Bits and Pieces

• We had a new child begin daycare with us today. A big welcome to Gabe. His first day went very well and we're looking forward to Gabe coming back on Thursday.

• The home inspection on the house we are buying was today. We got a pretty good report. There are a few minor repairs that need to be done, but nothing that causes us a lot of concern.
• Since everything is moving along so smoothly with the house it looks like closing may be the beginning instead of middle of November. We're planning to go ahead and pay the rent on the house we're living in through the month of November, however, so that we won't be as rushed while making the change.
• As we're trying to get through all this with as little stress as possible, I am hoping the rest of us don't catch the stomach bug that bit a couple people today. One child had to go home early and Mona, my asssistant, only worked about 1 1/2 hours today because she wasn't feeling well. My house now smells like Lysol.
• Yesterday Mona loaned me a book to read that I had a hard time putting down last night. Before I knew it, it was 1:30AM. Yikes. The book is A Lineage of Grace by Francine Rivers. Somehow I needed to read the stories of women who faced hard times and perservered. Women who dreamed and prayed and cried and laughed and in the end were used by God to bring about wonderful results. I will be reading some more of this book tonight, but hopefully this time I will stop reading before 1AM. I really need more sleep than that to persevere very much at anything.

Learning With Books - Books We Enjoyed This Week 3/21-3/27

Terrific Trains
This book of rhyme about trains has a wonderful rhythm to it is fun to read and listen too. We talked about how the train goes over the water on the bridge and the water goes under the bridge. We also talked about how red lights mean stop and green lights mean go.








Fox in Socks by Dr. Suess
I always enjoy reading this book, the challenge of reading through these tongue twisters without getting my tongue completely twisted is fun. We talked about some of the colors in this book - pink, blue and red - and counted the pink pigs in Ben's Big Pig Band. There were eight. Michael enjoyed the pictures of the beetle bottle battle since like many little boys he is fascinated with bugs.







Go, Dog. Go!
This book addresses a number of concepts as we follow the many dogs on their adventures. There are green, blue, yellow, red, black and white dogs. These dogs go up, down, over, under, in, and out. There are big dogs and small dogs. The dogs sleep at night and play and work during the day. The dogs stop at the red light and go at the green light. As we read I point to the scene being described and even the younger toddlers enjoy this book. We read this book twice  this week.






Thomas and the Big, Big Bridge
This book seems to be bit of a stretch for the toddlers, yet they repeatedly choose it for story time. We did talk about the colors blue, green and white and count the trains on one of the pages.









Disney's The Lion King II Simba's Pride
We had fun finding and naming the animals in this book - giraffes, zebras, antelope, warthog, baboon, crocodiles and, of course, lots of lions. And it's fun to roar like a lion.









 Animals
 We had fun going through this book of animals and signing the ones that we've learned the signs for so far. And it's always fun to make the animal sounds.










 In a People House
 This is a fun book for practicing the names of common items around the house. Hunter and Michael especially like the page with the lights and lamps. Lauren enjoys the page with the bouncing ball.










 The Cat in the Hat Comes Back
 Hunter was particularly interested in the water in the bathtub when we read this book this week. We looked several times at the pictures of the water running into the tub and then at the one where there was no water running. Reinforcing our ABC's and the color pink were also covered with this book.








 Just Me and My Mom
 There were a lot of fun things to talk about in this book. From the dinosaur skeleton with BIG teeth that was in the museum, to the seals, to the yummy looking hot dog they ate for lunch. And of course we had to find the frog on each page as he followed along for all the Little Critter adventures.









Ten Apples Up On Top This book was a big favorite with Hunter this week and gave us lots of opportunity to practice counting to ten.











 Walt Disney's Peter Pan and Wendy 
 Michael was thrilled that there was a character with his name in this book and on nearly every page we had to find the boy named Michael. The pirate's boat in the water was another big topic of conversation and Hunter insisted it was in a bathtub.









 Disney's Beauty and the Beast
 The talking teapot, clock and candlestick were points of interest in this book, along with the wolves and the horse.










 Bradley and the Great Swamp Mystery
 This book has a lot of interesting things in it to talk about. It's fun to name all the food the animals took along for their picnik - bananas, balogna, bread, and the bottle of blueberry soda. Then there are bird, butterfly and bee to look at and talk about. Since there is a lamb in this story we Michael wanted to sing Mary Had a Little Lamb so we did. Bradley Bear's flashlight is very useful in finding his lost friend, and we check on each page to see if his flashlight is on or off. At the back of the book is a list of Bb words with pictures that we review.





