She did it again!

Second night in a row of sleeping ALL THE WAY through the night! I am pinching myself. Can't believe this is happening! Still not expecting it every night. Certain their will be setbacks (but hoping for continued success). Now, if we can reclaim our king sized bed at some point, it would be lovely! I moved the crib into Analese's room (well, actually the girls' room). I may see if she will do daytime naps in there to get used to it. Still can't believe it!

The most random post ever.....

Yep, I cannot imagine anything more random than what I am about to type. Mariele slept through the night 11 hours last night! Yep! Completely random, and totally out of the blue. A little background explanation. A couple of weeks ago I got a little fed up with her frequent night waking to nurse, and I decided I wanted to night wean her. Well, I made a strong attempt the first night, and more feeble attempts the subsequent nights. To make a long story short, Lee has been sleeping in the guest room so I could make some attempts to wean her a bit in the middle of the night. I have been starting out the night sleeping in the guest room with Lee and then going to our room when she awakens the first time. She is not completely night weaned, but we have made some good progress. So last night after she nursed to sleep around 8:45, I went to the guest room with Lee (after doing a little blogging and having a snack). I woke around 2:00 totally shocked that she had not woken up yet. She normally wakes up around midnight. I checked on her and she was sleeping with her little butt up and I could tell by her breathing that she was in a deep state of sleep. So back to the guest room I went. I woke again at 5:00. Again, totally shocked! I would have considered it a super duper success if she had woken up anytime after this point. I checked on her and it seemed like she had not even moved since I checked on her at 2:00. So back to the guest room for me! I woke up at 7:15 (Lee was off today) and it was completely light outside and I was in complete shock that Mariele was still sleeping! I checked on her and she seemed pretty deep in sleep still. I finally went in there at 7:45, because I was not so sure about letting her sleep any later that that. She sat up in bed when I went in at that point. I gave her a morning hug, and she attacked my boobs. I don't even really expect her to repeat this again tonight (although I am fervently hoping). The point is, she is trending toward very good things! I am happy with that.

Now for the second most completely random thing ever - this afternoon, Analese has taken to calling me "Mother." I asked her where she got that, and she replied, "I don't know, Mother, " with a slightly British sounding accent. She only watches Tivo'ed episodes of The Little Einsteins on TV, so I don't recall seeing anything on there that would cause her to call me "Mother." Hmmmm.......Strange happenings around my house!

O Edamame!

This past weekend we went out to the local hibachi grill restaurant with our friends to celebrate a birthday and have a farewell dinner. Yng Yng's parents have been visiting from Malaysia for the past several months, and they returned home this week. The are very beautiful people, and it was so nice to visit with them several times over the course of their visit. So here we were at the Shogun restaurant. We were all seated around the hibachi grill. Analese and Anita were seated way across from us, and they were in their own little world. We were all enjoying an edamame appetizer. Yng Yng took a few pods over to Anita and Analese. Imagine my surprise when Analese kept coming back for more! She came back multiple times asking for more of the "beans." I was so pleased that she seemed to be so enjoying a green vegetable. She seems to be a bit anti-green veggie lately. Fast forward to Monday when we were grocery shopping. I found a bag of frozen edamame that you steam in the bag in the microwave. I threw it right into my cart, intending to serve it to Analese before she forgot about her great edamame experience in the restaurant. Fast forward to dinner tonight. I decided to serve the edamame as a side dish. I got Analese's plate all ready for her, and I filled half of her plate with edamame pods. I gave her a bowl for discarding the empty pods. She was so excited to have the edamame on her plate, and she was excited about the bowl. She got right to work squeezing the beans out of the pod. However, instead of squeezing the beans into her mouth (which is how one typically eats edamame), she was squeezing them into the bowl. I reminded her that the bowl was for the purpose of discarding the empty pods. "Oh no, mommy. I want to do it this way." OK. Whatevah. Anyway, she was having so much fun (she even SAID that she was having fun) squeezing the beans out of the pods. She ended up with a good sized serving of shelled edamame. So I suggested that she eat them. "I don't want them, mommy." WHAT??? I guess if I had been paying attention to her at the restaurant, then I may have realized that she was not actually eating the edamame, she was just shelling them for grins and giggles. Of course, little Anita was probably actually eating hers, because she is just healthy that way. So, back to tonight's dinner. I said, "Analese, you have to eat SOME of that edamame." "OK mommy, I will eat 2." Me: "No, how about 10." So I counted out 10 of the beans, and removed the other beans. About 45 minutes later, those 10 beans had made it into her tummy. She did not balk at eating them. She was just separating them into smaller piles and doing simple addition. "Look Mommy! 2+3=5! 6+2=8!"

