A little taste of Rachel singing the old standby Jesus Loves Me

a tree, a repost

The beginnings of fall. . .

Well, Aunt Sue asked for more. . so I'll give you some backstory. First of all, pinterest has renewed my interest in paper towel rolls & toilet paper rolls. Do you know how many cool things you can do with them? I have made a neat numbers learning craft for Rachel, & had some extra tubes lying around, so I thought Kate and I could make a tree. Well, you know how those things go. At first it was going to be just the tubes with some green tissue paper stuffed into the ends of the tubes. Then, I thought maybe we could glue some sticks to the tubes. . .then Kate suggested collecting the leaves. My real brainwave came when I was looking for the hot glue gun & found the green fabric & assorted "fall" fabrics. We decided to cover our trees base with the green for the grass, and I had Kate cut out some "leaves" that had fallen to scatter around the tree. We created our bark with sticks from the yard, and we found some really pretty leaves that had recently fallen to flesh out our fall tree. The cream was Kate remembering the nest she's had in her room all summer. We found it in our blueberry bush after the bird family had left it behind. Best of all, our project tied in pretty great with this new book I'm reading with Kate, Among the Forest People, by Clara Dillingham Pearson. It's a delightful book full of tales about owls, squirrels, crows, and all of the "people" within the forest. Each tale is chock-full of information about the habits of each animal, and contains a good deal of wisdom about real people as well. Kate has really enjoyed them, and we're both learning a lot!

Rachel

She's two and a half, and her nickname ought to be "Sunshine" but she most often called "Little Boo," "Little One," "Little Buns" or something extremely affectionate like that. She is such a cheerful girl, and being two years old agrees with her so very well. Her language is exploding rapidly, every time I turn around she knows a new sentence structure or word. These days she's taken to imitating big sis a lot, so I get questions like, "What does 'believe' mean?" or "How do you spell 'cat'?" Things she thinks Kate would like to know. She can say just about anything that she wants to say, but still has very adorable style of talking. She loves to double words -- like "let's take a walkie-walk" or "bathie-bath." She calls her favorite story (which has a character named Bobby) Bobby Pin because she fuses the character's name with the thing I use in my hair. She has a few other little enjambments like that, I just can't remember them right now. She sometimes flips words around; my favorite is "stipstack" which she uses interchangeably with "chapstick" -- it's as though her tongue just can't get it out correctly if she tries to say it more than once in the space of a sentence or two. "Moo-cow" is her official name for cows, and she's especially scared of the Chick-fil-a moo cow.

She soaks up things just like a sponge. As Kate has been working on her memory verses, I noticed that Rachel has about half of Psalm 1 memorized. It's just heart melting to hear her lisp out "and on HIS law he meditates day and night." She and Kate get along very well most of the time, and now that they can both play pretend, the fun has just doubled. I hear "I'm Jane," or "I'm Webekah," or "I'm da momma" pretty frequently.

She is just getting into sitting still for a longer book to be read to her, and these days "If You Give A. . ." books are her #1 on her list. She also continues to chose her Eloise Wilkin's favorites like We Help Mommy and Baby Dear. She also loves to sing & can sing many favorite hymns and bedtime songs. At family worship times, her top pick is the song about David & Goliath. She knows which songs I typically sing & which ones Josh typically sings. One evening as I put her to bed, I began It is Well with My Soul, and she felt compelled to mention that I was singing daddy's song. She even tried to sing the men's response in her lowest possible tone of voice. Soo cute!

She is a daddy's girl, and isn't afraid to be around him when he's working out in the yard. Not even around the loud lawn machinery! Saturday she sat out watching & playing next to him while he trimmed the bushes on the entire side of our house! She's much more intrepid than her sister ever was (or is!), and it is fun to see that character trait maturing with her.

