Wordless Wednesday

 

 

 

 

Nadia's Birthday Celebrations!

It feels like we've celebrated her birthday for four days, but really just yesterday and today were specifically planned for Miss Nadia. We went to DelGrosso's on Saturday because Word Girl was there not because it was almost her birthday, and every year our church's annual Family Fun Festival always takes place on a Sunday afternoon right around her birthday. On Sunday afternoon Nadia wore the "Birthday Girl" shirt that Gabby and Alexis gave her last month. Oliver stayed home with Paul. The kids enjoyed the air ball t-ball and the big bounce thing. It was the first time Ian enjoyed something like that. Nadia has enjoyed it for several years. They both improved greatly in their batting skills. I was asked to participate in the Bible trivia game, but I couldn't do that while watching Nadia and Ian.

Nadia had planned her birthday menu several weeks ago. Nadia, Ian, Oliver, and I enjoyed chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and grilled cheese sandwiches and brownies for lunch. Nadia opened most of the presents before breakfast. Her favorite gifts that morning were the princess costumes and Little Mermaid 2 dvd that we gave her. After breakfast the kids watched the movie, and then Nadia did some watercolor painting (a gift from us) and some scratch off princess papers (from my parents). Ian did one of the puzzles my mom had gotten Nadia. We also started to play a game of Trouble (another gift), and the kids had fun playing with the Blokus tiles (another gift) although they didn't actually play the game yet. Paul's mom and Shawn showed up around 2:30, and we headed to the pool a few minutes later. We arrived at 2:50, but we weren't able to get in until 4:30 because it was thundering and no one can get in the pool until 30 minutes after the last thunder. If it hadn't been her birthday, we would have just gone home, but we stuck it out and stayed at the pool until 7:00pm. Paul's dad and Paul showed up a little after 5pm with pizza. We ate the pizza on a picnic table with princess plates, cups, and napkins. Nadia opened her presents from Grandma and Pop Pop before we left, and right before bed she had her birthday dessert (chocolate peanut butter ice cream). It was the first time in her life she had some chocolate at all three meals!

Today we left the house around 9am and drove to Lancaster. We met Paul's parents, my parents, and Paul's grandmother at Friendly's for a birthday lunch and her birthday cake (compliments of Aunt Millie) and then we headed to Sight and Sound to see Noah. Nadia opened presents today from Gram and Aunt Millie and Uncle Al. We arrived home around 7pm in part because we made two quick stops on the way home. One of the stops was at a department store so I could buy myself a new bottom for my bathing suit as mine was in truly pitiful shape. Since Paul was with us, I took advantage of being able to go into a dressing room and try something on. If it hadn't been such a long day, I would have loved to do some more clothes shopping. I think that Nadia had a wonderful birthday, and I am glad we don't have anything special planned for the next few days as I am pooped. The special things on the schedule thus far for next month are MUCH closer to home (such as fireworks on the 4th of July). As I said a few days ago, I took too many pictures the past two days to include them all in this post. More to come later this week! I still can't believe my little girl is FIVE years old. My oh my.

Oliver enjoyed Nadia's birthday lunch!

 

Our 5 Year Old!

June 24, 2008

*Is our social butterfly. Everything is more fun for her (the swimming pool, playground, etc.) if there are other girls there (of any age). She also carries on lengthy conversations with adults. No one is a stranger.

*Is obsessed with the color pink and anything to do with a princess. We gave her three more princess costumes today!


December 25, 2008

*Hasn't completely given up the habit of sucking her thumb, particularly when she's in bed.

*Over the past year she hasn't taken many naps, although she's had about one a week lately. She usually plays with princesses while listening to books on CD (she's currently listening to The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis) or plays her Leapster game in her room while her brothers nap. Her most favorite Leapster games are Learn to Draw and Pet Pals. She's in bed from 8pm to 7am most days, although if she takes a nap it takes her more than an hour to fall asleep. She MUST have her dragon pillow in order to sleep. The last couple of months we got her to downsize to sleeping with only ONE doll or stuffed animal. She used to have a bed full of them. Lately she's either been sleeping with Zoe (Sesame Street character) that was one of her birthday presents last year or a Barbie doll she's named Allie (after a girl in her gymnastics class).



July 6, 2009

*She would watch TV all day long if I let her, which of course I do not! Her most favorite movies include ones with Disney princesses (Sleeping Beauty, Tangled, Little Mermaid, etc.), VeggieTales (Sweetpea Beauty and Penniless Princess in particular), and a Little Princess (the one based on the book by Frances Burnett). Her current favorite shows to watch via Amazon Prime include Word Girl, Bubble Guppies, Reading Rainbow, and Angelina Ballerina.

*Loves to play games and do puzzles. She can do up to 100 piece puzzles by herself, and she has done up to 300 piece puzzles with help. Her favorite games include Candyland, Memory, and hide and seek.

