Our Week :: July 25-31

Meghan managed to get my flip flops on her feet and walk all over the first floor in them!

Katie is continuing to love toys that are hung on the side of her pack-n-play. She has been doing a lot of talking imitation when with them and with us. She is also getting very good at getting the parts of these toys to her mouth to chew on or batting them around. She got a tummy bug during this week, so there aren't as many pictures of her as normal.

We have been working on scaling back on tv/media, choices, toys, and books around here. Things had gotten more full and busy than we like during the craziness of the last year and a half. Meghan has been responding to it SO WELL! She has spent even longer periods of time engaged in imaginative play and the depth of that play has increased drastically! And we've had fewer tantrums! It was very much the right choice for us to make!!

Here she was making dinner for Daddy!

She built a "flower tower!"

With decreased book choices at a time, she is also spending longer periods of time reading books that she enjoys. I'm amazed by all the words she knows (from hearing us read them) when she reads to herself or to her stuffed animals.

She is my constant little imitator. This day, I was cleaning counters in the kitchen, so.....

SO MUCH animal play around here!

She has continued to love puzzles this week. The color one was a concept she just couldn't master two weeks ago - to match a color swatch to an image of something that color. This week when I got them out, she put them all together so easily.

She has also been loving putting together her See and Spell - matching the letters as puzzle pieces to spell words.

As I said above, the imaginative play has been exploding since simplifying and there has been so much animal play....this day the wooden animals were all eating out of or living in her colored blocks. So cute!

Meghan and I worked together to make a cheesecake .... it was so easy, so fun, and so delicious!

She also discovered pencils this week. She used one to circle numbers on this scrap paper as Cole would say them to her. Watching the cuteness of her doing "math" in her jammies, with crazy post-bath hair, with Daddy, at the counter just made my heart happy. I'm so glad we'll be homeschooling and this can be her experience of learning!!