September Sunshine

Baby E still has a nasty cough, so she and I stayed home while DH took the older girls to church. There's a special service today, with baptisms and baby dedications. Baby E has been sick both times we've had a baby dedication since she was born. Hopefully next time (in 6 months) she'll be well enough to go and be a part of the service.

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Baby E has discovered the joy of baskets. She'll find a little basket, fill it with blocks or balls, and carry it around delightedly. Right now she's filling up her basket and then climbing into the little inflatable pool in the family room to dump it out. Then she'll fill it up and dump it out again several times before filling it up and taking a tour around the room with it.

She's asking to use the potty more consistently (instead of us just guessing or trying to read her signals). She'll get the potty and pat it, or pat her diaper and say "otty!" or "go!" until we help her go, and she's getting quite good at "holding it" if it takes us a few minutes to get her to a potty.

She's saying new words every day. Today while DH and the girls were getting ready to leave, she stood at the top of the stairs calling, "Guys! Guys!" While I had her sitting on the potty a few minutes ago, she started pointing at the wastebasket and saying "Og! Og!." It took me a minute to realize that she was telling me there were pictures of frogs on the wastebasket. "What's that?" is still one of her most commonly-spoken phrases, but it's getting clearer and easier to understand.

On Friday both older girls did water-measuring for math. M&M is working on concepts of more and less (which she already understands quite well) and AJ was counting how many cups of water it took to fill various larger containers. It was a lot of fun, but I did end up wishing we'd done the exercise outside. Even with several large towels on the table and nearby, we ended up with large pools of water on the table, chairs and floor. The girls helped clean it up, though.

The highlight for me was seeing AJ get so excited when she realized that differently sized and shaped containers could hold the same amount of water. We had fun guessing how much water a particular container could hold, and then testing our theories. I have two one-cup measures that I've wondered for years if were really accurate, because one looks so much larger than the other. It was fun to test those out and verify that, yes, they do actually both hold the same amount of water. AJ nearly jumped up and down in her chair, she was so excited.

I did take some pictures and will post those later . . . right now I'm at the laptop instead of at the upstairs computer where the pictures are stored.

Our dishwasher broke on Friday, so we're washing dishes by hand until the replacement part comes in the mail. Last night I cooked several meals to put into the freezer, so we have some catching-up on the dishes to do. We were so tired last night that we decided to just leave them for today.

Our neighbors are out in the yard today, putting up a fence between our back yard and theirs. I offered to help, but they graciously declined. We're splitting the cost of the fence, but it's nice of the neighbors to do all the work of putting it up. I'm so excited that the fence is finally getting done. Once we get the front panels and a gate up, I'll be able to relax a bit more when the kids are playing outside.

It's such a beautiful sunny day that I think Baby E and I will go outside for a while. We'd better enjoy the sun while we can, before the rain and the cold set in for the winter.