I'll be back

Oh, how I wish I could sit here and blog about everything that's on my mind. But my neck has been hurting for a few days now, typing for a long time makes it worse, and I should really get back to packing. I don't know what my schedule will look like in Sweden and I don't know if I'll have time to blog or not so I wanted to at least sign in to say hi and explain my absence. But keep checking. I'll be back sooner or later.

just a few things from today

I took E out in the pool today again. I love having a pool! Then we had leftover pizza for lunch. E has been asking for "ananas" (pineapple) all day long today. We don't have any at home. =(

I started thinking about what to pack for our trip next week and it's so hard. I guess we will bring some summer clothes, but not the spaghetti strap ones. I think we will need the short sleeves at least. We will also bring some early fall clothes. Not that we have a lot of that, but we can always go shopping once we get there. =) I only wish the dollar was worth more!!!

Shoes... hmm... all we have are sandals and flip flops. Should we buy some here or there?

C started cleaning out the room that will be the new nursery. (Mostly his stuff that was left in there.) We will use it as a guestroom one last time though, while I'm away. C asked me to move all of my folders out of the filing cabinet so he can move it out of there. That's done. Now I have to go put away some clothes before my little girl wakes up. But first I need some tums to get rid of this heartburn I got from eating Dakota bread (it has onions in it, which gives me heartburn every time). The bread is so good it's worth it though.

get off!

I must have peed at least 20 times today. I feel like screaming "get off of my bladder!!!!!" but I don't think it will help and people would probably look at me weird if I did so I won't. But seriously... I can't move without having to go. And peeing is not a fun thing to do when you're pregnant. Not so sure it's fun otherwise either, but I normally don't mind it. Now, however, emptying your bladder is not an easy task. So... GET OFF OF MY BLADDER!!!!!!!!!!!

Apples

So here are a few ideas I found for my first week of my fall curriculum. We will discuss apples and creation.

Yummy: apples raw, apple sauce, make fruit leather from the apple sauce, pie, juice...
Crafts: Cutting an apple in half (both ways) stamping with yellow, red and green (these will be the colors we work on this week), finger painting with apple sauce, finger painting with red, green and yellow on a paper plate, adding a stem and leaf (and possibly a worm) to make an apple, glue paper apples to a paper tree
Activities: read apple books, nursery rhymes, field trip to the apple orchard, sorting our apples by color, count them, plant seeds, A is for Apple, crawling like a worm, shape this week: circle
Bible: read about creation from a kids bible, verse of the week: John 1:3 "God created all things", walk outside and name different things God created

There are so many things to do, but I think this will be plenty for us.

These are not all my ideas. Most of them I
found by googling apple activities for toddlers.

planning again

Yes, I love to plan! I usually post things like meal plans or cleaning lists or such. And right now I should probably be planning a packing list for Sweden since we leave in less than 2 weeks. I actually have to plan a shopping list too since we need fall clothes when we go and all we have are summer clothes. But that actually made me think about when we come back. Summer here will be coming to an end and my favorite time of year, fall, will be on it's way. Which means no more "all morning long" in the pool and that means we have to come up with other ways to fill our days. Sure, we will still have cleaning (unfortunately), play dates, some running around to do and other outings, but I want to plan a weekly theme curriculum + a daily schedule for the days we spend at home. So far I've done a lot of online research and I want our daily routine to include:

calendar, weather, songs/nursery rhymes, story/Bible story, Bible verse
art project
theme related activities
letter/number activities
outdoor time (or music-movement when we can't go outside)
and of course free play

I'm not sure when exactly we will start this. We get back at the end of September and will need a few days to unpack and deal with jet lag. But as far as themes go I'm thinking fall ones to start with... apples, leaves, pumpkins and once we hit November we will work on Thanksgiving obviously, but also family. I will probably try and tie this together with Creation, throw in a few numbers, letters, shapes and colors and then blog about how much harder it is to follow a schedule at home with just one child than having a room full of children at school or daycare. =)

splish splash

This morning was a nice one. The sun was shining (and will continue to shine for days, yay!). C is doing yardwork today with the help of his dad and our friend F. Thank you both! I took E out in the backyard and filled up her water table with water and then I set the hose up so it turned into a sprinkler. We both got pretty wet. C and F were away unloading brush and dad came to join us. I had to use the bathroom so I asked him to watch E for a sec. When I came back out he had put E (who was wearing regular clothes and a regular diaper) in the water table. She was sitting in there pretending she was a fountain. So I went back inside again and got her swim stuff. Before I took her inside for naptime I dipped her in the big pool. C is fixing the pump now so we can all go swimming tomorrow. I should probably invest in a preggo swimsuit soon, b/c I probably gross people out in my regular bikini, but for just in the backyard it works fine.

it goes together like...

How would you finish that sentence? If you're an American my guess is "... peas and carrots". Although I found a few more when I googled it online. One of them being "... chalk and cheese", I'm a little curious as to how that one came about. Anyways, I have a new one. Actually, E has a new one. She gets milk everyday before naptime and bedtime. But before we give her milk she gets a dose of Zantac b/c she has a reflux problem. A couple of weeks ago we were down in TX visiting family and E was getting tired. So as usual when that happens she asked for Zantac and milk. We've never thought anything of it, but my SIL reacted and laughed at it. I guess most kids don't ask for Zantac and if you're not used to it, it sound funny coming from the mouth of a 2½ year old. So I told C that when E grows up she won't say that things go together like peas and carrots. She will say they go together like Zantac and milk.

too late

I don't blog as much as I used to do. But I don't have a lot to write about. After we got back from TX I got sick and then E got sick so we've just been home except for running a few errands here and there. E is still coughing and wakes up too early in the morning. And I go to bed too late at night so I'm usually really tired during the day. Too tired to figure out something to write here. I've also been too tired to clean the house so yesterday was the first time I cleaned it since we got back. Much needed!

A couple of weeks before we left E and I went to the library and borrowed some books for her. We didn't return them before we left b/c we would have plenty of time to do that when we got back. But with all the sickness around here I totally forgot. So I'm going to try to return them today.

I'm also too late, way too late with my allergy shots. Last time I got them was in June. I get them every 3-4 weeks and was going to get them before we left, but forgot. So then I was going to get them when we got back but you can't get them when you are sick so...
So now they have to cut me back a lot and they can't up me again until I'm done with this pregnancy. Oh, well. Nothing I can really do about that.

Ok, so E has been bugging me this whole time b/c she wants a turn so I'm handing it over to her...

vhhhhhhhhhhhhhhbbbtttttljjjjjkoäluyt lllkkkjjjjjjj mmnb bbbbbbffdsa

So here's how that went... "Wanna push button v" She pushes it and looks at the screen. "There's a v there." And so on for all the letters.

no photo

Here's why I don't put close up pics on my blog. If you're a fellow blogger, please be careful!

wroom wroom

C was mowing the front lawn and E heard the noise from the lawn mower. She looked out the window and realized that daddy was out there without her! "E outside, E's wroom wroom." She wanted to go outside to mow with her little mower. I told her it was almost naptime and we could watch daddy from the window. "Nooooooooooo, E's wroom wroom!" So I said first nap then wroom wroom. She repeated that and walked away. A couple of minutes later I thought she was really quiet so I looked for her and found her in her crib with a bunch of blankets on top of her. I asked if she wanted to take her nap and she answered with "wroom wroom".

(C and E will mow the backyard later.)