Tot School (More Christmas Season Fun)

**J is 30 months old**

I love doing Tot School with J! We are very laid back and so far I don't really plan anything. I keep a lot of things visible to J and let him lead when it's time to do some focused learning-play. Thanks for stopping by!


Holiday Decorating






























This year, I got some window cling decorations for J. He has fun putting these up and then taking them down again. He also likes to play with them.


Puzzles






























J worked a little bit on some puzzles this week. He is getting better at finding pieces that fit together, but sometimes needs my help in getting them to completely "click" together. I sometimes only have to guide him just a little and he can find where something goes. Some he does find completely on his own. The second puzzle here was an alphabet puzzle and I notice he's starting to recognize a lot more letters from sight.



Coloring
















This is a favorite activity around our house. On this day, J picked out a coloring book for me and asked if I'd join in. I colored the Cat Woman in his Spider Man coloring book.

































I found several Christmas printables for J to color. After he colored the front of them, he started "drawing" on the backs. He was chattering and chattering and I heard him talk about waterfalls, jump ropes, and other things I couldn't quite make out. I love to see his imagination at work.



Working on Number Recognition































We used our See and Say toy. J was actually playing with his mini-computer and pulled this toy out for me. He said, "Sit and play with me mommy?" So I started playing with this and asked for his help. He had the most fun just pushing all the buttons and hearing the numbers called out. I showed him how the game is actually played by waiting for the voice to call out instructions. We did this for a little bit. The game asks a few different ways to find the numbers e.g. "find the red number, find the 4 or find the blue 3. J does great finding the number by color but has trouble recognizing the number by itself. I got out our numbers sheet to do a little practice with that. It didn't hold his interest very long. I'd ask him to find the 8 for example, and at one point he said, "I'm too busy dancing."


Diego Printable Poster Activity































This was a printable that I downloaded and forgot about. J was rooting around my activity cabinet and was super, super excited when he found it. He asked me what it was and can he play with it. I explained it was a poster and I would cut out the pieces and once I cut them out he could glue them on. He is really excited to work with the glue stick lately and now he can do it pretty well. He didn't need too much coaching on this one. He would pick out an animal and then I would tell him to find the page where it would go. He would put the glue on and stick it in place. When we were done, he had fun pulling them off and then putting on more glue and sticking them back on again.



Christmas Carols Play-A-Song Book

I found this book after seeing it on another mommy blog called The Iowa Farmer's Wife. J just loves it! I barely got it out of the box when J was already sitting down figuring it out. On his own, he figured out that the little picture on the Christmas song goes with the button on the side to play that song. He asked me to read it, but I told him they're songs so he had me sing them several times throughout the week. I love Christmas carols so this has been a fun activity for us.



Enjoying Gingerbread













































We had a lot of fun making gingerbread cookies this week. I found some Betty Crocker gingerbread cookie mix and a lot of toppings to decorate with. I let J do a little stirring, but mostly he joined in the decorating part. He even was able to put on a little of the icing. I'm not that fond of eating gingerbread cookies, but noticed J liked them a lot. Most of them we ended up bringing to church for a college student study day that takes place each year.

































We had a "mom's morning in" for my Titus group meeting at church. Normally, we have a speaker while our children are in the nursery, but this week our kids stayed with us and made gingerbread houses. We did this last year, so I knew to put a T-shirt smock on J. He gets really into the frosting and it ends up all over. He was most interested in eating the goodies, but he did help me a bit in placing things on like m&m's, pretzels and chocolate chips.



We're Going on a Bear Hunt Song
J was singing a song from our library story time and I ended up finding it on You Tube (click here). He wanted to watch it a few times in a row and we sang it together. There's something about it I really like, I think it's the beat that's so catchy.

See the fun things other moms are doing at the Weekly Wrap Up, another place I link up.

The Lord is doing a work in my heart

Fun pictures of J the other day when he wanted his shades on as we were going to play outside.



























This should be an interesting week, I'll be without a car for 4 or 5 days. We brought it in to the shop since at 120,000 miles there were several things we knew were due. Plus we were having problems with the driver's side window and the side mirror broke. Since we can probably get another 100,000 miles from it, we're investing the time and money. Yet it'll be strange not being able to jump in a car and go. I'll have to arrange rides for groceries and mom's group and things.

We spent some time in Baraboo at the end of last week. L's good friend Mike came into town from Atlanta and we went out to lunch and then spent some time at Devil's Lake. It was exciting to learn that Mike was recently baptized and is really growing in his faith. We enjoyed catching up since we hadn't seen him in over a year. Mike's mom gave J a huge tin of crayons and I found some fun coloring books from the dollar store so he's been really into coloring lately. Now it's one of the first things he does in the morning and often the last thing he's doing before bed. We spent a good part of the morning today coloring as he loves it when we color together.

L has been setting the stage for us to do a full-house clean out going room to room getting rid of things someone else could use more than we do. There are plenty of things like that yet the task has seemed a bit daunting so I've put it off. Something happened today though where all of a sudden I was really motivated so I started with the garage. I spent a couple hours cleaning it out, reorganizing things and making more room in there to move around. It was so fulfilling to see it newly clean and all arranged. I think this will be a good project and it's helping me to spend less time on the computer and do something productive.

I'm seeing more victory in my battle of wasting time (on the computer mainly) and seeing how interesting it is getting in the extra free play time with J. Like today, he wanted to take out his "fall box" which is a bin filled with all kinds of fall goodies like colored marbles and stones, wooden beads, plastic acorns, pumpkins and cranberries, fabric leaves in fall colors. He pulled out a bead and since we have an activity where we lace beads together he wanted to get some string and we put on bead on the string. I was swinging the bead back and forth and he started pretending it was a park swing.

