went to the potty.  Initially, she was really, really excited about it, but she would never go more than a day or two without an accident.  Fast forward to June, and she FINALLY got her 3 days in a row!

June 6: At the Zoo (with Aunt Bekah)

We've been zoo-ing about once a month or so, since it got warm.  By this point, it had gotten hot, and knowing that they have these awesome water fountains just inside the zoo, we dressed the kids in their bathing suits.  We ended up getting there shortly before story time, though, so we did that first.

The kids could not wait to go play in the water, but when they got there, they were super shy about getting in it.  Elora, in particular, does not like to get water in her face, so she just kept backing into the fountains.  And of course, whatever Elora does, Kaylie must also do.

And then we learned that a baby giraffe had just been born that morning.  Have I ever mentioned that giraffes are Elora's favorite animals? These pictures aren't great, because they were taken through the glass and my camera kept wanting to focus on the fence rather than the giraffes (I forgot about manual focus), but isn't he sweet? Only about 7 hours old here, and already standing and walking around.  So, so cool.

June 14: Hopscotch

It was late in the day, either just before dinner or just after.  The girls and I had been inside all day--we hadn't even changed out of our PJ's.  It was a beautiful afternoon. not too hot, and Brandon decided it would be criminal if we didn't get at least a little fresh air.   We opened the garage door, set out the blue lawn chairs, and watched the girls play.

I didn't really take any pictures of their faces.  I was fascinated by the light, the nightgowns & boots, and the chalk lines.  Is it weird that I'm kind of in love with this picture?

June 28: Farmer's Market & A Speech Therapy Update

There's a farmer's market at the local park every Wednesday and Saturday during the summer, and Rebekah and I finally got around to taking the kids to check it out.  

We ended up eating half of our strawberries right there, they were so good!  We haven't made it back yet, but I'm thinking we really ought to.  

That afternoon, Kaylie had therapy.  We're still going twice a week, and Kaylie is making great progress!  She's added lots of new words to her vocabulary, and is signing for a lot of things as well.  Jennifer has moved from just trying to get Kaylie to repeat simple words to focusing on specific letter sounds and final consonants.  For example, Kaylie says "eee" for "eat", dropping the T and speaking only the beginning of the word.  We're trying to teach her to say the whole word.  At the end of each session, Jennifer always makes suggestions for what we can do with Kaylie at home, so that she continues to learn in between visits.

Elora always goes with us, and is always very good while we're there.  Jennifer either brings something special for Elora to play with, incorporates her into the lesson, or allows her to play one of the kid's games on her tablet.  Frankly, I think that might be Elora's favorite.

And that brings us to the end of June.  Next time, I'll try to bring us up to date in July.  :)

Homemade Play Dough

While Mom and Wade were here, we finally got around to making some of our own play-dough.  I don't know why I kept putting it off, because it was really stinking easy.  We started with yellow play dough (because yellow is Elora's favorite color) on Tuesday.  She and my mom played with it for hours.

 It was so much fun, and so easy to make, that we made two more batches on Wednesday, in red and blue. But each batch makes a lot of play dough, so it was a no-brainer to turn it into a lesson about colors.  We made the red, and then set about mixing up the perfect orange.

She was having such fun playing with the orange that I had to drag her away to help me make the blue, but then it was back to mixing colors.  We took the three primaries, yellow, red, and blue, and mixed them to make the three secondaries: orange, green, and purple.

We ended up with a ton of the blue, because it didn't take much blue to turn yellow into green, or red into purple, but otherwise, she has pretty much even portions of each color.

The play dough is her new favorite toy.  She was quite put out that I made her stop playing long enough to snap a few pictures of all the colors, and could not get her hands back into it fast enough.  She'd been making green worms with Oma, and then counting them in the style of The Count from Sesame Street, right down to the funny laugh.

As soon as she realized that it made us laugh, she really started hamming it up.  It was awesome.  Since then, she's played with her new play dough pretty much every day, and every time the green comes out, she makes worms and counts them.  And I still laugh.  :)
So, want to know how I did it?  Easy-peasy!  I followed this recipe exactly, every time.  She doesn't give a measurement for the glitter, though, so I ended up using 1Tbsp of iridescent glitter in each batch.  To color them, we used my Wilton gel food coloring.  The yellow didn't take much of the food coloring to get a nice bright color, but the red and the blue both did. Those gel colors are pretty expensive, so I may try the Kool-Aid next time.  And as a side note, we did use my good sauce pan for making the play dough, and everything--glitter included--washed out without any problem at all.  I did get a wooden spoon from the thrift store for mixing it, though, because I didn't want my good wood spoons turning colors.

There you have it!  Happy play dough making!

Little Vacuum

Elora loves to vacuum.  Anytime I get mine out, she wants to help me, but the thing is a little unwieldy for her, and she's not exactly thorough anyway.  But, who am I to discourage her, when she wants to help?  So I got her one of her own.  :)

It's actually a pretty neat little vacuum.  It's not very strong, but super lightweight.  The floor attachment and long (black) handle can be removed, turning it into a  little hand vac.  It's perfect for her!  Now, "getting" to vacuum is actually an incentive to clean up all of her toys.  It's crazy.  It's fantastic.  And, since she and her sister tend to make a mess on the floor at meal time (and when they're playing with something like moon dough), it's super handy for her to be able to clean up the mess herself.  She has fun, and feels so proud of herself when she's done.  AND I don't have to do it! Really, it's a win-win for everyone involved.