*She shows no fear at amusement parks. She rides everything she's tall enough to ride!



December 24, 2009

*Can write all of the letters of the alphabet (uppercase and lowercase) as well as the numerals 0-9. She prefers to write in uppercase. Her coloring and drawing skills greatly improved over the last year. She enjoys drawing stick figures now. She's pretty good at sounding words out to guess how to spell them.


*Loves to have books read to her. Some of her current favorites include Bernenstain Bear books, Little Critter books, Froggy books, Pinkalicious books, fairy tales, Little House books, Amelia Bedelia books, Seven Silly Eaters (by Mary Hoberman), Mama and Me (by Beverly Lewis), Thank you, Mr. Falker (by Patrician Poloacco), Fritz and the Beautiful Horses (by Jan Brett) and Henry's Freedom Box. She loves it when a book is based on a true story. She can sound words out and read about 15 BOB books.

*Some of her favorite songs are from the Annie musical, from Mary Poppins, and from the Little Mermaid. I gave her the Annie cd earlier this month, and Grandma and Pop Pop gave her a Mary Poppins cd today. Aunt Yvonne gave her a Disney CD today that incldues a nice selection of 25 different songs. She's enjoying going to The Ultimate Question musical rehearsals on Wednesday nights. They will have two performances in August.


June 2010

*Always includes Mommy, Daddy, and Uncle Maurice in her prayers.

*The past six months I've been reading chapter books to Nadia and Ian. Her most favorites were the books about Ramona. She also enjoyed Pippi Longstocking, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and Little House in the Big Woods. We're in the middle of the Boxcar Children right now.

*Loves to be tickled, hugged, and kissed.

*Would wear a dress every single day, if I let her. Her favorite dress (for every day wear not counting the ones she wears to church) is green. I won't let her wear it more than twice a week. At night she prefers to sleep in a princess nightgown, and her favorite swimsuit has princesses on it also. She also loves jewelry, purses, and shoes. She does NOT like to have anything in her hair or to have her hair brushed. I've found that if I have her brush her hair a little before I finish it off, there is less crying involved.

*Misses Cubbies. Of all the things she does outside the house (gymanstics, ballet/tap, storytime at the library, Sunday School, Cubbies, musical, soccer, and Wee Worship), AWANA is definitely her favorite. She's so excited that she'll be in Sparks in three months! She's going to be taking swimming lessons next month and participating in a fairy tale drama camp the end of July.




December 24, 2010

*Hopes I'll have one more baby, as she really wants a sister. She helps me out some with Oliver; for example, she often gives him a bottle when we're in the minivan.
*Loves to drink skim milk or apple juice. Her favorite foods include pizza, spaghetti, garlic bread, bagels, English muffins, crackers, pretzels, chips, yogurt, ham and cheese hot pockets, grilled cheese sandwiches, various kinds of cold cereal, chicken nuggets, cheese burgers, french fries, hot dogs, pancakes, applesauce, bananas, peaches, grapes, cherries, fish sticks, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, fruit snacks, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, chocolate frosted donuts, chocolate covered pretzel rods, and almost every kind of ice cream. She will eat vegetables as long as I also give her raisins to eat with the veggies.

*Walks beside me when we go to the playground so her brothers can ride in the stroller

August 2011
 

*Can count by 10s to 100 by herself and can count from 1-109 with just a little bit of help.

*Easily learns her Bible verses. She also recently recited the first 5 books of both the OT and NT to Sarah (her Sunday School teacher). I've started having her memorize the references.

*Loves to jump off the diving board at the swimming pool! She's also getting much better at swimming (without arm floats) in the section of the pool that's only 2 feet deep.


December 2011

June 24, 2012



December 2012

June 24, 2013

DelGrosso's Amusement Park!

The year isn't quite half over, and the kids have already been to five theme parks! They had been to Sea World and Knoebels before, but it was the first time they had ever been to Sesame Place, Magic Kingdom, and DelGrosso's. Paul's parents arrived at our house at 9:00 yesterday, and about 30 minutes later we were out the door and headed in our minivan to DelGrosso's. Knoebels is a little less than an hour from our house. DelGrosso's is near Penn State and is about 90 minutes from our house. Like Knoebels there is free parking and it doesn't cost anything to walk into the amusement park. You can buy individual ride tickets or a wristband. I had selected June 22 as the day to go because Word Girl was going to be there, and the kids have been into Word Girl lately. Nadia likes to pretend she's Word Girl, and Ian likes to take on the part of her sidekick, a monkey named Captain Huggy Face.