He held his marbles on the string saying "we're all friends and we're swinging". It's so fun to see what his imagination is coming up with. So I'm trying to take more time in what I'm calling "free play" where I'll get something out and just let him see how he wants to play with it and then I join in.























I feel like I've had a real breakthrough in my ongoing struggle with healthy eating and losing weight. It came on the heels of more failure and wondering what would really help me to make strides in this area. I happened to remember a website I found maybe 6 months ago called Setting Captives Free. They have a free online course called The Lord's Table which I've started and really feel is an answer to prayer. It consists of two phases of bible study and you are assigned a mentor who will walk with you through it. As you answer questions each day in the study, the mentor will respond with encouragement and prayer.


To back up a bit, I was finding that in my reading of Uncommon Vessels (developing godly eating habits) that it really is meant to be done in a small group where you can get more specific. The book itself just wasn't specific enough in creating a new discipline for my life. As I read the course prep materials of the Lord's Table and did the first day's study, I found so many of the ideas and the teaching to be mirroring the convictions the Lord has brought to my heart; mainly about eating for pleasure versus eating in a way that's honoring to God. What's at the heart of it is that the motivation for the Christian must be to honor the Lord in everything, including how we feed our bodies. It is so different from anything I've ever done in the process of overcoming my weight struggles. Nothing I've seen in our culture espouses eating in a way that honors God. Nothing in all the weight loss programs I've come across has that focus. It was even a bit strange to me at first that God was laying this on my heart over a long period of time yet now I'm really convicted of it. That I am finally addressing the heart, which is where my struggle lies. It'll be wonderful to share more as I engage with this study and benefit from the mentoring I'll receive.

Finally, our little caterpillar-turned chrysalis is in the last stage of becoming a butterfly! I checked him today and noticed the cocoon was getting darker and then by the end of the day I could start to see the outline of his wings! So very cool. I just hope he doesn't emerge while we're sleeping tonight! I may have to set my alarm to check on him. In reflecting on how the Lord has been doing so much in my heart lately, I was thinking about how our internal transformations are just as miraculous as the caterpillar transforming into the butterfly. Yet I don't often see them that way. It really is miraculous when the Lord changes our heart in a way we truly could not do ourselves.






























Picture credits:
onefaceinamillion.com

settingcaptivesfree.com

Visited Grampa today

After pancakes for breakfast, Julian wanted to color for a bit. Then I went downstairs to check on Rio. This morning she seems worse. Instead of laying on the bed she was sitting on the floor and her breathing sounds wheezy like her nose is stuffed. I got her IV equipment and Julian was upset with me being downstairs so I thought I'd keep him busy with my watering can he was reaching for. He was pretend watering but couldn't reach the plants so I took him around to the plants and helped him "water" them. Then I went downstairs and gave Rio her IV. She was real squirmy. Part of me feels like maybe my next step should have been putting her down instead of extending her life with the IV. That's what my husband is thinking. The vet thinks the wheezing could be a sign that her heart is too weak to pump the extra fluid so it's gathering in her lungs. I have to make a decision soon.

We spent some time at the library this morning and I checked out Dot the Fire Dog (one of his favorites) along with Elmo goes to the Firehouse. I also got a book called Who's Been Here which is a story about discovering which animals made which tracks. It was really dreary outside, very windy with light rain which pelted your face.

Today I read and studied the first half of 2Samuel. Beth shares how this is a very painful chapter to read where David is confronted by Nathan (a prophet). The Lord sent Nathan to David. He tells a story which alludes to David's behavior and shares words from the Lord which were basically, "I anointed you, delivered you and gave you Saul's kingdom, why did you despise the word of the Lord?". He wounded the heart of the Lord. Then David admits his sin to Nathan who tells him that David is not going to die but the Lord will bring calamity out of his house and his child will die. David fasted and prayed but his son still died. After the death, he went out and worshiped the Lord. His heart is turning back to God. He comforted Bathsheba who later gave birth to another son, Solomon, whom it says the Lord loved. Beth reflects on this sharing what happens when we don't confess our sin right away. It ends up festering inside us and effects us not only emotionally but can have a physical effect. She calls it sin sickness. It also puts a wedge between us and God until we confess it to him and seek forgiveness. She refers to Psalm 32:3 When I kept silent my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.

We spent the afternoon up at the hospital visiting my father-in-law. We have been estranged from him and my stepmother-in-law for over a year. It's a very, very long story. It's related to my long-term depression and major differences we had. We are working on reconciliation and I think this was a good step in that direction. My husband's dad had part of his lung removed because of a tumor in it. They think they got it all but won't know for sure until after a few days of reviewing test results. I think it really made a difference for his dad to see Julian and for Julian to see his Grampa.

The big excitement for this Saturday evening was going to get groceries. My husband was invited to a friend's home where some of the men from his men's group at church were hanging out. So Julian and I got the shopping done while daddy was gone. I love how our grocery store will have neat things for Julian at a great price. It's where I got him his first sled and then today I got him a large plastic golf club with a large plastic golf ball. I was showing him how to play and we had a couple different games going. In the first game, Julian would throw the ball to me and say "hit it" and I'd hit the ball and he'd go running for it. Then we played a game like tag where I'd try to get the ball to him and he'd try to dodge it. Later I saw him practicing hitting the ball with the club. He's getting the hang of it.

Ahh...now I get some alone-time and can relax and curl up with a book.