Wordless Wednesday

Goofing around with the iPhone camera.

Thank you!

I really appreciate all of the thought provoking comments you all left on the ranty homeschooling post of mine. I love blogging with all of you open-minded, diverse and super-duper intelligent women. If there were only more of you all in the world:)

Ranty Random

Today I came across this interesting article about homeschoolers in Texas. The article was mostly positive, although it was a bit light on actual information. I should not have read the comments following the article, but I unfortunately got sucked in...What struck me was how many people have very strong negative opinions about homeschooling. Some of these opinions are so strong that they believe homeschooling should be criminalized. Of course, many of these people do not even have kids, so I'm not sure they are qualified to argue this point at all. Maybe it is a Texas thing, but the general perception of homeschoolers seems to be religious right fringe lunatic zealots. Sigh.....I am used to being a bit of a misfit, and I am admittedly hard to categorize. Religious right? Let's take the right part first. I tend to swing a bit left of center politically, so right is out. Religious? Yes, I am religious....or maybe spiritual is a better term, although I do believe the two go hand in hand. I am not a lunatic, however. In fact, I would even say that I am not necessarily homeschooling for religious reasons, although I do give Biblical instruction. I would be doing that even if my kids were enrolled in public school, because I believe that religious instruction should be instilled at home first and foremost. I like to believe that I am a hip and progressive homeschooler. Maybe I am a hip wannabe, but I do try to be progressive, and I am certainly doing college preparatory homeschooling.....Well, right now I am doing Kindergarten level homeschooling, but if I stay in the game for the long haul, we are definitely doing college preparatory, advanced schoolwork. I am a firm believer in higher education, and my children will be highly encouraged to pursue advanced degrees of their choosing. My homeschool heroes both received advanced professional degrees and are some of the most well adjusted and well socialized people that I know. I am aware that there are probably many examples out there of homeschooling done poorly. And if someone knows someone who is not doing a good job homeschooling, then that colors his/her future opinions about homeschooling. Homeschooling is absolutely not for everyone. There are so many factors involved, and it is a huge commitment. I love teaching. My degrees are in science, but teaching is really more my passion. I was fortunate to be able to do some clinical teaching when I worked at the University hospital. I am not knocking the public schools. I am a product of public education, and it certainly worked for me and my husband. I'm sure I would have done well with private or home education also. The point is, there are many educational choices, and we all just want to feel warm and fuzzy about the choice we make for our children. Perhaps if we feel at peace with our decisions, then we will not bash other people's decisions. PEACE! The world would be a better place.....Now for the #1 reason I am homeschooling......Drum roll please.......Hubby gets 12 weeks of vacation a year, and we take vacations all random times of the year. I really don't want to be attached to the school calendar just yet. We will take it one year at a time. I'm certain that I will homeschool the girls through early elementary. I hope to go beyond that. But we will really feel the benefit in October of 2011, when Analese's peers are sitting in Kindergarten and we are going to Disney WOO HOO! I homeschool on a year round schedule to be able to accommodate those random vacations.

I know that was a "ranty" post for me. It was a brewin' all day, so thank you for reading or skimming though. Now on to the lighter randoms. My girls were both snotty nosed today, and Mariele even had a low grade fever when she woke from her afternoon nap. They are supposed to start their fall classes at The Little gym tomorrow morning, so I hope they are well and don't have watery snot dripping from their little snouts.

