2/28/13

2/28/13

Kenzie about half of her English muffins and a bite of blueberries at breakfast. At lunch Kenzie ate thirds on saltine crackers ( one of them with the canned chicken on it), and all of her cherries and potatoes.

A couple days ago I had an idea to take close up pictures of everyone's hands, except Riley and the three babies because they didn't want to cooperate. Now the kiddos request to "do the hand game", which means I show them the pictures on my iPad (eventually I will print them off and laminate them) and they guess whose hands are whose. All of the bigger kiddos (Thomas and up) love it.

Another thing I have done is to take pictures of different items out in the big room and then ask them to bring me the actual item that matches. That is one of the things the developmental checklist wants to know, so I decided to make it into a game also.

Kenzie and Joslyn we looking at the Snow White and the seven dwarfs book and asking each other who was grumpy, dopey and sneezy. Those seemed to be the only three dwarfs they could remember.

I was trying to figure out a way to assess if Kenzie could understand sequencing of events, such as the routine of putting a baby to bed. Tat specific example didn't work so I tried another. I asked her what Lauralea does when she watches me fix lunch, since she does it fairly often. She said I cut stuff up. I tried a little prompting and asked what if the food was supposed to be warm instead of cold and she announced readily, "We burn it!!" Gary and I cracked up! : )

Kenzie, Emily, Aaron,and Thomas were all using a stuffed animal to stand on while holding onto the changing table rim, then pushing off backwards and flopping onto the mattress. They were all laughing so hard and having so much fun.

2/27/13

Kenzie ate all of her biscuit and peaches at breakfast. A lunch she ate everything -- baked beans, pineapple, peas Nd dinner roll.

Kenzie was more testy today than usual with her friends. She either was trying to make them play with her a specific way or she was wanting them to stay away from her.

Yesterday afternoon we had a spider on the ceiling, which totally freaked Joslyn out until she raced over for Christina and her husband, Matthew to protect her. Gary then got it and all was well. Today Kenzie was looking up at the spot where it had been and asked me, "Remember when the spider was up there? Matthew saved us!"

Kenzie was putting her hands on everyone roughly in play first thing this morning. Reminders weren't working so we had her play in the back room for a few minutes before breakfast. She did better with it after breakfast.

Gary was shining his little flashlight into the igloo when a couple of the kiddos were in there. That lead to more being in there until there were five of them. We had an igloo of laughter. When he moved away, Kenzie started chanting "We can't see, we can't see, we can't see".

Kenzie was very excited to try to do all the specific things I asked them to do for the developmental checklists at art time. We ended up doing two sheets apiece, though, because she didn't like the thought of not being able to take it home today (We're keeping it for our meeting).

I have probably mentioned it before, but the kiddos just love to use our swivel rocking chair in the back room as their merry go round. They just love that, both the riders and the pushers.

Kenzie was very engrossed with building her super tall towers again today. She didn't want to leave to switch to the other back room when it was time, so Gary said she could stay and keep building. Thomas loved it because she let him hand her blocks to add to the top, so she didn't have to get up and down for each block.

2/26/13

Kenzie ate seconds on both waffles and hash browns at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her shrimp and colored peppers, most of her brown rice and about half of her oranges.

Emily took a bite of her hash browns this morning and looked at Kenzie and said, "Are you proud of me, Kenzie?" She knows that Kenzie always cheers for her when she takes her tasting bites. It was sweet!

Kenzie and Joslyn (and Riley) were doing puzzles this morning for about 15 minutes. Kenzie can do all of the puzzles that are out right now with ease. She was very excited and encouraging when Riley got a couple pieces of her puzzle in also.

We have scarves out and we had be that was shedding little red strings all over. Kenzie decided that they all needed cleaned up and spent about 15 minutes searching for red strings, picking them up, and taking them to the garbage. Emily, Riley and Joslyn all started helping her. When they had basically picked all of them up, Kenzie said, "now we need to get our 'noculars and look!" Smart little whooper!

Kenzie and Emily were pretending that the black chair in the big room was their bunk bed. One was 'sleeping' on the cahir seat and one underneath. Then they started playing peek-a-boo while there, which was really cute.

In the back room Kenzie make a really tall single Duplo tower. Wen it got too tall for her to reach the top of the tower from the ground she pushed the chair over to it and used to as a stool to reach even higher. When she got done she asked, "can you take a picture of it to show my mommy?"