It was a VERY hot day (high was around 95 degrees), which was great for the waterpark, but when we were on the dry rides, we were sweating quite a bit. It's smaller than Knoebels, but the kids had fun. I bought wristbands for Paul, Nadia, and Ian. I would have gotten one for myself also, but Ian wasn't tall enough to go on any of the water slides. I kept him in the dry ride area while Paul took Nadia on the water slides. He did enjoy the pool area! Nadia was tall enough to do three of the water slides.

 

They rode all of the kiddie rides multiple times. Ian's three top favorites were: the flying fish, kiddie rollercoaster, and the Dumbo ride. The park was open for nine hours yesterday. We were there for seven hours. I am sure the kids could have kept going for two more hours, but the adults were hot and tired. I was very appreciative of our central air conditioning last night after being in the heat all day. Pop Pop got one thirty minute break from the heat when he held Oliver in the air conditioned Infant Care Center for one of Oliver's naps.

I rode a couple of the bigger rides with Nadia (that Ian couldn't ride yet), and I would have done more with her but my stomach was protesting. This is one instance when I wish I had given birth in my 20's instead of my late 30's and early 40's because my stomach used to be able to handle all the rides. Paul did the adult sized bumper cars with Nadia. We had a very nice day, but I'd say Knoebels is still our favorite amusement park. I'm sure before the summer is over we'll be back at Knoebels! As is always the case with amusement parks, I have too many pictures to share in just one post. I'll share more later this week!

 

 

 

Diving Board!

Over the last two weeks Nadia has been asking me to let her go off the diving board, and Thursday I finally agreed to her request. If she was the only child I was taking to the pool I would have said yes the very first time, and I would have been waiting in the deep end for her, but that wasn't an option given I'm holding Oliver and keeping an eye on Ian at the same time. She hadn't been wearing her arm floats at the pool lately because she doesn't need them in the baby pool or two feet deep part of the pool, but I had her put them back on for the diving board. She loved it! She made many more trips off of it on Friday, and I snapped these photos then, as I didn't have my camera with me on Thursday. Sometimes it takes time for a child to have the courage to try something, and other times it takes time for a parent to have the courage to say "yes" to a child's request. Now if she could learn to swing and ride a bike without training wheels.

In preparation for her birthday I took her shopping Thursday night to buy her three birthday balloons at the Dollar Tree and select wrapping paper, princess paper plates, and such at Walmart. The balloons she picked this year were: Tinkerbell, one with a few princesses on it, and a cupcake shaped one that read "Happy Birthday." I also bought the kids some pool toys since we're spending so much time at the pool these days. At my urging yesterday Ian did share some of his toys with some other kids who were playing in the baby pool. The torpedoes were the most popular.

 

Paul didn't hear anything from Kansas, which means they picked someone else. Even though we didn't really want to move there, it's discouraging to be 0-9 thus far. At four schools he had a phone interview but didn't make it to the last stage, and at five schools he made it to the final stage (with three of those he had a phone interview first) but wasn't picked. He'll be interviewing with #10 (at the phone interview stage) on Wednesday afternoon. I've submitted 81 applications thus far.

New Librarian

I took the kids to our local library for the preschool summer reading program that started this morning. I really liked (Melissa) who was the librarian when we first started going, but I wasn't impressed with the one who had been there for about 18 months. The new one has been in the job for about two months, but this is the first time we met her. From October through March I took the kids to the preschool story time at the library near where they go for gymnastics. I was really impressed with the new librarian today. Just like Melissa she included music and other things to keep the children actively engaged. The program lasted about one hour and included a craft with paint at the end. Nadia did an excellent job of listening attentively to the stories and participating in the music, games, and craft. Ian participated and listened during portions of the time and played quietly with some toys at other times. Nadia hasn't listenened to a book on CD for about 6 weeks, but I checked out CD's of books three and four of the Chronicles of Narnia series for her.

Hopefully she'll listen to those during her "quiet time" over the next couple of weeks. We finished the second Pippi Longstocking book today so I checked out the first Boxcar Children book to read aloud to the kids. Oliver's goofed up nap schedule has greatly reduced the amount of time I read chapter books to the kids each week. I miss it. I definitely plan to take the kids to the library every Wednesday morning at 11:00am this summer, and if we don't move, I will probably continue to take them to this library in the fall because if we don't move I'm planning to take them to gymnastics in the evening rather than the mornings so that Nadia can be in a more advanced classs.

I had planned to take the kids to the playground this afternoon, but they talked me into taking them to the pool instead. When we lived in Texas my mom had a rule that it had to be at least 90 degrees for us to go swimming. She had that same rule when we moved to Maryland, but then she realized we wouldn't be going to the pool very often and changed the minimum to 80 degrees. It was less than 80 today, but we went swimming. The boys and I stayed in the baby pool, but Nadia spent some time in the big pool. We are loving this swimming pool!