Command Family Day Picnic

Brandon's command put together a family day picnic last Friday.  We'd never seen Brandon's workplace here, so we went in before the picnic to have a look around.   He's an instructor at a training facility, so a lot of what we saw were just classrooms and offices.  If you've seen a class room and an office before, then you know what they look like.  Just imagine military gear piled up here and there, along with some large, official looking manuals, and you've got it.  But a lot of their training involves hands-on practice, so much of it happens outside a classroom.  That was the really interesting stuff.

They call this the climbing tower.  One of the courses they teach here requires that students be able to climb this 30 foot rope ladder while wearing weighted vests, to simulate being weighted down by full gear, in 2 minutes or less.  It looked easier than it actually, was, I'm sure.  I found myself wishing that I hadn't worn a dress that day, because I wanted to know if I could do it.

This is the "ship on land",  a mock-up of an actual ship, with orange cones to designate "piers", used for practicing certain security techniques.  (They also have a real ship in Norfolk that they practice on.)  The best part, though, was getting to check out the FATS system.

M4, top; M9, bottom.

The FATS, or Fire Arms Training Simulator, is basically a giant video game.  Real weapons were modified for use with this arcade-style target practice simulator, which is controlled by someone at a computer set up at the back of the room.   On the opposite wall, there is a floor-to-ceiling screen, divided into several narrow sections, each with its own target, so that multiple people can practice all at once. When "fired", the weapons recoil and you hear the sound of a gun shot, and a "hole" appears on the "target".   It was really neat!  And I did pretty well, for someone with approximately 0 weapons experience, no glasses (I'm near-sighted), and 2 children pulling at her skirts.  But then Brandon picked them up and squeezed off a few rounds, and I knew precisely how awkward and inexperienced I am.  Is it odd, that I hate violence, but I think my husband's obvious expertise with weapons is sexy?   There's just something about a man who knows how to handle himself--and a weapon--that is incredibly attractive to me.  But I digress.

He showed Elora the pistol and let her "shoot" it, but she only did it once because she didn't like the noise.  Kaylie didn't like it either, for that matter.  That's why she was clinging to my skirt while I shot the M4, and why I was holding her when I shot the M9.

The picnic itself is barely worth mentioning.  The food was good, and they had several corn hole stations set up in the shade, and a fire truck for the kids to check out, but it was so ridiculously hot that pretty much everyone just ate and then went home.  

A few of us stuck around and went in the pool to cool off, but we didn't stay too long.  It was just so hot!

Father's Day 2012

I found a list of photography tips on Pinterest, and I wanted to try some of them out.  Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous, so we went outside an hour or two before sunset, and played.  (As always, click on the pictures to see them larger.) 

   

One suggestion was to take photos from behind, which I already do from time to time, but I don't think I do it enough.

Another was to shoot with the sun behind your subject, and another was to play with the exposure. 

Brandon said that trying to get the girls to cooperate for pictures is like trying to herd cats.  He's right.  I'm sure this is true of all small children.

Brandon doesn't really like them, he says they all just look over-exposed.  Some turned out not-so-great, but I think some of them are definite winners.  I really, really need to just suck it up, and put myself in a photography course.  Or two.  I hear that the Art Institute has a decent photography program...

Anyway, when we finished with the photo session, we put the girls in play clothes, and let them enjoy the last of the beautiful day outside.

  I hope everyone had a great Father's Day weekend!!

Gager Visit 2012

Have I ever mentioned before that I have been blessed with exceptional in-laws?  Especially the women.  My husband's mother is one of my best friends, and my husband's brother had the good sense to marry Carrie, who is just as wonderful as she could possibly be.  And if I didn't already love all 4 of them for their own merits, which I did, they all love my children to distraction.  How could I not love them even more, for that?  So it was with GREAT anticipation that I looked forward to my in-laws friends coming up for a visit.

They came up the Thursday before the party, and stayed through the weekend.  Friday, there was baking and cake-decorating and playing and exploring and dinner at Abuelo's.

Saturday was the party, and in the morning everyone chipped in to get everything ready.  Carrie in particular was a God-send.  She did ALL of the food prep while I ran around like an idiot frosting cupcakes, sewing ruffles, and I forget what else.  And everyone else helped out with everything else.  

Sunday was a relaxed day.  We stacked all the new toys and clothes off to one side, because I just wasn't ready to tackle finding homes for everything.  Then Papa and Gigi put together the girls' new easel, and Elora got to spend the morning painting. 

In the afternoon, the guys went for burgers and beer while Carrie, Staria, and I took the girls to see their first in-the-theater movie: the Lorax.  It was awesome.  Kaylie got a bit restless during the movie, so I spent part of the time standing with her at the back of the theater, but Elora was riveted the entire time.  And at the end, when the truffula tree started to grow, Elora jumped from Gigi's lap, bounced up and down, and said over and over, "It's growing, it's growing! Look, mama, look!  It's growing!" loud enough for everyone in the entire theater to hear her.  It was the cutest thing I have ever seen.   

James and Carrie had to head back Monday morning, but Staria and Jimmy stayed with us another day.  Brandon was able to get off from work early, so we all loaded up and headed to Virginia Beach to see the Aquarium.  

 

 

 

It was really neat.  They had animals from all over, but they really focused on the local ecosystem and natural history. They had exhibits on everything from local geology to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  Did you know that Chesapeake Bay was formed in part by a large impact crater?  Or that the Chesapeake Bay watershed includes 6 states, ranging all the way up to New York?  Neither did I, until we visited the Aquarium.  Too cool.