2/25/13

Kenzie ate all of her Cheerios and a bite of her banana at breakfast. At lunch she ate seconds on cheese sandwich and all of her apples and tomatoes soup.

Kenzie wet over to Nora and was talking to her and telling her she missed her, making Nora smile several times this morning. When Joslyn came, Joslyn also went over and was talking to Nora. Kenzie told her, "Joslyn, I missed Nora!" It was really sweet!

Kenzie brought me three different "fingernails" (hang nails, actually). To clip. She asked very nicely.

Kenzie draped herself over my shins as I was sitting on the floor with my feet up on the changing table side being the gate. She kind of chuckled and said, "I'm a monkey, a swinging monkey!"

Kenzie raced over to Gary, wrapped her arms around his legs and said, "you're a rat!" I guess that means she was the rat trap.

Kenzie was asking about each person on my Peanuts shirt today and I couldn't remember the name of two of them so I told her we would look them up on my iPad. We did and not we know Sally and Franklin as well as the rest of the crew on my shirt. : )

Kenzie put on a pair of goggles with sunglasses over the top and it looked so funny! I had to take a picture of both the first effort (alone) and the second (with Joslyn).

2/22/13

Kenzie ate over half of her craisins and oatmeal at breakfast. At lunch she ate everything -- applesauce, ground beef and pea pasta salad with shredded cheese.

Kenzie was having Thomas be her baby today. She was telling him exactly what she wanted him to do and he was following along beautifully. She was having him lay down and was feeding him a "bottle", which was really funny. She also "changing his diaper", saying "put your legs up" then down. She is super funny!

Thomas took one of the books over and handed it to Kenzie, saying "Will you read to us?" She was happy to help him out, got up in the big yellow chair with Thomas on one side of her and Emily on the other. She read a couple minutes until she lost her audiences attention then went on to something different.

Kenzie was leaning against the changing table and called Emily over to her. When she got close Kenzie caught her and wrapped her arms around her tightly. While she was holding onto Emily, she announced, "I got a rat in a rat trap". They then switched and Emily then was the trap, but Kenzie wasn't going over to get caught quick enough, so Emily called out "Come here rat?"

In the back room Joslyn and Kenzie, first of all, were jumping while holding onto the block building. They were knocking off pieces while they held and jumped to the music. At first it was on accident, then they repeated it over and over, cracking up when they landed in a heap with blocks in their hands. They made it look so fun that Aaron had to join in too, of course.

After that they focused on building tall towers with the individual Duplo pieces. At first they were having a difficult time getting them to stand up while they added more. I showed them that they could put them on a flat base part and that helped stabilize them for additional blocks.

2/21/13

Kenzie ate all of her plums and seconds on cinnamon rolls at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her kiwi, most of her green beans and sandwich thin and a couple bites of turkey burger.

Kenzie started out the morning a little testy -- wanting what the other kiddos had, interrupting others' play, fussing when redirected, and overall just acting tired (Gary did let me know it sounded like she had a hard night). To her credit, she used her words most of the time without her hands when one of the kiddos was bugging her or she wanted something!

She and Joslyn went out and worked on puzzles side by side for several minutes. Both of them were pretending they didn't know how to put their puzzle together so the other one would "help" them.

I love how Kenzie will just start singing a song as she plays. It doesn't matter if she is playing with the instruments, racing around the rowdy side, looking at books, playing with the dolls, Duplos or what. She also carries a tune very well for being so young.

Kenzie was using one of the cameras and was taking pictures while she and Joslyn were on "vacation". She suddenly stopped and told Joslyn, "oh, oh! I need a new battery!" She then messed around with it until she figured out how to open the back of the camera to "fix" it! She was very proud of herself.

Kenzie was crawling along behind crawling Mia, which Mia really loved. She was squealing and chuckling like we don't hear her very often. Kenzie also knew it was unique and did it for quite a while, with Thomas joining after a minute or so.

Kenzie was talking to Joslyn with a phone in her hand and said, "I was talking into my phone and said hey, what's goin' on!" She cracks me up so many times a day! She always has something funny to say.

Kenzie and Emily were being little glamor girls today, strutting around with their cool shades on watching themselves in the mirror.

2/20/13

Kenzie ate thirds on both whole wheat toast and dried mangoes at breakfast. At lunch she ate most of her tropical fruit, about half of her sweet potatoes and a couple bites of beef and bean burrito. I was surprised she ate that well after her big breakfast.