Some cute pics from the weekend.





A funny story about scissors. Lee was absolutely appalled when he found out that I was allowing Analese to cut with a pair of sharp tipped sewing scissors when she was doing her school work. We tried using the plastic safety scissors.....but they just don't cut! Yeah, they are pretty safe. Analese is doing a lot of "precision" cutting, and she really was preferring the sewing scissors. She was always fully supervised, by the way. Anyway, Lee brought her home a pair of metal safety scissors the other day.



She was proud of her new scissors, especially because her Daddy gave them to her. She took them over to the couch along with her straw thermos. After a few minutes, we wondered why she was being so quiet. Lee went over to check on her and found her with the scotch tape dispenser trying to tape up the almost severed straw from her thermos.



She immediately started crying. She totally did not mean to do it. I think she was just goofing around and was very surprised that the scissors actually cut through the straw! I contacted the Thermos company and ordered replacement straws and all is well, but that poor child sniveled for about an hour over that severed straw! Oh, it is hard to be four sometimes.

Wordless Wednesday Eve Eve...

In case y'all have not noticed, I tend to blog in spurts lately. I know I will get so busy this week that I will totally miss putting up this Wordless Wednesday photo, so here ya go. In the good 'ole summertime:

I can't get good ones of both girls at the same time...

Then Daddy begrudgingly gets dragged into the photo shoot for the purpose of getting them to both smile.

Silly baby

Rearranging

We did some super exciting furniture rearrangement! We moved our old sectional sofa out of the guest room and into the school room area. We moved the leather chair out of the school room area into the office. We moved the "junk" table out of the school room area into the guest room. All of these spaces are much improved now. Funny how just rearranging some existing furniture can really spruce up a place.

Our school room area is in the addition off of our master bedroom. The sofa is great because so much of Analese's school right now involves reading little phonics books. It is nice to snuggle on the couch while we read them.




I just love our school space. It is a very pleasing learning environment and just a cool place to hang out!

The guest room seems a lot bigger now with the sofa gone. And for our TV addict family members (you know who you are), it is now very easy to watch TV from bed.

More Wordless Wednesday...Ballerinas!

Wordless Wednesday...

"Mommy look! My yo-yo has an angry pig on it!"

QUICK daily cuteness!

Mariele fell asleep with Daddy a few evenings ago.



Mariele wants so badly to be involved while I am doing school with Analese. Here she is sitting next to her Sissy in Sissy's desk watching the phonics video (which is evidently pretty darn entertaining)!

None other than Yours Truly.....

featured in an interview on the 500 in 2010 blog today! Click here to get to my interview. Or you can click the sidebar to the right.

Random spewings forth...

There are so many things I have wanted to blog about. Now if I can just remember what they were. We have successfully completed (as of tomorrow, that is) the first 2 weeks of our year round homeschooling. I lesson planned 185 days. I meant to lesson plan 180 days, but I accidentally went 5 days too far, so the poor kiddo gets 5 extra days of edjumacation. We take vacations during the year at very random times, so the year round (July-June) schedule will work so nicely for us. Analese is doing so well with her school. She has been reading for awhile now, and this week she has learned simple addition and subtraction. I am letting her do a small drawing/art project once a week, and I was very impressed with her drawing of this cat today. She was following the step by step instructions on how to draw the "copy cat." I got her started and then went to change Mariele's diaper. When I came back, this is what was on her paper! I added her name and the date at the bottom, because this one was a keeper! I don't keep every single thing that she does, because it would just be way too much. But I do like to keep certain ones.



I really am trying not to push her too hard. We are operating well within her ability doing this homeschooling. I think we are both having a lot of fun with it, and Mariele really wants to be involved too. She likes to color all over Analese's discarded papers. Analese really does have an amazing attention span for the school work. But after school is over, sometimes she even seems to regress to almost infantile behavior - crying over little things, wanting to be held, etc. I am trying hard to balance her school day with lots of playtime and downtime. I have to remind myself sometimes that she is only four. Also, she has been eating like a horse the past week or so. I think she is just burning so much glucose in her brain cells!

