Parentisms

As Kate was trying to shake a salt shaker at her sister, "Don't a-salt your sister."

Cat Got Your Tongue?

When we saw the pediatrician for Gabby and Nate's well visits last month, I was asked if I had any concerns about Gabriella's speech. I raised the point that while her vocabulary is excellent, she still has what I think of as toddler diction ('w' instead of 'r', etc.). This led to a referral to a speech therapist.

I knew that this might be an interesting experience, since Gabriella often clams up in front of new people, and this is doubly true if she knows that they are wanting to hear her speak. I went armed with a list of her common speech errors and we met with a nice lady who tried her very best to get Gabby to speak. We moved from the office into a play room, where we looked at wall murals and played with mega blocks. I did manage to get her to tell me the colors of the blocks she wanted in order for the therapist to overhear. After that, she did her best to even suppress a grin. The gal gave her an obviously girl doll and said something about it being a boy and then told her that the boy doll was a girl. Gabby sideways glanced at me, but didn't make a correction. When the woman asked for the boy, Gabby shrugged her shoulders and handed back the girl.

At the end of the session, with not one question of the assessment that the therapist had in hand completed, the therapist offered to either have us come back in or to write up a list of things to try at home, with us calling back in after six months if we don't see any improvement. I opted for the at home practice. She also told me that it's not uncommon for a child at this age to be working on those sounds too, so it's not a major concern at this point.

Tonight I thought I'd get the little gal to talk about the experience, hoping that if we talk about it some that it will help her in similar situations in the future. I asked cheerily, "Didn't you think that lady we talked to today was nice?"

Gabby regarded me cooly and in a totally deadpan manner answered, "I didn't talk to that lady."

Amen.

You Create: picnic bundle

I made this for my in-laws to carry their utensils for a picnic.



I took a place mat and lined it with flannel. I cut the flannel to 1" larger than the mat, turned the edges under and stitched it together. I flipped up the bottom of the mat to make a pocket and stitched that to make pockets to store each of the items (napkins, forks, knives, spoons, and a spare spot for anything else they might need to carry).



Lastly, I stitched a ribbon on to tie the little bundle up.

Hot Chocolate Santa

I took a milk bottle from a fast food restaurant we visited recently in a rush from story time to the grocery store and washed it out. Then I painted it as Santa Claus. Kate and I made hot cocoa mix from scratch and filled it for her story time teacher.

Story time was snowed out this week (we got about a 1/2" of snow, but here that causes a lot of trouble, since there just isn't the call for the equipment to be kept for the little snow we get), so we'll have to try to get it to her another time.

Trim the Tree

We finally put up our tree Saturday night. Justin and I got the tree, lights, and beads up so that the kiddos could help us put up ornaments on Sunday after church.

Gabby loves the beads and told me that, "The tree has a necklace!"

The bottom half of the three is full of fabric ornaments that my mom's mother made. We put some of our more fragile ornaments on the top, but many of them we kept boxed up, knowing that Nate will be rough on our tree this year.

Each of the children got to hand their 'baby's first Christmas' ornament.






Then I asked the girls which their favorite ornament was.


Kate told me one of the fabric angels was her favorite, "Because the angel told everybody."


Gabby chose one of her two baby's first Christmas ornaments (they each have a figurine one and an engraved one). Of course she chose it, it is a baby.

I asked Justin what his favorite one is, but he couldn't choose between three:


The French Fries that Kate and I got him on his first Christmas as a daddy, as I called him Papas Fritas because of a story from a friend of mine, whose father thought his daughter was talking about whenever she said french fries in Spanish,


The snowman I got him the year that he got to build his first snow man as a father,


Or the Cincinnati ornament.

I also love many of our ornaments. I am so thankful that I can to our marriage with several ornaments from my childhood like:


My baby's first Christmas,


A Mary that my sister bought me one year when I played Mary in a Christmas play,


And this one that came from our exchange student in Denmark

Then there are the ones we've gathered like


The one we got our first year of marriage.

More Home Made Christmas

I've been doing some more home made Christmas gifts.

Gabriella asked for baby doll clothes for her favorite doll, Sally, for Christmas. She said in specific that she wanted strawberry pajamas. Since strawberries are out of season, even in the fabric store, I was only able to buy strawberry buttons. I used some fabric scraps and put together this little set for baby Sally, who I had to go hunting for last night to check the fit on her pants. She was even willing to pose for this picture.

Christmas Tree Cookies

Since Christmas isn't Christmas without cookies, okay so it is, but I don't ever remember celebrating one without these cookies, I made these with the girls. I even happened to have star candy sprinkles with which we topped our trees.

The very first year we were married Justin was working an odd shift and sleeping odd hours. I was taking night classes three nights a week (many people were taking the same classes for their Master's degree and so we met when they could come). I got out of class early one night and scurried home to make these cookies. I was so excited to make them on my own for the first time. Justin was asleep, so I sneaked into the little galley kitchen and mixed up a batch of dough. Just as I was preparing the first cookie sheet, my sleepy husband stumbled from the bedroom, which shared a wall with the kitchen, and demanded to know what I was doing with a caulking gun in the middle of the night (8 PM).

My caulking gun (cookie press) and I have been making these cookies for the past 12 years and we always laugh when I pull out that press.

It didn't take Nate too long to figured out that the girls had left their chairs from helping, right where the cookies were cooling.