This set has the cameras in them and Kenzie was using one of the them today and told Thomas to "get ready for the pictures!" She was having the kiddos do different specific things (posing) for the photo shoot.

When Gary was making the toast today we realized we were out of jelly and jam. When Gary told me about it, Kenzie said she had some at home we could use. She then said, "maybe when I get a license I can drive the car and get you some jelly".

Joslyn, Thomas and Riley were on the rowdy side of the room and Emily, Kenzie and Mia on the other. Emily and Kenzie were meeting the rowdy side kiddos with "water ". Even Riley was coming over with her arms out saying "more" to get some. It was great!

I was having some of the kiddos try to do things for the developmental assessments and must have called it testing, because the three bigger girls talked about testing the rest of the morning. Kenzie loved doing all of the things I asked her to do. She had a difficult time not answering or doing the things when it WASN'T her turn too. : )

Mia came over to Kenzie and Kenzie asked "do you want to do so me tests?" Apparently she didn't because Kenzie then told Joslyn, "we'll do Mia later!"

We had made what we had called a "hide-a-way" with the big blocks in the back room. It had two and a half walls and then we put it up against the room wall on the open side and with the half wall against the block shelf. In order to get in they either had to scoot it away from the wall or crawl in through the big block shelf. Yesterday they had played with it that way for the entire time. Today it morphed into "McDonalds" and the wall was the order counter. Behind it was the kitchen. Kenzie and Joslyn were in the kitchen and kept trying to get Aaron and Riley to place some orders. The whole thing was pretty humorous.

2/19/13

Kenzie ate all of her Kix cereal and a bite of mixed fruit at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her ham sandwich and mandarin oranges and seconds on cooked peas.

We have been working with Emily to progress from giving each item of food a lick to a tiny nibble. Kenzie is super good about cheering very enthusiastically for her each time she does it!

I was sitting lightly on the edge of the back of the yellow bench because I was trying to get a good picture of Riley with her glasses on. Kenzie and Emily came over and started to sit on the yellow bench to read some books. Kenzie leans back against me then said, "Can you move that big butt?"

Kenzie had such a great day today. She listened very well, was a great gentle friend, tried to help Riley when she was having her melt down, used her words without her hands all but one time, and was a great helper. It was like the polar opposite of Friday.

Kenzie mentioned at lease five different times that grandpa had to have an operation and wasn't supposed to talk for a while. She has a very caring little heart. Two different times today a child was crying because they hurt themselves and Kenzie was right there asking them if they were alright, if they wanted a love and letting them know "you'll be okay." What made it even sweeter was the concerned look on her face as she did this.

Kenzie really enjoyed dressing up in all of the hats, mittens, boots, scarves and sunglasses or goggles today. They were going swimming, skiing with Joslyn, outside to "make a snow man" and so many other things. They were also using the scarves as belts, turbans and blindfolds. It was super fun to watch.

I am also posting a picture of Cooper playing with the play gym while the kiddos slept. I thought it was great because in the picture, you can see Riley sleeping to the right of him and Kenzie to the left. We sure love all three of your kiddos!

2/15/13

Kenzie ate about half of her rice and raisins at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her French bread and meatloaf and about half of both cooked carrots and dried apricots.

Kenzie, Joslyn and Thomas were sitting in the yellow chair sideways, pretending it was their car. They were pretending to drive different places, including what sounded like "Saint Pats", though I don't know where she would have gotten that!

Kenzie vacillated between being very nice friends with Thomas and not so much! One of the "not so much" times she smacked him in the face with one of the play cooking pans. That earned her some alone time. It helped for a while, then she was hitting and pushing again (Joslyn, Riley, Emily...) I am thinking the upped intensity level is probably due to the stress felt surrounding grandpa's procedure. Kiddos pick up on so much more than we realize!

Kenzie was leading the kiddos in made-up songs as they walked around the table in the big room. They stopped briefly and Kenzie asked, "Do you want to sing some more? Do you want me to sing again?" Thomas immediately affirmed that he did, which made Kenzie happy.

Gary was catching "rats in a rat trap", which means catching them between his knees. Kenzie loved it and when he was done, Kenzie took over being the rat trap. She and Emily took turns catching "a dirty rat in the rat trap" for about 10 minutes.

