Story Time!

Keira's favorite time of the week, by far, is story time! She starts talking about it at the beginning of the week, and on Thursday morning I motivate her to leave Eli's preschool by telling her it's Story Time. When she talks about Story Time she says, "sing songs", "blow bubbles", "read books", and she's just added one more to her favorite list -- "typing."

When we first arrive at the library for Story Time, it's playtime. The librarian has scattered toys around the room and it's time for the kids to play and the parents to referee and chat. When we first started frequenting Story Time regularly at the beginning of the year, she was nearly glued to my lap. Now, she's brave and often plays for long chunks of time across the room from me. Sometimes she does pick up a toy and bring it back to the comfort of my lap. On March 17th, Grammie accompanied us to Story Time which meant she could take loads of pictures while I participated. Thanks Grammie!


After playtime, the librarian comes in the room, puts out the tub to collect the toys and starts singing a little "Clean Up" tune. The kids who are familiar with the routine, including Keira, rush to put their toys in the tub and run around to collect the rest of the toys, too. They know that they will be rewarded for their cleaning up with bubbles. So smart! The bubbles usually distract the kids enough so that no one is crying over the toy they had to part with.

After bubbles, the librarian hands out books to the kids, and most of the kids come back to their parent's laps to read. Of course, since these kids are LITTLE there are always a few who are aimlessly wandering around the room or climbing on the furniture instead of listening to the stories. Keira, and Eli for that matter, have always been good about following the routine. In fact, both of my kids have always been such avid "readers" that we usually finish our book and look around for someone to swap books with.


After reading, the librarian walks around the room and collects the books while we sing "You Are My Sunshine." Sometimes, Keira is so eager to give her book to the librarian that she'll leap out of my lap and run towards her with her book in her outstretched hand. After "You Are My Sunshine", we sing "Twinkle Twinkle". In this picture you can see Keira making a diamond out of her fingers just like the librarian does.


After singing several songs while seated including "The Wheels on the Bus", "Old McDonald", "The Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Where is Thumpkin?" and "Hickory Dickory Dock" as well as listening to a few stories we stand up and sing some songs.


The standing songs include "If You're Happy and You Know It" as well as "I'm a Little Teapot." I love my little tipping teapot!


After tipping like a teapot, she boogies to the "Hokey Pokey."



Finally, the librarian sings a good bye song and ends it by saying good bye to each one of the kids with a little tummy tickle. All the kids wait patiently, yet eagerly for her to come to them.



Keira always giggles and smiles wildly during and after her goodbye tickle.



Just recently, Keira added a new favorite activity to her Story Time repertoire, it's what she calls "typing". She sits at one of the little computer desks outside of the Story Time room once Story Time has finished. She's always loved sitting in any little chair that is her size. Once seated, she does her best interpretation of one of us on the computer. Her fingers whiz over the keys...



Then, she interrupts her typing with occasional clicks of the mouse.



Sometimes I'm not sure who enjoys Story Time more, Keira or I. Obviously she loves participating, but I love watching her. It's so special to have a certain time each week to watch my baby girl do what she loves to do best -- sing songs. :)

Sunday School and Angel Choir

A couple months ago, I wrote that at the Christmas Eve service we watched the Angel Choir sing. After watching them sing, Eli was interested in joining. Since then, he's gone most Sunday evenings from 4:15-5:00 to the Angel Choir practice. Scott drives him and says that Eli seems pretty quiet during the practices, but I'll catch him singing the songs all around the house. He must be listening during the practices. Eli was immediately enamored with the Angel Choir leader Ms. Jean. When he found out Ms. Jean leads the four-year old Sunday School class he got interested in going to that, too. Therefore, for many weeks, Grammie has brought him to Sunday School in the morning and Scottie has driven him to Angel Choir in the evening. He's becoming quite a church regular. This morning I overheard Eli talking to Keira about God. Keira has a board book called "Thank You God." Eli told her the title of the book and repeated it a few times until she repeated it back to him. Then he said, "Keiwa, God is always with us. That's why I go to Sunday School and Angel Choir." I guess it's all sinking in.

