We have teeth!

Well, Tiernan does now! His first tooth, bottom right (his right) has cut through today. And it has made for an exciting week! Last week I was at the docs for a check up and asked her to look at Tiernan as well since he started with a nasty cough the night before. She said he had Bronchitis and gave him some antibiotics to take for the next 10 days. So we started that and he started having "digestive issues" that involved many frequent and stinky diaper changes. Poor guy. And then all week this week he's just been grumpy as can be, making me want to pull my hair out or run away from home or have my reproductive abilities disabled. At times, all three! At least now we know what the issue is (or at least one of them) and today has been better. No fewer grump attacks, but at least I can help him out now that I know what's going on.

Kenton has taken to singing his ABC's now. He wants to sing them, but doesn't really know the words, so he just goes "W X Y Z, na naw ABC, nex... sig a me!". He's also showing much interest in the potty in the last couple of days, wanting to sit on it (and sing ABC) now and then. So that's progress! I don't really want him to learn and then back track when we move, but I think it'll stick more if he's initiating anyways.

Today we were having lots of fun setting up a fort with the couch cushions! He loved it and called it his castle. I don't really like doing it with our couch, but he saw it at his friend's and loved it, so I didn't want to say no. Once we've moved we'll probably be getting gifted a couch from family to use in the kids' play area, so they can use that one for forts to their hearts content.

We have pictures!

While we were out yesterday, I had all the pictures from the camera put on a DVD (and we got an extra since they were doing buy one get one!). So I can finally update the old posts with some pictures. Unfortunately, we're still not functioning for new pictures.

But, quick run-down so I can go do pictures...

Tuesday we played more of the Feather Game, first doing the secondary colours (green, purple, orange and pink. Pink, cause we had some pink feathers in the pack). The pink and orange confused him and he kept getting those mixed up, but he did pretty good I think! Then we did the primary ones again (and again). I think we'll do them all together next time and see how he does.

Yesterday I had an appointment, so we left early and went to the library for story time. K didn't want to listen to stories so much as run around playing with the foam letters, grabbing the librarian's story time tools, and try to play with the other kids. So we snuck out of the story time room halfway through and went to play with the trains instead. Which distracted the kids at a daycare that were sitting right there trying to read a story, but not my fault they sat beside the train table!

But, we did get a few books about colours and the alphabet. And a couple Thomas DVD's, for something new. I hope to go through the books with K this week and work on our colours some more while he's interested.

T has been sitting up a lot lately. And trying to stand. Oh boy. He's doing well with carrots, which reminds me, I need to make more!

Okay, I'm off to add more pictures to the blog now!

Feather Game

K and I did more fingerpainting yesterday, they turned out quite well I think. He's getting over the fact that you're supposed to get your hands dirty! So that was a nice distraction after lunchtime.

I also made up some frames out of craft foam. They're for my Oma and Opa, so I put the kids' names on them. The idea is they'll be able to put them on their fridge, and it will help them remember their great-grandchildren's names. Okay, okay, so we gave them unique names, but at it'll also just be a nice addition to the Valentine's pack we're making up for them. After he woke up from his nap, I got K to help me put some foam stars on the frames. We worked on naming the colours as he picked them out and stuck them down. Today we may put some glitter on them (cause we can!), and then try to print out some pictures to put in them.







While looking through a bunch of homeschooling sites for crafting ideas, I made up a learning game for K. I came up with it while trying to figure out what to do with the multicoloured crafting feathers I bought so I'm calling it the Feather Game. I took some leftover plastic cups from his birthday and put pieces of coloured construction paper inside, making each cup one colour (I was going to glue the paper on the outside, but this seemed like too much work at 10:30pm). So there's a square of blue in one cup, then red and yellow. I counted out five feathers for each colour, and the idea is to put each feather in the matching colour cup! It honestly took me five minutes to make!



This morning we tried the Feather Game. At first, K was more interested in grabbing the cups and pulling out the paper. Then I started to show him the idea, taking a blue feather from the pile and putting it in the blue cup. He did a few, and then decided to dump them out, then knocked the cups on the floor. *sigh* Okay, so I grabbed the feathers and gave them to him one at a time. This worked much better, but he still only had an attention span long enough for two or three feathers of each colour.



I had also thought that making him run to put the feathers in the cups would be a great way to burn some energy while staying inside and playing the game. So, I put the coffee table on the far end of the living room, and the feathers on the floor at the other. I showed K that we were going to run and put the feathers in. He got all excited. "Fast!?" he says, and runs over to the feathers, grabs a handful and runs to dump them all in one cup. Okay, so it's a work in progress. Plan B. I took all the feathers and sat holding them at the other end of the living room, giving him one at a time.



This plan was working out. So well in fact, that he had taken a yellow feather and dumped it in the closest cup, which was a blue one. When he went back with the next feather (a red one), he put that one in the red, then took the yellow out of the blue cup and put it in the yellow cup! I was so proud of him! It shows me that he is learning his colours, as well as rules for games. However, he still only has a two to three feather attention span!