this and that

There's not a lot of news around here. Real life has started up again after the holiday craziness. Rachel's back at school, and thankfully doing pretty well at the moment (she was having a rough time, behavior-wise, before Christmas, so I was worried about how she'd do going back), and Rebecca and I are back in our little routine.

Rebecca's room time is going better this week. That first day was the only one she cried. The next day she fell asleep curled up in a little ball in her rocking chair, and now she's playing and seems to enjoy it. Today she even ASKED me if she could go play in her room! I hadn't given her room time today because we went to the grocery store during that time, so after lunch, before naptime, she asked to play in her room. What? You want to give Mommy some time to herself? Are you kidding me? Sure!

We've been working a lot on helping her learn her letters. She's interested and enjoys it, so why not? She knows R (R says Rebecca, she proudly yells.), M (M says Mommy!), D, G, T, K, B, U, E, H, X...I think that's all for now. When we're out driving around she'll point out letters on signs. She's always right on, too!

She's enjoying her toys from Christmas, but she likes playing with them in unconventional ways. She got a "puzzle" which looks like a barn (she loves barns and farm things) and you open up little doors and there are little animal magnets inside. Rather than taking them out and putting them back in, she takes them out, sticks them together (they're magnets, so they stick together, back to back), and calls it her iPad or her iPhone (I don't know how she even knows what an iPhone is, because no one she knows even has one!). She carries it around, swiping her finger across it, like you do on an iPad or iPhone....silly girl. Or she puts them in a dish from her little kitchen and calls them cookies. She loves taking little pieces and parts of toys and using them for other things. This is all well and good until its time to put the pieces away and I can't find them all. It drives me crazy. I've kept Rachel's toys for years without losing parts, and now I'm losing all kinds of pieces. It makes me so mad when I can't find something. I try and tell myself it's just a toy, but I want them to remain complete with all their pieces. A lot of times they're up in Rachel's room, where the two of them often play. And since Rachel's room is usually a disaster, even though I make her clean her room at least once or twice a week, they're always hard to find. If they're not there, I find them under couches, in between cushions, and so on. Or they just stay lost...which I hate. This girl....I don't remember having this problem with Rachel.

Rebecca's developing an imagination, which is fun to see. She plays in the bathtub and makes up scenarios for the princess dolls (Rachel's bathtub princess dolls), or she has pretend tea parties with a stuffed animal, and so forth. She's enjoying playing with Rachel's old Little People castle, carriage, and the princes and princesses that go along with them. That's what she usually plays with during her room time.

Rachel is enjoying school. I hear the most about music class. She loves it. Art class, too, but especially music. She's selling Girl Scout cookies right now, and has already surpassed what she sold last year, so we've made some progress. (We are not the greatest Girl Scout cookie selling family. We have a small family, no one is local, and most of the people we know are already Girl Scouts, so it's hard to find people to sell to. There are three Girl Scouts just on our little cul de sac of 10 houses, so selling in the neighborhood is tough, too.)

I'm taking two correspondence courses right now in order to renew my teaching license by the time it expires this summer. One of them is about using the iPad in the classroom. I actually have learned quite a few things about my ipad that I didn't know, just from doing my assignments!

And that's the news from our world.