Here's a picture of Eli eating his snack at Sunday School on February 27th.

Zoo Atlanta

Thanks to a generous Christmas gift from Brian and Kathryn, we have a family membership to the zoo for the year. It's awesome, we've been a few times now and I'm sure we'll go many more, especially now that the weather is beautiful. :) At first, taking two kids to the zoo took a little getting used to, but now it seems like we've established something of a rhythm. We start out all together, and usually hit the playground first. It's especially important to get to the playground early, as it gets crowded and a little crazy as the day wears on. Since Eli is now a few years older he tried all of the play equipment, even some of the tricky climbing stuff. While Keira spent a lot of time walking around, getting her bearings and watching the older kids.



Next, we usually head to the carousel, where Scottie snapped a few of the kids with their matching mouse hats. He joked that we could easily say that we took these photos at Disney. I thought Eli's zoo sticker might give it away. Incidentally, Eli was a gracious big brother and that allowed us to get these photos. He was happily situated on one of the animals that goes up and down, but when Keira sat on the large bench instead, Eli came over to sit near his baby sister. :)



After the carousel, we all head to the train. Then after a few rotations of train, carousel, train, carousel we usually split up. The girls head for some animal time, while the boys continue a rotation of the playground, train and carousel with a little of the mole tunnels thrown in for good measure. During one of our split up times, Eli took the camera and snapped this serious self portrait on the train.



After which, Scottie grabbed the camera and took this silly one.

Dinner with Grammie and Babo

I am still LOVING our new house. As the days get warmer and more and more beautiful we are now enjoying our new yard, too. On one of the first warm days this winter, we invited Grammie and Babo over for dinner. Entertaining at our new house is infinitely easier and more relaxing. Grammie got some great pictures of the kids, which is a good thing since I've been falling down on my photographer duties a bit lately.

First, here's Keira showing off her driving skills on the golf cart and her excitement in her new backyard. Interestingly, the girl is obsessed with driving. She asks for my keys when I'm strapping her into her carseat. After playing with them, she says seriously, "Keira drive!"



As for Eli, Grammie caught him with a fairly serious expression at the computer. The boy seems to be always into printing something off the computer. Lately, it's been cryptograms and if you look on the desk next to him in this picture, crossword puzzles. Scottie created a crossword puzzle for Eli with picture clues that he can do mostly unassisted.



After dinner, Grammie snapped a joyful boy sorting and eating his M&Ms. Nothing can bring on an Eli smile quite like chocolate!

Grammie's Birthday Dinner

I've been away from the blog for a long time... I've been getting my Zumba on during my free time, but mostly the earthquake, tsunami and ensuing nuclear crisis in Japan threw me for a loop. I have a friend from Junior High, Mika, who lives in Tokyo. I offered to have her come stay with us in Georgia until things settled down. But, she decided to stay put. With all of my nervous energy I decided to go through old pictures. It let me reminisce about safer, happier times with Mika. Thankfully, the situation in Japan seems to slowly be getting better, and all my old pictures posted on facebook were a hit with a lot of my old friends. Now, I think I'm ready to get back to the blog...

On February 4th, we celebrated Grammie's birthday at Outback. Unfortunately, because of her back flaring up, Seana was unable to come. But, we did get to spend the evening with Grammie, Babo, Uncle Brian and Ms. Kathryn.





We also got a great picture of the four of us.


All told, we spent over two hours at Outback, and Eli's behavior stunk. To try to keep him occupied and out of any further trouble, Grammie loaned Eli her camera. He took quite a few pictures, these are a couple of my favorites -- a self portrait and one with Kathryn. Eli loves Kathryn, we saw her the other night, and he calls her the best hider in Hide and Seek.