I feel blessed to be able to enjoy a weekly play date with another homeschooling family that lives right in my neighborhood. We have been friends for awhile, and I love bouncing homeschool ideas off of her and exchanging stories and sharing experiences. It is nice to know that there are many families in my area that have chosen this educational path.

Analese officially started piano lessons today! We are using the piano teacher of our good friends' kids. She is really wonderful, and today was a trial lesson to assess Analese's readiness for beginning the lessons. Analese was so excited about the piano teacher coming to our house. When she arrived, I just left the room and let them have the lesson. I could tell that Analese was being still and paying attention and really enjoying herself. Every once and awhile I would hear her giggle a little at something that Miss Shirley said. Miss Shirley said that she is ready for lessons and we set up a weekly time. Now I just need to guide her practice a little each day. Analese said, "I like my teacher. She is a girl just like I am!"

Which brings me to my next funny story. Analese missed a few sessions of The Little gym this summer because she was sick and we were traveling. I scheduled her first make-up class a couple of weeks ago. I put her in the sports skills class. She had done that one before and really enjoyed it. The class she was in before had a few girls, but this class was ALL boys except for her. She still seemed to enjoy herself, but after the class I asked her how she liked being in an all boy class. Her response: "Well, those boys were just running around and not listening to the teacher. Girls are nicer than boys." I had to inwardly giggle a little at that. So for the second make-up class, I put her in the dance class this week. She loved it, and it turns out that she misses dance class. She is doing gymnastics for the summer and fall. I may have to put her back in the dance class eventually. No boys in that one!

Mariele spent two days in a row wearing this:



And she was imitating all of her Sissy's dance moves. That is her Sissy's old dance leotard that is too small for her now, but fits Mariele perfectly. Every time I would have to change her diaper, I would try to put her shorts back on her, but she would grab the leotard and start fussing. She is only 18 months old and she already has a definite opinion about what she wants to wear!

I'm excited about the school year and I am proud of all my lesson plans. I love having days when I feel like I can accomplish it all. However, I am getting pretty deficient in "me" time. My poor Kindle seems to be sitting on the table unread:( I hope I can manage my time in such a way to find myself some "me" time. And some couple time with Lee would be nice too. Next week we are going to dinner with a couple WITHOUT our kids. That will be nice....and weird. But mostly nice, I think.

In conclusion, I need to go read my Kindle now. I have to be a little nocturnal to get some "me" time.

Our Weekend Excursion to Austin

This weekend we had a spur of the moment excursion to Austin. We just felt like leaving town and getting away for a short while, and we had never been to Austin, which is in a more hilly part of Texas. Austin is really a nice little city. It reminds me of Little Rock . We spent the night in a hotel right beside the Congress Street bridge where all of the bats reside. Every night from April to October, these bats swarm out from under this bridge at dusk. People line the bridge and fill up the park that is next to the bridge. I could not believe that so many people were there just to see the bats! The bats did not come out until nearly 9:30! By the time they came out, it was really too dark to see them, and it was definitely too dark to photograph or take video. It was neat to see, though. They were flying kind of low. One of them nearly flew into Lee's head! The girls got light swords from some guy who was selling them down there.



So many people waiting to see the bats! That is our hotel in the background.



The next day we went to McKinney Falls State Park. It was HOT! But we had a nice time on this paved trail that was surprisingly hilly!






Analese rode her bike for a pretty short distance before she wiped out. The trail was kind of rough and very hilly. I was just glad that she did not wipe out in the middle of the cactus that was lining the trail!




We saw the upper falls. There was a swimming hole and lots of people were swimming and jumping off the cliffs into the swimming hole. I did not feel very comfortable with my girls being there, however. I did not bring Mariele's floaties, and Analese does not know her limits. She thinks she can do anything as long as she is "careful." So we really did not spend much time at the falls. Lee did take them wading.




All in all it was a very fun weekend, and it was proof that some of the best times are the times that are not even planned!