Grace AnneMarie - 1 Month

We've survived our first month with a newborn :) 

Sleeping:
Grace slept really well for this first month.  I was surprised how much waketime she was capable of, even when still at the hospital.  She was alert and looking around but went to sleep really well.  There were naps that didn't go well but she would always make up for it on the next nap.  She will take a paci but tends to yawn and it falls out of her mouth.  The bouncy seat has helped during some naps and the swing as well.  Bedtime started to get rough about week 3 where that hour after her last feed was filled with a lot of crying and going in with the paci.  We are still in the throws of that right now.  After an hour of off and on sleep we let her CIO and it took 7 minutes for her to fall asleep.  Nighttime sleep has been great, for a newborn :)  We've yet to have a bad night other than one where she apparently didn't get enough waketime that day and daddy just kept her up for about 30 minutes around 1am and she slept until I woke her for her next feeding.  She goes right back to sleep after MOTN feedings.

Eating:
Grace was 6lbs 8oz when we left the hospital on Monday.  I fed her every 2 1/2 hours during the day and 3 hours at night giving her 9 feedings in a 24 hour period.  I had to wake her for every feeding.  At her first check-up that Friday she was back to her birth weight at 7lbs 1oz.  I was pretty happy.  A week later she had only gone up 3oz and the doctor was a little concerned.  She wasn't my regular pediatrician and didn't really give me much to go on other than come back in a few days.  Luckily I saw my regular ped the following Tuesday and she was 7lbs 10oz, he was happy and so was I.  He said I could let her go longer at night so I started letting her sleep and I set my alarm for 5 hours between feedings.  There were several times when I had to wake her for that feeding!  This past Tuesday she weighed in at 8lbs 8oz so I switched her to a 3 hour schedule during the day with 2 cluster feeds in the evening and she is still only waking once at night and sometimes it is me waking her at the 5 hour mark! 
I have been feeding her the same way I did with Faith, 5 minutes in the football hold, 5 minutes across on each side, and then 5 minutes football hold again.  If she goes longer in each position, fine, but 5 minutes is my goal. 
I downloaded Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, a 41 hour audio book, onto my ipod and have been listening to that during my MOTN feeds and any others where I don't have the bigger girls around and it has made the feeding time go by faster and I feel like I am getting even more done, not that keeping Grace alive is a waste of time but it is nice to be entertained while doing it!
Her first bottle was on Wednesday morning and she only took 2oz.  I pumped out 5oz so I was pretty discouraged.  She did fine that day though so it didn't seem to affect her too much.  We practiced with a half ounce after several feedings the next day and then re-attacked with a nighttime bottle from which she took 2oz and has been doing that for this week.

Skills:
She really enjoys tummy time and is something of a cheater in that she just stretches out and falls asleep there.  She is lifting her head up and at the end of the month has started gripping fingers and clothing.

Our Schedule:
0700 - Wake, eat
0815 - Nap
1000 - Eat
1100 - Nap
1300 - Eat
1400 - Nap
1600 - Eat
1700 - Nap
1800 - Eat, Watch us have dinner, Bath, Bible story,
2000 - Bottle, Bed
2230 - Dreamfeed
0330 - I wake her for MOTN feed if she hasn't already woken up

Rebekah Joy - 25 Months

At 25 months Rebekah Joy is growing up so fast!

Sleeping:
Continuing to do great sharing a room with her big sister.  She has gotten out of bed twice in the last month, both to let me know that she wanted her blanket back on her.  I am not totally convinced she was awake either time it happened so I will monitor this and see if sleepwalking is in fact what we are dealing with!
Eating:
Her 2 year molars are coming in as evidenced by her crying at the drop of a hat and loss of appetite.  Towards the end of the month, however, we are doing much better.  Meat is still the last thing eaten on her plate.  She really likes having her food cut up and will usually pretend to do it as I cut it up for real.  I think I said this last month but I need to get her started on using a regular rather than sippy cup at the table. 
Skills:
She is doing well at getting her own panties on and we are starting to work on her getting her pants on by herself.  She also wants to wipe herself after potty and her baby doll.  She has a huge vocabulary, it is really stunning and she is big into explaining everything right now which is good, it means she is listening!  Her gymnastics classes are still a big hit and she really is improving in her balance beam walking and hanging, which she continues to do on everything that looks like it might have a sufficient hand hold area.  She wants to jump on her own so badly but isn't quite there yet.
Play:
She has gotten a lot of use out of her birthday presents from last month.  She greatly enjoys walking with her caterpillar and does remarkably well on our little 1/2 mile walk around our neighborhood.  One of her favorite toys has become her snap and style baby dolls.  Those have been great in both solo play and playtime with mama.  She loves playing with our friend's doll house when it is on loan and continues to really enjoy being read to. 
Rebekah is now a middle child with the birth of a new baby sister on November 2nd.  Rebekah has been very into her new sister, looking at her and touching her (also using the hand sanitizer!), and overall is preparing to be an awesome mama.  I am going to love watching her imitate me in the coming months with Grace, it is so sweet to see little mamas in training!  It continues to challenge me to be worthy of imitation. 