 Baby Einstein See and Spy Counting
This is a fun book for practicing counting to five. The illustrations are bright and interesting and the text fun.










Love - Johnny Appleseed 
We enjoyed this book and looking at all the animals who lived in and around the tree.











What Will I Be?
This is a really fun book about careers with photographs of children dressed up as people in the various careers. Baker, mechanic and astronaut were big favorites when we read the book this week.

Oversleeping, Fun and the Printer Incident

Often I've tried to write blog posts on specific categories or subjects but somehow my life just will not stay in neat little boxes. So I'm going to try something different. I'm just going to blog each day about the things that are important to me that day. My family, the kids in my care, what I'm learning, what we're doing. Each part of life intertwines with all the others and too try to separate them feels very artificial too me.

My morning started out a little less than stellar. Because I slept most of the night on the couch to be near an overnight daycare child who was not feeling well, I overslept this morning. When I woke up at 7:15 and looked at phone I realized a parent had tried to call me 13 times and had texted me several times. That's when I remembered she was scheduled to bring her child at 6:45. I immediately called her and found out she had tried to drop off her child and when she couldn't get an answer from me she took the child to her mother's. Her mother brought the little boy over a later. This is the first time in the ten years I've been providing child care that this has happened and I felt awful about it. Thankfully they were very understanding.

Amanda decided this morning to help the little kids make kites. So she went outside and found some sticks, got out paper, crayons, tape and string and set to work.






Austin has been a little quiet the last few days. Yesterday he was complaining of a headache and I gave him some Tylenol right away. If he doesn't take something immediately when he begins to get a headache it can turn into a migraine. He says he feels fine today but he looks tired. This has been his main free time activity today. Along with Mahjong on the computer.




He did do his chores and he also went with Doug to take the trash to the landfill after Doug came home from work this afternoon. And this evening he seems a little more like his usual self, even horseplaying with the younger kids



While working in the kitchen - cooking, loading dishwasher, putting away clean dishes, all that fun stuff - I've been listening to this audio book.

While listening the caught my attention. "If you don't consider your life as part of your business plan you may find yourself outwardly successful but inwardly miserable." Since I've been thinking today about how all of life is intertwined this seemed like an affirmation to me. What I do in each area of my life effects all the other areas of my life.

Another subject covered today was a vision board, or goal collage. This isn't exactly a new idea, I've read of it often before. But I found myself thinking today how much fun it would be to do one and to have Austin and Amanda each do one as well. I found some interesting reading about dream or goal collages here , here and here.

I've also been reading this book, a few pages at a time. This one may take me awhile.


I made one of my favorite meals for dinner this evening - Chicken Chow Mien over rice.



We all like it except for Amanda who says it would be good if it had anything in it she liked. She doesn't like celery or onions and really isn't a big fan of chicken. Unless it's chicken nuggets. Can you say picky eater?

The one year old pulled the printer off the shelf on top of Michael's head today. Michael and printer are both fine. Michael now has another dramatic story to tell. The printer has been moved into another room. The one year is just mad that he can't do it again.

Although it was much too warm for any snow to stay around we actually had a few flurries today. I really wish all the rain we had yesterday would have been snow. I'm ready for the white stuff. Hot chocolate and a good book while watching it snow outside. The stuff dreams are made of.

Dream. That's what I'm going to go do shortly. Maybe I can catch up on the sleep I missed last night so I don't oversleep again in the morning.

Book Review

I love to read and find it to be necessary to my feeling of mental well-being-almost like eating is to my physical well-being. Brain food I guess.

This week I'm rereading a book that I've read before-several times. It always inspires me. The book is "Reposition Yourself-Living Life Without Limits" by T. D. Jakes.

The book is divided into three parts with five chapters in each part- Part 1-The Sky's the Limit
Part 2-Beyond the Limits of Mediocrity Part3-Beyond the Limits of Success.

I appreciate the way that T. D. Jakes offers encouragement to for for the dreams you hold dear. But he also provides a common sense approach to dealing with obstacles and an understanding that each of us has to start with what we have at this moment. He also acknowledges that there are challenges that come with success and provides encouragement and strategies for dealing with these challenges and moving on to even greater success.