New stuff

Baby G can RUN now! He's 1, so he's not really "Baby" G anymore, either. He can climb the couch, the bathtub, off the bed, etc. He loves the wooden puzzles with the big knobs, esp his shapes puzzle. He is getting his Tooth the Fourth.

A is flooring me with her mind again. She was pretending to be a mermaid from Mexico this morning, and is explaining to me the differences in tail shape between Mexican and traditional mermaids, and explaining her diet and her interactions with the migratory Monarch butterflies there. I didn’t even know she knew what Mexico was!

Mexican mermaids have tail fins that are positioned almost vertically, while the other mermaids have tail fins that are almost completely horizontal. She provided a physical illustration for me. Monarch butterflies in Mexico swarm to the Mexican mermaids and lift them to the tree branches, but the mermaids fall back to the rivers because they can’t fly.

Heehee.

A also wants to fly to the rainforest and tell people to STOP cutting it down, to "adopt" a Monarch butterfly through the World Wildlife Fund, and to go to Costa Rica and catch a butterfly. We are planning a neighborhood recycling program as a more local way to help the deforestation.

A is learning multiplication and division right now, and enjoying that.

C got her "BOB books" that are all easy, 3-letter words, and she's thrilled that she has books SHE can read ALL BY HERSELF.

I've been doing more temple work, found some names (yay! story later), and got my hair cut finally. I've also been spinning more, and knitting. I'm getting ready for NaNoWriMo next month.

Jeremy is having a stressful time with his English class (rough professor), but the other classes are going well! Registration for new classes are next week.

AWESOME day

So, baby G is 1!

But today's post is about our AWESOME day.

I've felt like I really need to go to the temple & do the initiatories my dad gave me the last few weeks. So I finally figured out a way (slipping out before J's morning class on Sat) and went to the temple yesterday. I noticed one name had no parents listed, and "sealing to parents" was blacked. For some reason, I felt like I needed to go find her parents. I looked on familysearch.org when I got home (the fact that I even remembered to was a miracle, lol), and I found her marriage record with her parents listed! I guessed that the work was already done for them, but I sent the info to my dad, and the next day we checked. She was in "the system," with no parents listed. We found what appear to be her parents, but with no children listed, and their work is not done. Everything matches. I'm going to the family history library tomorrow to verify (see if we can find the family together on the newly indexed 1880 census records), and then we can connect the family lines and seal them together. YAY!!!!!!

Next cool thing today: I've been sitting baby G on his squishy potty seat in between diaper changes recently. He likes it, and has started peeing most times I do this. Today J called me in to the bathroom to see G trying to put the cushy potty seat up on the potty himself. I took off his diaper and sure enough, he was peeing. Wow--he really seems to understand this!

Last cool thing for today: A has been in vision therapy for a little over two months. When it started, she generally had to be forced to read even one page of an easy reader or picture book (not including reciting memorized books). She would get very upset at the idea of reading. She said she could NOT do it, especially not with small letters. Today, she asked me if she could read a page of the chapter book we're reading at bedtime. It's an abridged version of "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells. It has the slightly larger, more spaced type typical of the abridged/easier versions, but it is still a chapter book, solid pages of text with interspersed pages of B&W illustrations. She read EVERY PAGE of the chapter except one. I read the third page, and by the time I was done she was excited again and read the rest of it herself. She is over the moon that she "can read CHAPTER books!!!!!!!!" She did wonderfully, reading words like "aluminum" and "delightful" herself. Awesome!!!!