Joslyn, Kenzie and I had fun building farm houses together in the back room with the Duplos. They were helping me decide where to put the windows and roofs. It was fun for all three of us!

2/14/13

Happy Valentine's Day! Kenzie ate all of her grapes and seconds on cinnamon toast at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her hash browns, canned cherries and crescent roll and most o feet chicken. She was also enlightening all of the other kiddos about what a good meal it was! : )

Kenzie immediately asked for a heart on her cheek when she saw the heart on Emily's. Thankfully we still had one left!

When Thomas and his mom came this morning, they had valentines for all the kiddos also. Kenzie asked them, "Did you happen to bring a Valentine for me?" Lexi loved it and we all thought it was so cute and funny!

Before breakfast Thomas was whining about something and Kenzie told him, "Whining doesn't get us what we want!" Gary and I cracked up. It is amazing how they know all the right things to say, even if they still do those things themselves!

Kenzie went over and greeted and talked to Noah for several minutes this morning. He was responding wonderfully to her with cooing and huge smiles. She obviously missed him and I think the feeling was mutual.

2/13/13

Kenzie ate all of her peaches and most of her whole wheat bagel at breakfast. At lunch she ate about half of her salad with ranch dressing and all o finer corn, ham and macaroni and cheese.

Kenzie and Joslyn were using great imaginative play on the rowdy side, even though the only props on that side are stuffed animals. They weren't even using them. Instead, Kenzie was asking Joslyn if she was wanting to "get ready for valentines day." They were then "taking a shower", so I guess their plans included cleaning up for the big day! : )

Joslyn would only go along with Kenzie's directions for a while, then she stopped cooperating. As soon as this happened Kenzie really didn't want to play with her anymore and went to the other side of the room to see if Emily would be a little more compliant. : )

Gary had Kenzie sit for a couple minutes after multiple reminders to keep her hands off and/or be gentle to her friends. She thought it was a great opportunity to be the director or supervisor of everyone then. She sat there just shooting off instructions!

Kenzie and Joslyn were using the big blocks as a stage again in the back room. One would sing and the other (and me) were the audience. .

Kenzie was using the Duplos as a phone after the concert was over. She said she was "calling Miss Kelly about Aaron's hair." When I asked her who miss Kelly was she said she was a "worker person, a hair worker person."

Baby Reid started fussing so I announced that I was "going to go fix Cooper a bottle". Kenzie has obviously heard me make those mistakes a few times, because she immediately said, "I mean Reid a bottle".

If I miss a day of journaling or it is extremely brief for the next week or so, it will be because of focusing on completing the child evaluations/assessments. That was what was going on yesterday. Thanks, in advance for your understanding.

2/11/13

Kenzie ate all of her mixed fruit and about half f her Chex cereal at breakfast.

Kenzie started singing the ABCs after breakfast and Thomas joined in with her. Kenzie was excited and announced, "We singin' together!"

Thomas hurt himself on the bar at the mirror and was ring hard. Kenzie had a very concerned look on her face and sweetly asked him if he was okay. While still howling loudly, he said, "yeah".

Joslyn was lying on the mattress with her leg up in the air. Kenzie saw it and asked, "Are you doing exercise, Jozzy?" Joslyn said she was. Kenzie then lay beside her and put her up in the air too, saying " then you pull it back like this..." and other instructions. At the end of there "exercising" Kenzie asked me, "Does Gary ever do exercises?" She also said she was doing exercises to "help our backs".

Kenzie was orchestrating Thomas, Emily, herself and Joslyn "taking turns" jumping off of the climber/balance beam with the others sitting by the changing table as the audience. (Orchestrating is a nice worded for bossing.) : )

Kenzie was so excited when I told her we were going to paint to day. She loved it and didn't want to stop water color painting even though it was all mixing into a gray color and starting to ball up the paper, because it was so wet!

Kenzie said two really cute things at lunch today. The first was when everyone had sat down. She looked around, smiled and said, "We're not missin' anyone!" It was so cute and sure enough everyone at the table was there. the second one was when Christina's husband Matt came home for his lunch. She said, "There's our Matthew" which he loved!

2/7/13

Kenzie ate thirds on bread and all of her cantaloup at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her sliced turkey and dried mangoes and about half of both her green beans and crescent roll.