Our Schedule (before baby Grace's arrival):
0730 - Book and Giggle time :)
0800 - Wake, dress, breakfast
0900 - Preschool
1030 - Outside
1200 - Lunch, chore, reading
1330 - Nap
1600 - Playtime with Mama
1630 - Snack, solo play, freeplay
1800 - Dinner, family time, bath, reading, Bible story, bedtime o/a 2001

Grace AnneMarie Theising

The Theising Academy for Young Ladies got its newest enrollee on Friday with the arrival of Grace AnneMarie Theising.  She joined us at 0751 on Friday, November 2, 2012.  She was 7lbs 1oz and 20 inches. 

I had convinced myself the entire pregnancy that we were having a boy and of course everyone told me that I looked like I was carrying a boy.  Most people had said that about the older girls as well :)  I was so convinced this was a boy though that Frank told me on the way to the hospital I needed to pick out a girls' middle name, just in case :)  Good thing we did!

I love not knowing in advance what we are going to have.  The sweetest sounds in my memory will always be Frank's voice announcing the arrival of our daughters! 
Grace's sisters came to visit her in the afternoon and adore her already.  They brought presents and their affection, the latter which I hope never fades!

 

Grace has proven to be her father's daughter in her personality already.  The nursery workers have told me she is so calm and sweet, just what a mother loves to hear!  She is a great eater so far and has the sweetest little newborn cry.  We are so thankful to God for His bountiful blessing of another healthy daughter and are continually conscious of His working in our lives.  Each of my girls have been instruments God has used to teach me more about their namesake virtues and I have no doubt Grace will be used in the same manner.  I pray that I can be worthy to be her mom. 

Pre-School Schedule

The current Pre-School schedule at the Theising Academy for Young Ladies (Faith 3 1/2, Rebekah 2):

Pledge/Calendar/Letter intro - 10 min
Bible story and craft (craft done 2-3 days/week) - 15 min
Music and worship - 10 min
Station Activities* - 10-15 min
Letter craft - 15 min
Reading - 10 min

Friday nights/Saturday morning are also family night and/or a sensory activity centered around the letter or Bible story we are doing that week

*Station Activities:
Faith
Monday - Letters (letter hunt, write the letter worksheet)
Tuesday - Alphabet (reiew, beginning sounds, missing letters)
Wednesday - Numbers (clothespin match, mazes, review, missing numbers, collage)
Thursday - Kumon Letter / Number and Handwriting
Friday - Reading (sight words, first words, see, spell, write, word search)

Rebekah
Monday - Letters (letter hunt, write the letter worksheet)
Tuesday - Alphabet (magnets, cookie cutters & playdo)
Wednesday - Numbers (review, collage, puzzles)
Thursday - Coloring
Friday - Matching and Sorting activities

Letter of the Week - F (Football)

We did F this week and since we are smack in the middle of fall, we decided that Football was a great F word!  We made this football craft and the girls really enjoyed it!

 

 

Our next craft was a football field.  Each girl got a green piece of construction paper and I put 9 glue lines on it for them to place white strips of paper.  We counted each line as we went.  Then they got to put their own end zone colors on there.  I also had some number stamps for them to play with.  They enjoyed just stamping and we didn't worry too much about yard line identification :)  We have a VT football field mouse pad which I used as a model.  The girls really did like this craft as well.  In the future I think we'll try and take them to a football game for a family night!

Our books for this week were T is for Touchdown which we all really enjoyed and of course Baby Hokie Bird's First Football Game which provided ample opportunities to learn Old Hokie!

