DDD for Saturday, April 21

Daniel could barely keep his fingers away from Elsa's birthday
cupcakes at our family party for her on Saturday. He ate three of them
in a row, mostly focusing on the frosting.

DDD April 27

He is a confident climber of all playground apparatus, and he called
to me, "Watch me, Mama!!"

DDD April 26, 2012

A package of flour + a bottle of baby oiil = hours of digging,
scooping, building for Daniel. Its called Cloud Dough, but Daniel is
calling it Soft Sand and Baby Oil Flour, too.

Night Creatures

I hear night creatures, mama.

That's what DHH said after getting into his car seat at 8 PM to go home from a dinner out at a friend's home.

Where did he come up with that?
LOVE IT.

DDD 4/25/12

Daniel is currently giving his lawn mower a bath. Both of them were
filthy from the yard, so its a win-win. He has such fun ideas that it
is difficult to find a reason to tell him no.

Meeting (Another) One of My Students

Right now I am working two afternoons a week, tutoring two children who are from Korea.
You are very interested in what I do and tell people I am teaching kids ENG-lish.

Today your dad brought you in to pick me up. I was coaching a child through an essay.  This child needs a lot of encouragement and assistance forming complete thoughts and writing them down.  You stood right next to me for a while before I saw you, then you climbed on my lap.  You were eager to listen to the boy read his story and marveled that HE wrote it.  I think you really encouraged him. You thought he wrote it for you!

The boy asked if you spoke English, and that made me laugh.  You and Yoon Seo have such heavy accents in English that I am not sure which one is more easy to understand!

I am glad you saw me teaching another child because this is something that I am good at. I want you to recognize this and enjoy teaching and learning, too.  I treasure our times of "pre-fooling" as you call it, and I am so excited to see just how wrinkly and big your brain can get.

Love you.

Project 52, Week 16

Elsa turned one, and Daniel helped her with the birthday candle.

DDD April 24, 2012

Daniel is getting sillier and more handsome every day.

Daniel Has a Friend!

His name is Lincoln, but Daniel called him The Linkster today.  He also calls him Lincoln James and Linky Winky.  I don't think L's parents know this - Daniel just made these rhymes up today and had a hoot doing so. These boys are 23 days apart, and Daniel is the younger one.  Their interests are very similar : being silly, singing, dancing, trains, going places, and being busy.  They are a perfect match.

Today Miss Day (that's what DHH calls L's mom) took the boys for a mall adventure while I got Elsa's photos made.  Daniel hadn't told me anything about what they actually did, just that he had a good time but really just wanted to go to L's house next time because he has a basement AND a train table.

Daniel on the Phone

Hey-woah, Mom-mah.
Pretty good.
What you be doing right now?
What Daddy be doing right now?
I wah-ove you, Mom-mah.  Bye-bye.
Is Mommy still dere? Still dere?
Push this button to hang up.


That's Daniel's basic conversation when on the phone.  In the middle, there will be gibberish about a particular object that's in the room that he's describing, but we cannot follow that part of the conversation.  He also spends a lot of time responding to our questions or listening to us tell stories.  He is a good phone listener.

We've been apart from him for two nights, and our phone calls with him are a lot like this.

Sticky Window Project.

This is a good example of preschool projects we do out our house every few days.  On the days we do not do a formal activity that involves cutting, gluing, drawing, painting, we read for an hour together.  Daniel has such an appetite for books! I love it. He also has an appetite for creating new things and novelty experiences, like making this "sticky window".

He had the idea to stick little paper shapes he's punched the prior week to the window and sorted them in a muffin tin first.  His sister helped quite a lot too - doing her share of spilling AND sticking objects to the window.

Daniel especially liked the opacity of the window and PEEKing through it.

Hot March Days = Water Play!

Daniel knew just what to do when I set out the hose and some containers.  He instantly went to work transferring water from bucket to bucket, and he also had the plan to wash their slide.

Elsa played right beside him, too.  He didn't splash her and let her play with some of the things he was playing with, which is great sharing progress!!!

Focused.

Elsa sticks her tongue out like Daniel used to do.

He really enjoys watching water move from bucket to bucket.  He hauled water in the dump truck to the flower bed, too.

His fine motor skills have improved so much since last August, the last time we used squeeze bottles for water play.  He can pinch the cap out to open it and squeeze the water out so easily now.

They played side by side for nearly 45 minutes.

WITHOUT arguement!

New Baby News and Gift.

Daniel's gift was the second one, the blue bag.

The tag said, "To the NEW big brother."

Inside was a celebratory gift - an amazing MQueen car.

Reading, First Allowance, and Patio Picnics.

I just reading, Mom.

March 2012

Accepting his quarters for the two weeks of chores he did in March - helping his dad with the garbage.

Each day he begged to eat outside on the patio for a picnic.  Even on the days he needed a warm flannel shirt, he was happy to eat "OWside"