Wow! This past year has absolutely FLOWN by ... and Alexander has actually turned 13 months already! Today we went to the Children's Museum, and it's just so amazing to see how much more of a "big kid" he is...of course he's still my itty bitty (30 lb. and outgrowing his 24 month clothes) BABY!
Summer plans: NONE! Well, I will visit my parents a couple times, but we are more the "stay-cation" type. Trust me, Traveling with small children. is. not. relaxing. Especially to a "control" freak like me. There is plenty to do around here. We plan on going to the library one day per week. The kids will go to story time and then play afterwards. Another day we will go to the free local movie theatre...FREE MOVIES! Then of course there is the Indy Zoo and Children's Museum. We will speckle that with some La Leche League meetings around the city, and of course, playdates.
Date plans: Since Alex was 10 months old, Josh and I have been going out every single week. We go out to eat someplace, then maybe hit the grocery store. Who knew that shopping solo (aka...w/o kiddos would be date material!)?! So Josh and I plan to continue our weekly dates. It's so important, especially with 2 kids now! We also have zip. zero. zilch. 0. family in the area to pawn them off for free babysitting. Luckily, we have a couple awesome high school girls in our neighborhood. The best kind of sitters are those that (1) have their own phone so we don't have to leave one of our phones here since we haven't had a landline in about 5 years and (2) can get to and from our house without us having to go get them. Actually, the even better kind of sitters are friends with kids who also have kids so (1) there is no cash exchanged, just a kid-watching swap! Hey, anyone local want to set up a regular kid-watch swap?! and (2) they have kids themselves, which just speaks volumes in the awesome care that I know they'll give.
Summer Goals for Claire: I put Alex down for a nap every day, and then I read her some special "big girl" books--whatever she picks. Lately she's into Madeline which is a super cute book. She can write all the letters in her name. My goal is to get her writing her name with the letters in order C-L-A-I-R-E is pretty long for a 3 1/2 year old. She had 12 kids in her 3/4s class this year. Only 2 kids could write their names. One has only 3 letters in her name, 2 of which are the same A-V-A, and the other kid is a "4" going on 5 soon...BUT I want her to be ahead...lol. My other big goal is to work with her on cutting. I've totally slacked off in letting her "play" with scissors and cut. She got a little "report card" and cutting was her weakest area. My fault. She snipped a new dress last summer. I put the scissors up and haven't really given it a 2nd thought. So, now I'm going to try to just let her cut at paper, so then she will be more accurate in cutting out shapes and lines, etc. She also was marked down for not being able to "recognize" her own name. I think that's a load of crap. Guess what? The paper had her name SPELLED WRONG! So of course she's going to say that's not her name. We will continue to work on letter sounds and pre-reading skills. She knows a few sight words, so we're going to increase those. I try to do some different flash cards with her once in awhile, but we both prefer stories and just picking out words/numbers from the books.
Summer Goals for Alex: GETTING THAT BOY TO CRAWL! He is totally strong enough. He can do it with "help" but I think it's coming soon. He loves baby signs! So I plan on doing lots of more signs with him. Yesterday we went into Walgreens, in the non-food section. Then when I walked to get the jug of milk, he started signing "MORE"... I think he wanted a snack since there was food around...pretty amazing because he recognizes that without anyone saying words.
