Day of firsts

Today was a day of firsts in our family.

Aaron's first day in Pre-K at Goodard- the Lion classroom with Ms Rachel and the 4 and 5 year olds!  (He loved it and had a great day.  Ms Rachel said that he fits in perfectly!)

Maggie's first day wearing underwear to school! (She wore them all weekend and only had 2 accidents, both poop, and wore them all day at school with no accidents at all!  She was very excited to show me her sticker chart on the bathroom wall and all 6 stickers that she earned for going on the potty 6 times that day!)

My first day back to work in the schools, after doing management and working in the schools for almost 4 years!  I'm going back to the school/coop where I worked for 4 years before having Aaron, so it felt like going home!  I'm very excited to be doing direct service again after being away from it for so long.  (I will now be working in the schools 3 days/week and doing management from home 2 days/week.)

What a great day of firsts!

Weekend fun

Saturday mornings are so much fun at our house!  The kids are always really excited to be able to get up, eat breakfast at home, and then enjoy some time playing with their toys.  Here's a look at some of our Saturday morning fun!

Making oatmeal for breakfast. Aaron reports that he doesn't like the oatmeal at school (which I think is just plain oatmeal) but he loves the oatmeal at home (which is often packets of flavored oatmeal)!

Maggie's Saturday morning smile!

We love the weekends!

I started a load of laundry after breakfast and Aaron decided that he wanted to pull the paint cans out of the laundry room and set up his "drum set".  Maggie needed to join the fun too, of course!

Maybe a drummer, like Daddy (and Mommy)?

Cheese!

Look at how adorable Maggie's hair is in a little loop on the top of her head!  She looks so mature with her hair like this!

Maggie lost interest, so Aaron took over the rest of the paint cans!

Wow- that is quite the seat!  Not sure why we buy toys around here?!

A little morning exercise on the trampoline

Jumpin' and smilin'!

Aaron took this picture of Maggie.

Maggie must have decided this step stool might help her shoot the basketball more accurately!

Slam dunk!

Playing store

Maggie is taking care of her babies

Happy Valentine's Day!

Aaron quotes

I really wish that I could put a microphone on Aaron so I could catch all of the hilarious things that he says right now.  His teachers, Ms Chanel and Miss Megan, are really awesome about writing some of the funny things down for me.  Here are some recent Aaron quotes from school:

While playing play dough, "I'm building a construction site!  It will fly to New York and Uncle Tom will wear it on his head!"

"I'm making pizza, but it's yucky because it's spicy like hot lava!"

Aaron pretended to be a "deceptacon" on the playground at school.  He said that a deceptacon was a dinosaur that turned into a fighting ship.  He chased his friends and teachers and when he caught Miss Megan he told her the deceptacon turned her into a meatball!

Aaron took a bunch of foam snowflakes and put them on a drumstick, as if it were a skewer. He went around the room selling "cookies" to all of his friends for $3 each!

When Ms. Chanel asked the class, "what animals have 2 legs?"  Aaron and the rest of the class listed a couple of kinds of birds and then everyone paused, stumped.  Aaron piped up and said, "I know Ms. Chanel- persons!" 

Here is a good ones that I heard last night at our house:

The kids were playing legos at the table and Maggie was getting into Aaron's legos. Maggie was telling Aaron that she loves him and Aaron replied, "I love you too, Maggie, but I would love you even more if you would get out of my legos!" (It was really hard not to laugh at that one!)

Maggie stuff

Maggie is something else right now.  At times she is so sweet, gentle, and loving and at other times she is wild, rough, and bull-headed!  She is a Mama's girl and can be heard saying my name over and over when I'm around.  (She also whines more when I'm around, which is not cool.)  A few things to remember about our 22 month old Maggie:

