Ian lost his first tooth!

This morning Ian decided he wanted his tooth out, and he asked Nadia to pull it out for him. She was very happy to help him out! She also wanted to be in charge of putting his $5 under his pillow tonight, but since I had already planned an outing to the mall this afternoon, I gave him the money during the day time and totally skipped the "tooth fairy" routine. I had planned a trip to the mall to use the rest of our free ice cream cone coupons for Friendly's (we had six and they were expiring in 5 days) and a $10 off coupon for JCPenney. I let Ian and Oliver each pick out one pair of pajamas. Ian picked Captain America and Oliver picked Mickey Mouse. I paid less than $5 total for both although the original prices would have totaled $66. Most of their clothes I buy at yard sales or consignment shops, but I prefer to buy socks, underwear, and pajamas brand new and JCP is usually the place to get the best bargains (and sometimes Sears). After they each ate a cup of cookies and cream ice cream, we headed to Target. Nadia had saved up a total of $22, and Ian had about $12. Ian bought a small Nexo Knights Lego set for $10 and Nadia bought another Anna doll. How many Frozen dolls does this girl own? This one is a plush one that sings.

I haven't focused on art as much as I would like to with the kids the last few months, but I have been trying to do more lately and plan to do even more from May through August. At right is a picture Ian drew this morning of birds. Nadia was better at coloring than Ian is at this age, but Ian has an easier time with drawing than she did. Nadia also has been doing keyboarding and Spanish lately which had been dropped for several months. I tend to err on the side of wanting them to have plenty of time to play and be kids rather than trying to cram in every possible subject in every week. I took my mom's advice and am having Nadia go back through all the songs in her two piano books again before we start the new books. She is doing great! She plays each song three times - once she sings the names of the notes while she plays it, the next time she sings the lyrics, and the third time she counts out the rhythm while playing the song.

While Nadia and Ian were in gym class Oliver and I went to a grocery store (not one we usually go to) before spending some time at the Well (indoor playland at church). Oliver loved having his own shopping car to push. He wanted me to put everything in his cart, but it was a little too small to hold everything. So cute! I was mostly buying things for our Jewish meal. Earlier in the week I had made challah bread (braided yeast bread), but today the kids had bagels (not something new but still something good to have when studying Israel) for lunch along with some matzo crackers. They really liked the crackers! Ian and Oliver liked the challah bread, but Nadia didn't. For our dinner I cooked tzimmes (features carrots and sweet potatoes), baked cheese sticks, chocolate macaroons (for dessert), and potato latkes. Not surprisingly, the cheese sticks were the most popular item.

Oliver did not nap at all today, but he slept in until 8:30 again. Wow! We shall see what happens with the time change this weekend. Usually this is the good time change for the kids, even though Paul hates to lose an hour. The other happy news of the day is that I slept better last night than I had in many days (although still some pain), but over the course of today I have felt remarkable improvement. Yahoo! I really didn't want to need an MRI or physical therapy or anything else the doctor mentioned as the next steps if the pain didn't go away. Hopefully in the near future I will be pain free and able to sleep on my sides again. We didn't go to a playground yesterday (because of the rain) or today (because of gym class and a trip to the mall), but I was able to run from 5;10-6:15. I left as soon as Paul got home from work. All in all I'd say we had a good day. It was a memorable day since it was the day Ian lost his very first tooth. My "babies" are growing up.