LOW - I is for Ice Cream and Iguana

This was a pretty sweet week :)  First we made an Ice Cream I

We also made some ice cream hands.  Here is Rebekah taking a lick of hers :)

One day we played with shaving cream, first using an ice cream cone as a brush and then just having fun!


We also made ice cream in a bag!  Frank was super skeptical but it worked great!  The girls loved making it and we all loved eating it.

Grace AnneMarie - 15 Weeks

Yes, a little behind but really, better to do it now than to just chuck it and never do an update again!

As of Friday, Grace was 14lbs according to the bathroom scale.  She is wearing 3 month clothing and some of that is looking a little tight.  She has a nice double chin developing, which is really only nice when you are 3 months old :) 

Eating:
Still on a 3 hour schedule during the day.  We have dropped the MOTN feeding and tonight (Feb 18th) I am going to not give her the DF and see how it goes.  She eats well for each feeding and takes a 3-4oz bottle at bedtime.

Sleeping:
On the night of February 5th we put her to bed with her left arm out of the swaddle.  I was not anxious to get rid of the swaddle but I was tired of the 1/2am wake up and was hoping maybe this would help.  Bedtime was rough but not too bad and after the DF she slept until 5 without waking.  The night went so well that I left her arm out for all her naps and they went well too!  I was surprised, especially after the hard time we had unswaddling her older sister!  During the 5th night of one arm out, she managed to get the other arm out and slept until 7 that morning.  Bye-bye MOTN feeding!  By the 13th she had found that her left thumb was rather soothing and has been a self soother ever since.  Her naps are great (I can't believe I just wrote that!).  She does wake at 45 minutes for her 2nd and 3rd nap but puts herself back to sleep and I rarely have to put her in the swing (she still takes her 4th nap there).  The last several nights she has started having the 1/2am wake up again and I have not been feeding her but rather just holding her and aspirating her nose as she has been congested.  I honestly think the DF is interrupting her sleep cycle so we'll see how it goes tonight!

Skills:
The self-soothing is a pretty big skill :)  She is getting her head up way high off the ground during tummy time and working on rolling over.  Oh, smiling!  She has the greatest smile.  She is so happy.  She has started cooing more and is really interested when I talk with her.  I am so profoundly grateful that God has taught me to enjoy Grace's infancy.  I value so much the hard work I am putting into her (and my other girls) now as I earn the right to influence their lives towards Christ.

H is for Heart

This week being Valentines week, I decided to teach H is for Heart.  There are tons of craft ideas out there for hearts and valentines so it was actually a task to narrow down the ones I wanted to do. 

We started with a heart sticker H

Then we did this Heart memory matching game.  The girls had to match upper and lowercase numbers.  Faith LOVED it and Rebekah did really well but got bored after making about 2 or 3 matches.

I got a heart punch from Michael's and used it to make this pattern activity for Faith and a sorting activity for Rebekah (along with the heart mold from Dollar General).

I also used the heart punch to do this paint shake.  A little paint in the container, fill it with the paper hearts and then shake, shake, shake.  After the paint was sufficiently mixed I had the girls glue them on a separate sheet of paper in the shape of H h.  I found these and some of the other activities on NTFFC.

I filled some medicine droppers with paint and had them dot one half of a folded heart.  The concept was a great one but the medicine droppers were pretty hard for them to use.  They liked the symmetry of pressing the heart together to make the same design on another page though so it was a good craft. 

 

We ended the week with Musical Hearts.  I wrote some actions on these foam hearts and placed them in a circle.  I played the Sabre Dance while the girls ran around the circle.  When the music stopped they had to do the action written on the heart nearest them.  We did this about 3 times a day all weekend long and it was a great energy release!

 

Manna from Heaven

We read Exodus 16 for Bible story this week and made Manna from Heaven using this recipe and template :