• She loves to go pee and poop on the potty!  When she's at school and she goes on the potty, she will tell her teachers, "Mommy happy!" 
• Maggie always "cheers us on" during and after we use the toilet as well, which is hilarious!  She will stand beside us and say, "Yay Mommy/Daddy/Aaron.  Pee/Poop on the potty!  Yay!"
• She loves to play hide and seek.  Last night I was in the bathroom and Maggie came in and told me "hide and seek Aaron".  She didn't tell him that they were playing hide and seek, but when he showed up at the bathroom door, she squealed with laughter- "Aaron find me!" (Why can't we ever use the bathroom in peace?!)
• Last night when we played hide and seek, she had me hide first and then when it was her turn to hide, she would hide in exactly the same place that I hid!  I was hiding behind the curtain in our bedroom and she walked past me probably 5 times before going to get Aaron to help her find me.  I finally had to laugh so they could discover where I was hiding! 
• Maggie loves music and is kind of obsessed with Rio.  When we get into the car, she immediately asks for Rio and when the each song is over, she will immediately say "more", even though she knows the next song is coming!
• Friday night is movie night at our house and Maggie loves to watch movies.  She will often ask on regular week nights if we can have movie night!
• She loves the show Little Einsteins, which she says "little heinsteins" and has started asking for it at night before bed by saying "downstairs Maggie little heinsteins".  Her speech is really telegraphic right now and it's hilarious!  She doesn't get to watch tv shows very often, but we think that she is starting to realize that Aaron gets to watch one after she goes to bed.  (He gets to stay up about 45 minutes later than Maggie, if he takes a nap at school.  If he doesn't, then he doesn't get to stay up later and he doesn't get to watch a tv show before bed.)
• Maggie can be heard saying "I love you too, ____" all the time right now.  She is very loving and doesn't hesitate to tell us, her teachers, her friends, her stuffed animals- anyone who will listen really!  Even if she says it first, it's always "I love you too!"
• When I tuck Maggie into bed at night, sometimes I ask her what she will dream about (something that Tim always asks Aaron).  One night she said "Sarah (one of her teachers at school) and apple pie".  I laughed so hard that now she tells me almost every night that she will dream about apple pie!
• Last night when I tucked Maggie in, she pulled me close and was giving me a hug and a kiss.  She put her hand up to my cheek and did the sign for apple and giggled saying "apple".  I told her yes, that was the sign for apple, and then she proceeded to show me the sign for food, cookie, and drink.  It was so cute!  They learn a lot of signs at school, but because Maggie was so verbal early on, we didn't do a whole lot of signs with her at home, aside from more.  I think she didn't really realize that I knew these signs too!

Wow, did we ever get lucky with these kids!!  They bring so much excitement and joy to our lives!

Maggie and Daddy relaxing on the couch after work/school with their computers!

Play things

Our children are hilarious! They will ask me to play with the most random things and then be entertained by them for ages. One of their favorite things to play with from the kitchen is a set of popsicle molds that we use in the summer. Makes me wonder why we EVER buy toys?! Here are some pictures of our two cuties playing after school this week.

This picture cracks me up!  Didn't realize till after the fact that it sort of looks like Aaron has 2 swords up by Maggie's neck!  Maggie wanted to sit on Aaron's lap for this picture, so he put his arms around her and this is what we got!

Aaron's facial expressions are a riot!  Maggie actually kept her eyes open through this smile!

Cheese!

Goddard

We love having the kids at the Goddard School! Every day we get activity reports of what the kids worked on that day (broken into the target areas of Language Arts, Cognitive Skills/Math, Creative Arts, Music/Movement, Motor Skills, Science/Nature Study, Social Science, and Computer Lab for Aaron and Self-Help/Life Skills for Maggie) which also includes information on what they had for lunch, time that they napped (or didn't nap), diapering/toileting information for Maggie, and a memorable moment from the day. The memorable moment can something creative or funny that they said or did or explanation of an activity that they enjoyed or excelled at. It's so great to be able to go through the sheets at the end of their school day (usually in the car on our way home) and talk about all of the things that they did. They take pictures a lot in the classrooms to use for bulletin boards and to display their activities on the wall, so often the teachers will e-mail or print the pictures out for us. Sharing some of the recent ones that Maggie's teacher, Miss Amanda, e-mailed to me.

Maggie playing in the gym at school

Maggie was counting chocolate chips during "Favorite foods" week at school

Maggie & Aaron hugging through the fence at school

The teachers will often tell us how cute and sweet Aaron & Maggie are to each other. They have a big playground that has a fence separating it into 2 areas, one for the bigger kids (with bigger equipment/slides to play on) and a side for the smaller kids with things to climb through and little house kind of things to play in. (Maggie LOVES to go on the big kid side and Aaron loves to go over to the little kid side, since they are generally on the other side!) When they see each other on the playground, the teachers say that they will meet at the fence and hold hands and give each other a hug! We definitely feel like they are enjoying each other even more now that Maggie is getting bigger. We hope that they always can be good friends!!