Faith August - 3.5 years

Faith is 3 1/2 years old!  Some days she thinks she is 10 but for the most part she is content being 3 1/2 :) 

She LOVES babies.  Was so into her 8 week old cousin, Nikolaus, when we visited my sister at the end of July/August.  I am excited for her to meet our new baby and she is pretty pumped about it as well.  Prior to meeting Nikolaus when I told her this baby might be a boy she said "but I don't want a boy, I want a girl, like us [pointing to Rebekah]"  After hanging out with Nikolaus she decided a boy would be good (as long as we named him Nikolaus) but that phase lasted about a week and now she wants a girl again!  We are currently 2 weeks out from meeting this new baby and she refers to it as "he" half the time and "she" the other half but I am pretty sure she wants a girl... who doesn't :)  She loves feeling her own baby (the one in her tummy) move around and she is so sweet and caring trying to sympathize with my increasing inability to help her on the monkey bars and bend down.  She says she'll hold my tummy when it hurts and it is so adorable.
Sleeping:
Nap days seem to be about 50/50 but she really does still need the rest time.  Some days it takes her the entire hour of rest time to fall asleep and those days are much harder to wake her up but I will never let her sleep past 4:30 no matter what.  She an Rebekah moved into the same room during this quarter.  She is sleeping on the top bunk and has been doing great.  If they talk and laugh before bed it rarely lasts more than about 30 minutes but most days we don't hear a peep out of them in the evening.  Rebekah is usually up in the morning before Faith and although quiet, Faith has started waking up early as well.  That probably explains her napping slightly more regularly :)  At 0730 I will go into their room and turn on a nightlight and give them each a book and a doll or stuffed animal.  They rarely look at the book I gave them but they spend the next half hour laughing and giggling with each other.  It is cute and they are quiet for the most part.
Eating:
She enjoyed my sister's roasted broccoli so I have started making it in the same manner and it is no longer the worst thing in the world :)  As for table manners we are currently working on chewing with mouth closed.
Skills:
Loves the monkey bars, as long as there is help for her to get across.  She has such a great time at gymnastics class every week.  She worked hard this quarter at making it down the balance beam alone and finally accomplished this about 2 weeks ago, only needing help getting up at the very beginning.  Watching the Olympic gymnasts on TV got her super pumped for gymnastics and it was cute to watch her so engaged.
She continues to love cutting fabric and "making" things for Dolly & Mackenzie.  I've started giving her a few pins and a pin cushion to help in her sewing projects.  We've also started with a glue stick to she can get some pieces "sewn" together.  She has become such an awesome help in the kitchen.  She cracks eggs like a champ and she really loves helping to make food.  She also loves the sampling :)  In addition to being a helper there, she and Rebekah both have become real helpers during chore time.  Faith folds clothes (pants mostly), they move almost all the furniture when I vacuum, and we actually clean bathrooms faster with their help than just me alone.  I have visions of giving them a bathroom the next house we live in and making it their responsibility to clean the entire thing.  It is such a pain to have small children "helping" (i.e., in your way) during chore time but WOW, what a pay off in a relatively short period of time.
We continue preschool at the Theising Academy for Young Ladies.  Faith enjoys doing all the prep with the numbers and velcro numbers for me before pre-school starts.  We have recently implemented station time during each day to get the girls used to working on some things separately.  Sometimes they do the same thing during station time but just in different areas.  Handwriting is Faith's favorite pre-school activity and she can write her and Rebekah's names as well as most of her letters.
We've been working on her being self-sufficient after bath time, getting herself dried, lotioned, and dressed - it has been going great.
Play:
Still loves preschool (both real and playtime).  We got a Little People Preschool set for $4 at a consignment event and it is a HUGE hit!  Enjoying this music blocks toy that she got at her second birthday so much more now than she ever used to (she likes the singing part the best).  Her solo play times that are the best are when she is making food and using any variation of a dish set, tea set, cutting food, super sorting pie, or any of her baby doll stuff.  Incidentally, her dolls are starting to be dressed now rather than just naked all the time.  She likes changing their clothes and I imagine it will continue to increase in frequency as the new baby arrives.  She loves playing with kitchen toys either alone, with me, or with Rebekah.  I am excited to get them a kitchen for Christmas!  She continues to enjoy riding her bike outside and asks to do so all the time.  Bible "reading" is still a constant amusement and I love it.

