Camping with Cousins

We just went camping with Brent's siblings.  First time camping for either child.  They both did great and had so much fun with their cousins.

The first morning, when Sophia woke up, she looked around the tent and said loudly, "Why not my house??" She'd forgotten where she was and Mama and Daddy were happy that she knew where home was.

They had a great time on the boat and just playing around with each other and in the dirt in general.  They were so filthy but that's how you know you had a good camping trip, right?

We even went on a little hike.  Sophia is so determined.  She fell a lot because her balance isn't the best, but she kept going.  She wants to do everything that her brother does - no questions.

They both take gymnastics right now and Sophia is right in the bunch and learning with the rest of them. Nathan is having so much fun.  The night of his first gymnastics class, after he had learned how to do a backbend and had demo'd it to everyone he could find, he was asleep in bed next to me and I woke up because he was moving strangely.  I rolled over to find Nathan trying to do a backbend in bed IN HIS SLEEP.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the Dinosaur Museum for another cousin's birthday.  Nathan decided he's fascinated with the Woolly Mammoth.  He later told me, "Mama, I used to like trains but that was before I knew they had woolly mammoths."  He wanted to learn more about them so I looked up some things on the internet for him. After a few minutes he said, 'Mama, this is boring.  Can we look at movies of live mammoths instead of pictures of dead ones?"   (and then we went over the definition of "extinct" again...)

"National" Competition

Driving in the car.  From the back seat, Nathan says, "Mama, Haiti is bigger than China, right?"

"Umm... no, sweetness.  No.  China is much bigger than Haiti. Remember how we talked about Haiti being an 'island'?  China is much bigger than the island that Haiti is on."

[Pause}

"But Haiti has more people than China, right?"

"No...  China definitely has more people than Haiti"

[Pause]

"But Haiti is further away than China, right?"

"I have an idea!  Let's play another game, OK, Sweetness?"

Preschool Graduation

Nathan graduated from Preschool a couple of weeks ago.  He's such a shy kid.  The little program was in the teacher's family room.  The kids all sat facing the parental audience and sang songs and she introduced each kid and what she loved about them.

She had little paper graduation hats for them.  All the other children wore those.  Nathan wouldn't do it.  It just held his.

I asked him later why he wouldn't wear his hat and he said, "I didn't want to look STUPID, Mom!"

He also wouldn't really sing and do the actions.  I asked him why and he said that he didn't want to be doing the singing; he wanted to be sitting with him Mama watching the other kids do the singing.

I Love You Me

Sophia's language skills are growing rapidly and it's very sweet to see her explain things.

Last night, she was telling me about something Brent did for her.

I said, "Did Daddy do that because he loves you?"

and she said, "Yeah... Daddy 'I love you' me"