Just so I won't forget

1. For the first time in Ri's little life she is taking an interest in learning her letters. She's never been one to 'sit down and learn' like Jack was at that age. She likes to do things on her own terms- much to my chagrin. Oh well.

We've been working on spelling her name (verbally) and she has that down. So we have taken the letters in her name and started w/ those. Well - now she looks for R's, Y's, E's...etc... all over the place. She found some this morning in a magazine, looks for them at restaurants and points them out in all the books we read. It's so funny b/c she gets excited when she 'finds' an R- it's almost like she's winning a game when she finds the letters she knows.

In fact- tonight- while reading- she found a 'little e' on a page and then proceeded to count ALLL of the e's on that page. Thank God we were reading a board book and not one of her big books that take forever!

Needless to say I am excited that she's finally learning her letters. Now- we need to work on writing them.

2. Speaking of reading- Jack is plugging along. We read every night for his reading log homework. He reads a bit and then Todd or I read to him. We've read to him since he was an infant and it's so cool to hear him read TO us.

Jack usually picks out the books he reads and for the most part has always picked out 'easy books.' The ones that he can read w/o much help from us. The ones that he feels confident with. The ones we read over and over and over again.

I encourage him to choose books that might challenge him but he always reverts back to the 'easy ones.'

Until tonight. He picked a book called The Perfect Nest. I have read this book to him quite a few times and it's a challenging book to say the least. Well- Ri went to bed and it was time to read. When he grabbed The Perfect Nest I said- "Oh- you want me to read this to you?" "Nope. I can do it Mom."

Well ok then. And you know what? He read it. Most of it. Of course there were words that he didn't know- but he read the bulk of it w/o my help.

3. Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 is a night to remember. Jack and Riley did NOT fight at all during dinner and then went and played together BY THEMSELVES while I cleaned the kitchen. I swear. This is the truth. They pretended they were going on a trip to Florida (Ri was the kid and Jack was the dad). It was so darn cute. In fact- I took this (crappy) pictures for proof:

4. Jack has a small obsession with attaching things to his bookbag. It all started w/ a little purchase at the school store and has escalated. I'm secretly hoping some of this stuff 'breaks.' Shhhhhh...... See for yourself:

Until next time....