Last of all, she loves her family. She says "LiLaw-en" as one name. Lydia's name just gets smooshed in there at the beginning. And she always pays special attention to little Lukey. She adds a smile to Gagi's face every time she sees her, and really loves to be with all of her grandparents. I love to hear her have a little chat with my parents on Skype. She loves for mom to tickle her 'neck' and doesn't see a lot of barriers to a thriving relationship in the fact that they live thousands of miles away from her! And that makes me smile.

a map

Our activity from today -- making a map of our community (with Mommy's help). We read the book Lost, by David McPhail about a bear who gets lost in the city, befriends a boy, finds his way home with the help of his new friend, who realizes that now HE is lost. :-) Cute book. We decided to make a map because that's how Bear knows how to get back to his home. I loved seeing Kate's fun ideas, although you can tell she doesn't have a very good idea of scale. Our house is bigger than the either grocery store. And the rocky beach and dock are much bigger than the small lake that they surround. My other favorite is the horse in the pasture, with a girl who is taking care of the horse.

Kate, her artwork and drawings

Okay, so, the plan changed & I am including some pics I have taken of her recent handiwork to give you a flavor of what's on her mind these days.

This one may be hard to read: My name is Frederick and I don't need a Governess. 

Who told you that? Fraulein Josephine, four governesses ago. 

Science Journal after reading about Frogs

Typical drawing from her imagination -- two of her favorite things. 
Girls with long hair & houses. She even included a mail box!

Experimenting with water colors -- this is also supposed to be a girl, 
and I have never seen her draw a rectangular dress, but it's quite an interesting image. 
And, she chose all of the colors and mixed all of them on her own. 

 Dear Mima, I love you so much, I think you sh (she abandons this) would 
like to come to my house. . and on the side you have the word "Johnson."

Our address -- at least the street name.

Maybe my favorite one -- wwwcom -- the mouth trumpet 

Kate

So, what are my kids up to these days? And who are they? They are my everyday challenge to speak the truth, ask God for wisdom, laugh, sit down and read, and read, and read some more.

Kate -- She's four. People can't decide whether she looks more like Josh or me. Well, people can decide, they just don't agree with one another. I can even see that her hair is much like mine and our eyes peas are in a pod. But others won't be dissuaded and think she is the spitting image of Josh. She still loves many girly things, but has started to experiment with favorite colors other than pink. She recently chose light blue, and was thrilled to know that it could be called "robin's egg blue." Her day starts with breakfast, morning chores, and sometimes a few errands with mom. She buckles herself in her booster seat, unbuckles herself and can unbuckle little 'sis, too. Talk about helpful. I don't think I've pushed her helpfulness to its true limits yet -- yesterday she, of her own accord, gave Rachel a bath, and got her dressed (with a diaper on!). She isn't a big eater, but eats a good variety of foods. Loves shrimp, steak, salad, sprite, and anything sweet. After lunch, where she most often chooses meat sandwich over peanut butter & you name it, she normally spends a little time with me doing school. We started talking about sounds and letters earlier this year, and she just ate it up. She still loves us to read to her a lot, but she's learning it can be fun to do on her own, too. I overheard her reading out loud to herself this afternoon through a crack in the door. But, one of my favorite bonuses to her reading is her SINGING with us at church more, even when she hasn't memorized the particular hymn or all of its verses. I just love singing along with my family and praising Jesus together in a different way than before. We try to read a non-fiction "science" book during our school time, and do a bit of handwriting practice as well. Lately we've talked about frogs, butterflies, Antarctica, snow leopards, fables, fairy tales, and have really enjoyed that video buzzing around about the octopus in camouflage. She just recently began taking violin lessons from her Auntie Jen -- and she so excited, although you wouldn't know it to see her during her lessons. She is very serious and soaks it all in. This is how she moves through much of life -- with her eyes wide open, and pretty quiet in "new settings." An analytic mind accompanies those observant eyes, and so I get some real doozies from her! "Why is it okay for people to lie about where David's friends were? Is that okay?" Umm, really? I have to get into the ethics of Rahab's lie with my four year old? Between school and dinner time, she spends her free time dressing up and pretending to be Jane, Beauty, Rapunzel, Susan, Laura or Marta. Most of these dress-ups involve a pair of my shoes, a scarf or two arranged artfully as either long hair, a bonnet, or a baby carrier. By the time dinner comes around, she is really ready for Dad to get home. She is loves to recount the day sometimes in extreme detail and sometimes she just glosses over the highlights. Nighttime has developed into a better routine of late. One story, one song, and prayer. And a kiss. The hardest part is figuring out which book to choose! 

Well, so much for part 1. . .part 2 will focus on the cutie pie two year old!!