3 to 3.5 years old times two

Nadia at 36 months old

1. Both children had been potty trained for quite some time by the time they turned 3 years old, but neither one was going to the bathroom completely independently when they turned three. Nadia was more independent than Ian as the only thing I had to do for her was help her pull her clothes back up at the end. At 3.5 Nadia was completely independent. Ian can pull down his pants, but he can't get up on the toilet himself unless there is a stool there, and he doesn't pull his own clothes back up yet or wipe himself after he goes #2.                                    

2. When Nadia turned 3 years old her nap was at least two hours long each day. Ian's nap has been an average of one hour long for the past six months.     

 

3. Nadia sneezed and went through far more tissues than Ian ever has.

 

Ian at 36 months old

4. Nadia learned how to put her shoes on a little before she turned 3 years old. Ian started putting on his own shoes a little before he turned 3.5 years old.

 

5. Both children often said "I forgive you" after saying "I'm sorry" if I didn't say "I forgive you" soon enough.

 

6. Nadia had a prized possession (the pillow Paul got her in Poland). Ian hasn't consistently latched on to any one particular item over the past six months.

 

7. They both loved chocolate cake! Her favorite hot food was spaghetti, and Ian's is definitely pizza. Her favorite sandwich was egg salad, and Ian's is "peanut butter" and jelly (really wowbutter). Both children enjoyed french toast, pancakes, and pizza.

 

8. Ian drank more water than Nadia.

 

Nadia at 3 1/2 years old

9. Her favorite Bible stories were Daniel and the lions den and Jonah. Ian's favorite Bible stories are Joshua at Jericho and David and Goliath.

 

10. Nadia used to pull the fitted sheet off her bed every time she slept in it. Ian never has done that.

 

11. Nadia's favorite color was pink. Ian doesn't have a favorite color yet.

 

12. Nadia's counting skills were more advanced at that age than Ian. He just started memorizing verses, and she had been memorizing verses since before she even turned three years old. Her attention span for playing board games was also MUCH more advanced than Ian. He's not ready to play Candyland yet, and that was her favorite game when she was his age. Their jigsaw puzzle skills were very similar as they were both doing 12-24 piece jigsaw puzzles at this age. Ian was more advanced with learning the letters of the alphabet.

 

13. They both loved wearing costumes. Nadia at this age wore a Snow White costume ALL the time. Ian constantly changes from one costume to another.



Ian at 3 1/2 years old

Weekend in Review

My mom arrived at our home around 9:30am on Friday. The kids were so excited to see her! We spent some time at the playground prior to having lunch, and my mom treated the kids and I to dinner at Perkins that evening, which was a special treat. Oliver had some of Ian's pancakes as well as some of Nadia's french fries and some of my breakfast potatoes. On Saturday morning I mowed the lawn while my mom supervised the kids as they played on the deck and in the back yard. She left at 2:30pm on Saturday, and I immediately loaded the kids in the van for our second visit at our swimming pool. The water in the baby pool was nice and warm, but even the main pool had warmed up some. Nadia was happy that I stayed in the "big pool" for awhile with her. The pool is nice for kids in that one third of it is only 2 feet deep. The middle third is 4 feet deep, and the deep end (with a diving board) is 10 feet deep. The kids can stand in the 2 feet deep section, and of course they also join Oliver and I in the baby pool as well.

After dinner on Saturday I went to CVS and the grocery store by myself. On Thursday I had gone to the grocery store in the morning, and it was the first time that I took all three kids and none of them cried. Woohoo! The last few weeks I've been putting Ian in the shopping cart and bringing a single umbrella stroller for Oliver. I push the shopping cart, and Nadia pushes the stroller. She's learning how to steer a stroller and not run into shelves or the backs of my feet. This store doesn't have any carts that accomodate more than one child, hence the need for creativity on my part since my back isn't too keen on "wearing" Oliver and Ian isn't ready to walk in the store yet. After we put the kids to bed on Saturday night we watched "Lincoln" although I was too tired to stay up for the whole movie. Oliver had gotten me up at 5:10 that morning.

Sunday morning I did a little Father's Day photo shoot at 8:15 and then we were out the door for Sunday School. After Sunday School I took the kids to the church's children's library and read books to them until 10:30. I think we'll make that a habit. Nadia opted to leave with Ian for Wee Worship at 11:00 rather than staying with me for the whole service. I told her she has that choice for two more months, and then after that she needs to stay with me. After church I fed the kids while working on making mashed potatoes and such for the Father's Day dinner. Paul's parents, brother, and sister-in-law spent the day with us. Nadia read some of her BOB books to Pop Pop. After they left I gave the kids a bath and put them to bed. I took the kids to the playground this morning, and we're going to head to the pool after the boys wake up from their naps. The committee that Paul interviewied with via Skype on Thursday afternoon said they will make their choice on Tuesday (tomorrow), and the top candidate will be notified by Friday (21st) at the latest.