so VBS at our church was this week - it was interesting to be involved with VBS at a church about ten times the size of the churches I'm used to. I was in charge of preschool craft, and since the program is geared for school age children, the only preschool children in attendance were teachers' kids. I had the 3-5 year old classes - we had anywhere from 160-180 kids!! They didn't all come at once, the classes were staggered, but when the classes overlapped, we could have as many as 50 preschoolers at a time! (we, being me, one other adult, and ten youth workers!) It was crazy, but fun!
Alexa had a blast, but I had heard that some of the boys in her class were pretty hard to handle. In fact, one of my friend's daughters was in that class and they moved her to her mother's class because she started crying and refusing to go into the classroom on the 2nd day!! All Alexa ever said when I asked her about the boys was that some of them got in trouble. Throughout the weekend though, I've realized Alexa was more aware of the situation than I thought! I was cleaning the kitchen yesterday while Alexa was playing with her Little People figures in the living room. I heard her start sing-songing, "I told you not to talk to the teacher that way! You're going to time out!" Then, in a whiny, yet very loud singing voice, "No! I don't want to go to time out!" (back to original voice) "Yes! You AAAARRRREEEE!!!"
Somehow I don't think the teachers' actually sang the disciplinary action during VBS, although it is an idea...her mini-musical reminded me of when a few of my college theatre friends decided to pretend their life was a musical and sang every word of their conversations for a day or two...
Anyway, I apologize for the lack of photos with this post - I haven't taken any lately. Billy has some great photos from our trip to the zoo in May and our Memorial Day hike, but I forgot to download them from his camera before he had to leave for his TDY trip, so those will eventually show up (because they're too cute not to post) but not today...
In other news, my son has expanded his hobbies over the past few weeks - in addition to dumping the dog's water bowl, he also enjoys trying to beat the dog to his bowl of food during meal times, and if successful, sampling the contents. Other new games include "pull the hair from the cat" (and then eat it), and "hit the pretty green button under mommy's desk" - this button happens to be the power to my computer, printer, monitor, etc., This game is most fun when mommy is working. His last new hobby is apparently an inborn trait in brothers - he enjoys watching Alexa organize her puzzle pieces, dolls, horses - whatever the activity of the day may be - into a perfect, OCD-type line, and then, when she has finished her adjustments, he knocks them all over, or chews on them (did I mention he's getting two more teeth - this could explain the constant chewing/biting/sampling of dog food and cat hair). His sister is not amused by this new hobby and indicates this very loudly. I heard her screaming one day and ran in the living room to find her sprawled out over her perfectly assembled foam princess puzzle, trying to cover each and every piece with some part of her body. Meanwhile, Brody was crawling over her head to reach the unprotected puzzle piece on the other side.
Despite their disagreements, Alexa is really great at watching out for her little brother. He wandered into the laundry room the other day (no doubt to make sure the cats had not left any traces of breakfast in their bowls) and Alexa was quick to alert me that Brody was in the cat room. Once I removed him, she also informed me that that I needed to put the baby gate up because Brody wasn't a cat and he didn't live in there. Good info to know.
Like my son, my oldest munchkin also seems to wake up older every day (yes, I realize this is expected, but as a parent, some days it still takes me by surprise). She woke up Wednesday morning and suddenly knew how to write her name. We have been working on it for a while, but Wednesday, everything clicked, and she's been autographing every coloring page and spare piece of paper since! I thought the changes between two and three were overwhelming, but as I look back over my posts from last year and see how much my little girl has learned, I think the changes from three to four are even more astounding. I cannot imagine how I will feel this time next year, knowing that when summer ends, my baby girl will begin kindergarten...not a thought I want to dwell on, but I can't seem to figure out where to take this post next, so I guess it ends here, with the promise of pictures on my next post.