Our Schedule:
0730 - Sister playtime in beds
0800 - Wake-up, dressed, breakfast
0900 - Pre-school
1030 - Outside
1200 - Lunch, chore, reading
1330 - Mommy and Faith time (at least 15 minutes of this is doing whatever she wants to and the rest is usually whatever I need to get done that she can help with: sewing, cooking, etc.)
1430 - Rest time
1600 - Snack, training time, solo play, free play, time with Daddy
1800 - Dinner, outside or other time with Daddy, bath, reading, Bible, bedtime o/a 2001

Letter of the Week - P

I know, I know, F comes after E... Faith told me this several times this week but I decided to break out of my conformity shell and not work strictly in alphabetical order.  It is fall and the pumpkins are growing bigger and bigger; going to the pumpkin patch with our LIFE Group over the weekend seemed like a great family fun event to anchor our P is for Pumpkin weeks!  I am attempting to do pumpkin for both weeks of P... we'll see how pumpkin'd out we get!
The first craft we did was a messy one: cutting open a pumpkin to get out all the seeds which we saved for a subsequent craft.  I then roasted and pureed the remaining pumpkin flesh and used it in a pumpkin cake during the week. 

We washed and dried the seeds for our next craft, a pumpkin seed pumpkin. I didn't tape the seeds down like the directions say (because I didn't re-read them!) so we just started out trying to paint the seeds.

That did not work out so well.  We then moved to the painting with you hands method and that was much more fun and exciting and it got the job done!

We let them dry all day and then after dinner I pulled them off the cardboard and the girls glued them inside their pumpkins.  They turned out really cute and it really was a fun craft!

 

Our family fun day was a trip to the pumpkin patch.  It was awesome weather and a great time for the whole family.

We did take two short pumpkin breaks during the weeks to do color days.  First we did pink.  Faith is currently in love with a series of books called Pinkalicious by Victoria Kann and everything is better in pink so the pink day was super fun for her!  We started with our standard pink collage...

Then I had the girls mix white and red paint to make pink and paint on their collage.  Faith remembered that white and black made gray from our E is for Elephant week!  She really enjoyed painting with her own pink paint.



 It was back to pumpkins again to decorate our pumpkins from the patch.  We painted them with glue and then sprinkled glitter on them.  Next time I will use the glitter shakers rather than individual packets.  The girls loved it!

 For our purple day we mixed red and blue to make purple paint and dipped the ends of some old wine corks into it in order to make "grapes."  Incidentally we found Purplicious by Victoria Kann this week at the library!

We followed that up with mixing blue and red food coloring into a jar of milk to make purple milk.  The girls drank it with dinner and loved every second of it!

Our final pumpkin craft was a variation of this one, without the face.  The girls really had fun with this one, I am sad I forgot to get a picture of the end result :(

 

Our pumpkin books during these two weeks were Its Pumpkin Time and Patty's Pumpkin Patch, the later being the girls' favorite of the two. 

 

The Pumpkin Patch

Our church LIFE Group decided to continue its annual tradition of visiting a local pumpkin patch.  We'd never been before (last year I was at my parents and the year before Rebekah was about 2 days old) so this was a new tradition for us!  Frank's mom drove up to meet us.  The weather was perfect and despite a great deal of mud, everyone had a marvelous time!

Faith and her friend Mackenzie on the swings, where a good deal of the morning was spent!

There was a small animal farm.  Here is Rebekah feeding the goats.

 

We finally made it into the patch!

Faith found her pumpkin pretty quickly and is starting to pose nicely for pictures, especially when she has a chance to be a serious ham!  That is a butterfly on her cheek from her first face painting experience.

Rebekah chose a spider for her face.

 

Our two cutest pumpkins :)

Rebekah Joy - 2 Years!!

