Don't Eat the Pictures

We found this little gem on VHS at our library. Don't Eat The Pictures: Sesame Street at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about it. My kids, 4 and 8, have never even seen Sesame Street before. They thought it was hilarious. Now we all go around the house singing "Don't eat the mummies, no. no, no". It was a really fun introduction to art and museums for little kids.

Here's our favorite song:

Cecropia Moth

Lydia went outside early this morning and promptly returned, urging me to come see what she had discovered. Only about a foot from our door, resting on the railing, was this beautiful Cecropia.

Moms should never, ever get mono.

It is just way unfair to be this wiped out and try to take care of 3 kids. We've been listening to audio books, and Lydia has really taken off with her desire to read. Maybe it has something to do with mom being way too tired and coughing too much to read aloud. At any rate, my mom had bought her the whole set of A-Z Mysteries a few months ago, and she never touched them, except for the first one. In the past week she's picked them up and is now on book 'R', The Runaway Racehorse. Some days she goes through 4 of them. I'm just really happy that she's finally doing it on her own, because I know it will help her fluency and confidence tremendously. They're no great literature, but they are fun, and I like that the main characters are boys and a girl who are just friends and they are kind to their siblings, polite to adults, and cooperative with each other. I have read all the books up through 'Q' and have found nothing objectionable. Just good clean fun. Lydia loves them. Now I need to think on what to introduce her to when she's through them. The author, Ron Roy, has a set of books called the Capital Mysteries, set in Washington, D.C. He wrote them after the A-Z Mysteries, so I'm hoping they might be a little harder reading level. I need to check them out.

The audio books we've listened to are Five Children And It, and Nine Unlikely Tales for Children, both by the wonderful E. Nesbit, and The Witch Family, by Eleanor Estes. The first two are free on Librivox.

A little hike at the VIC

On April 23rd we met up with some friends at the VIC for a little hike and picnic lunch. That was the day I first noticed a pain in my left side, and I've been pretty much out of commission since then with Mono. Evidently the left side pain is due to the inflammation of the spleen. I thought I had better at least do a short blog entry about the hiking, before I forgot about it!

A beaver dam we saw:

The perspective in this photo cracks me up:

Isaiah didn't make it into any of the pics, since he was on my back most of the time.

That Friday was also the day our Teaching Textbooks Math 4 came, and I am so, so glad I ordered it! What a night and day difference in Lydia's attitude toward doing math. I actually think a lot of her resistance comes from doing the writing part of the math work. With TT she is completing the lessons so quickly. And she's been able to do it even though I've been sick. I'm really glad I didn't wait until Fall to order, as it seems like such a perfect fit for her.