My Amazing Girls

I’m not going to lie. This post is probably mostly going to be bragging about my girls and how amazing they are. We’ve had fun the past few days.

I taught nursery on Friday, which I was happy to do. I was even happier when it was over and am definitely happy it isn’t my calling. For the lesson we talked about the Plan of Salvation and made a little mobile from a pattern in the lesson manual. At least, those of us emotionally stable enough to complete the project…which was, you know, hardly anybody.

For the mobile the kids had to colour three little pictures. I had all the pieces pre-cut so while they were colouring I went around to write their names on the back so when the time came to put the mobiles together (the time didn’t ever really come) we would know whose picture was whose.

When I got to Rachel she said, “You don’t have to worry about writing my name on my paper. I already did it!”

She had. Kind of. She wrote the R and the A above the R, which isn’t bad for a two-year-old. I was pretty shocked. And impressed. I finished writing “-ACHEL” for her, obviously.

When we came home from church Rachel wanted to colour more so we got out some paper and crayons and colouring books. The girls had fun together.

It took longer than I thought it would take for Miriam to put the crayon in her mouth, but after analyzing it for several minutes she decided it was chomp-worthy and in it went.

Today we had a play date with Rachel’s friend Elijah. From what I understand they played super heroes and Toy Story. Elijah has action figures of Woody and Buzz. Later in the day we brought out some play dough that we made last week and Rachel made her own action figures. From left to right we have Woody, Buzz, their mom, their baby sister, and she’s currently crafting their big brother.

When she was sick of playing with those she squashed them all together and we made a family of snakes. She made the baby snakes that are all snuggled up together by one of the mommy snakes. I made the long snakes, including the snake eating the mouse. Rachel was a little upset by this (remind me to never let her watch the nature channel) and made me take the mouse out of the snake’s mouth, smash up my snake, and make a new tail for the mouse. Then she requested that I also make a baby mouse for the Mommy mouse to take care of.

She also kissed the mouse to help it feel better.

Miriam was like, “What? She’s kissing a mouse? No way!”

Currently Miriam’s favourite toys are a tube of lanolin and the 1/4 cup measuring cup; this forces me to ask myself once again why we bother buying toys for our children. She did play with her squishy blocks today, though, so at least I feel like I am getting my money’s worth out of something.

The following picture explains why Rachel was so introspective when she heard Tom’s talk about his sister knocking his towers over. Miriam was caught red-handed, which is probably why she looks so shocked.

Rachel quickly forgave her and decided that they should read stories instead of fighting over blocks, so she grabbed Little Red Riding Hood and read it to Miriam, complete with a husky big-bad-wolf voice. Of course, she can’t really read yet but she did a fabulous job paraphrasing. I’ll post the video I took of them if I ever get around to it.

 

You might think that Miriam is upset in this picture because she has personal space issues, which, admittedly, she does, especially if it involves Rachel touching either Miriam or her playthings.

However, I know the real reason she looks traumatized is because of the glaring grammatical error on this page. It makes me want to cry, too.

Now, I know my grammar isn’t close to being perfect. I hated the grammar class I took in college (yes, an entire course devoted to grammar—not usage, not syntax, just grammar—and, no, I have nothing to show for it), but this is just bad. I mean, I’m willing to look past the fact that they had the hunter hit the wolf over the head with the end of his rifle instead of gutting the monster and that they took out anything else remotely scary or disturbing in this story (which kind of ruins the fairytale, but I can understand why they do it—it’s for kids and kids are…tender).

This, though?

Well, it’s hard to look past it.

Little, Red Riding Hood?

Little [comma] Red Riding Hood?

Are you kidding me? How much more glaring could you get? Talk about traumatizing a child!

All that aside, though, and it’s a pretty good story, I suppose. Sometimes to switch it up a bit we read it as Little Red Rachel Hood (or is it Little, Red Rachel Hood?), which Rachel thinks is hilarious. Today when she read it to Miriam she inserted Nancy in place of “Little Red Riding Hood’s mother.”

She also named an Apatosaurus and a teddy bear after me so I’ve been feeling pretty good about myself lately.

Rachel, who loves assimilating consonants, has recently picked up a new word that is just loaded with consonants. That word is “bubble gum.” She pronounces it  “buggle dum.” I find this fascinating on so many levels—like why it is she can say the ‘g’ in buggle but not in dum.

She’s a constant source of joy, Rachel is.

Today Miriam grabbed Rachel’s arm and immediately brought it to her mouth and started sucking vigorously on it. That’s what Miriam does with pretty much everything. Rachel was not impressed.

“Help me, Momma!” she shrieked, “Miriam’s nursing on me!”

Yeah. And did I mention she fed Miriam mashed potatoes and gravy today. Nom, nom, nom…but so totally not a “stage 1” food.

Anyway, I love these girls so much, even the days like today when Andrew leaves me at home alone with them for like twelve hours and I feel like I’m going to rip my hair out by bedtime…even on those days.