"I'm two."  That is what Rebekah has been saying for about a month and it is finally true.  Rebekah Joy is 2!  She is the happiest kiddo and has brought so much happiness to our lives.  She is 25lbs 3oz, xxx inches tall and in great health.  She has a vocabulary of about 300 words; uses 2-5 word phrases and has done great with including "please" the first time she requests something.  She mimics everything her sister does and Faith seems to be okay with that!
Sleeping:
Doing so well in her big girl bed and in the same room with her sister. Their naps are in separate rooms but nighttime is in their bunk beds.  She usually wakes up about 7am and although quiet, Faith tends to wake up then as well.  At 7:30 I go in and turn on their nightlight and give them each a book and a doll/bear.  They will laugh and giggle until 8 when I get them both up.  Some days they sleep until closer to 7:30 but rarely any later.  As we'll have a new baby soon who I plan to have eating at that time, they will continue to hang out in their room and they both seem to be okay with that.  She falls asleep quickly at night and has only gotten out of bed one time. It was in the middle of the night and I am pretty sure she was half asleep still :)
Eating:
Her appetite is still really good although the amount she eats has curbed a little bit.  Now that she is 2 I plan on introducing some shellfish.  She continues to do well with her fork and spoon and really enjoys trying to cut her own food with the side of her fork like she sees me doing often. 
Playing:
With the move into the same room, I have still been separating them for solo play, one goes into my room for a week and the other is in their joint room.  The next week, they swap.  At first Rebekah didn't like that her sister was listening to "her" radio in mommy and daddy's room but she got over that pretty quickly.  I have continued keeping Rebekah out with me for mommy time during the first 15 minutes of solo play and she really enjoys that time, just the two of us.  Rebekah really enjoys playing in the kitchen, both with her kitchen toys and with helping me cook and clean, specifically with the dishes :)
Skills:
Rebekah has started enjoying our worship time during pre-school much more and is even requesting songs, usually Jesus Loves Me.  She is recognizing some letters, loves to count and knows all her colors.  She is enjoying sorting activities and likes coloring more and more each time we do it.  Gymnastics class continues to be a huge source of fun for Rebekah.  She loves to hang from the bars and has found that hanging in general is one of her favorite things to do, including on the back of the church pew!  She also really loves to pretend she is on the balance beam, even when she is just walking on the white line in the parking lot.  "Hands out" she says :)  She loves learning to dress herself and can usually get her panties on by herself, now she is working on getting her pants on!

 

Our Schedule:

0730 - Books, bear, and sister time (in room and in her bed)

0800 - Wake-up, get dressed, breakfast

0900 - Pre-school

1030 - Outside

1200 - Lunch, chore

1330 - Nap

1600 - Snack, training time, mommy time, solo play, free play

1800 - Dinner, family time, bath, Bible story, bedtime o/a 2001

Letter of the Week - E

I decided to do E for 2 weeks.  The first week we focused on Elephants.  Our first craft was an adaptation of several letter ideas that I found.  Frank has such a creative streak, sometimes I think he should be the pre-school teacher :)

We made the top of the E into the trunk, so it was longer and curved outward. The girls painted them gray, added the eye and ear, and then we danced them around to our Elephant Song. We also made a paper plate elephant ....

 

 

One of my favorite elephant crafts was the handprint elephant.  I had the girls cut the grass out first and then we mixed the paint and did our book time while it was drying and then glued on the ear and eye.



 

I honestly was not that overly excited about either of our books for elephants.  Our library didn't have most of the ones I was looking for so I guess I was lucky to find the ones I did :)  We read Babar's Counting Book and Elephants: A Book for Children.  The latter book was certainly informative and had great pictures but more words per page than really works for a 2 and 3 year old!  My plan was to go to the zoo and look at the elephants for family day but Frank ran in a triathlon Saturday morning and we decided it was way better to support him!

 

Now, onto eggs!

Our first egg craft was this lower case e in an egg.  Faith loves cutting so I had her cut the crack of the egg and then we put the craft together.

 

Next we made some Egg Carton Es

 

Rebekah and I hard boiled some eggs and then we had some egg races with Daddy one night in the evening.  Outside games are always a hit and this one was really fun for everybody (except Lady who was barred from eating the eggs!)

 

I have been saving my egg shells for the last 2 weeks in order to do this sensory craft.  I had them crack the shells with their hands and then we glued them to an egg.  The weather turned cold the night we did this activity, hence the knitted hats and shorts :)  The girls liked this activity certainly but it wasn't the same level of enthusiasm as some of the other sensory crafts we've done.  Perhaps if they were more into destruction it would have gone over with more exuberance but I'll take their mild manner void of the need to brake things :)

 

 One of the activities I had the girls do while they were watching each other at gymnastics this week was some egg letter matching.  Faith did really well with this but I think next time I will also use 2 egg cartons and put the letter at the bottom of each space so she has a specific place to put the now completed egg.

The last awesome egg activity we did was this naked egg experiment.  The girls were certainly intrigued by this and it will be a very cool thing to do when they are a little older as well.

Our egg books this week were Big Egg and First the Egg which both girls had memorized by the end of the week they loved it so much!