Kenzie was very fragile this morning, with three melt-downs before breakfast. She kept saying she was tired, so I told her she could go lay on her nap mat until she felt better two different times. Both times she lay there for about 3 minutes then came back out.

After breakfast she was in a much better mood and played with Joslyn and Emily in the box as a "family" for some time very peacefully. Maybe she was actually more hungry than tired!

Kenzie unloaded the whole book rack this morning (the book she was looking for must have been the last one)! She then sat on the yellow bench, with it turned on its side and started looking at books. Petty soon Riley went over and joined her. Kenzie was thrilled and really started showing her the pages and pointing things out to her.

Emily, Joslyn and Kenzie were discussing their doctors yesterday at the table during snack time. The conversation mostly centered about the toys at their doctors offices. They were actually listing the types of toys that were there. Gary and I sure thought at was funny, especially when Kenzie insisted that hers had "lots and lots and lots and LOTS" of toys!

Kenzie was doing some rhyming word play with Gary this morning. She was saying his name and a rhyming word (real or made up). Gary berry, wary, merry and sharey were just a few of them.

2/6/13

Kenzie ate all of her toast and at least a couple bites of mixed berries at breakfast. At lunch she ate seconds on bean soup and all of her saltine crackers, kiwis and ham.

Kenzie started off the morning playing with Thomas. We looked over and they we were sitting in the yellow chair reading together. The next time we looked, they each had one end of the play peas in their mouth. It reminded me of the Lady and the Tramp movie when they each had an end of a piece of spaghetti noodle. : )

Kenzie and Emily were wrapping doll blankets around themselves and saying they were mermaids. Not only that, but they were singing "here comes the mermaid" to the tune of 'Here Comes The Bride"

Kenzie and Emily also spent a lot of time playing with the dolls in the box. They were using it as their home. They would leave the box to go to the store or what sounded like "church".

They were also lying on the floor wrapped up in their blankets looking at books. Kenzie was the one holding and 'reading' the books, but Emily was very interested, especially when it was a book that they could sing to.

Kenzie was using some Duplos as her phone in the back room. I don't know who she was talking to, but she said, "yeah, I talked to my dad a couple hours ago and he had an appointment!" : )

2/5/13

Kenzie ate all of her whole wheat bagel and dried apricots at breakfast. At lunch she ate all of her tilapia and applesauce and about half of her peas and pasta with cheese.

Kenzie raced over to greet Thomas when he came and instantly invited him to play with her. He was more interested in exploring the new toys, since he hadn't been here yesterday, but he did play with her several times ast hear ing went on. She taught him how to put the baby in the "car seat" cowboy hat. I think it is so funny how one child will decide that an item can be used for so me thing different like that teaches the others, starting a new tradition. No one had ever done that before Alayna and now all of the big girls do it and are teaching the younger ones. : )

Kenzie handed a stuffed rabbit to Joslyn and asked her, "What's wrong with this rabbit? Has she been puking up?" Joslyn examined her thoroughly and told her, "Nope! I don't think so." Later Kenzie asked her if she was her doctor and Joslyn said "No" with a chuckle. Kenzie looked downhearted and said, "but Jozzy, you help me!" They are so cute!

At about 10:00, Kenzie had a testy episode. She also said she was "getting kind of tired" right about the same time. I was actually surprised she had done so well up until that point after hearing that she had a hard night.

Kenzie bonked herself n the mouth with a Duplo creation she had made and immediately asked, "Is there blood?" in a semi panicked voice. It was as if she was needed me to verify if she should cry or not. There wasn't so we were in luck! : )

2/4/13

Kenzie ate about half of her craisins and raisin bran at breakfast. At lunch she ate one slice of cheese pizza, all of her tropical fruit and over half of her cauliflower broccoli blend.

Kenzie was playing about 5 feet away from Mia. Mia coughed and Kenzie said, "Mia don't cough in my face!" I couldn't help but crack up and Kenzie looked at me like I was totally crazy -- what was so funny about that?

Nora was sitting in front of Kenzie while I was fixing her hair. Nora screeched at her for no reason and Kenzie said, "You're a little pill, Nora!"

Kenzie put on the cow suit several times, complete with the cow hood. She also put the lady bug jacket deal on also.

Kenzie and Emily each had a stuffed animal that they were using as their "babies". They were taking them to the "doctor to get some medicine" and then back home (which was the igloo).

Kenzie and Joslyn were playing with the Duplo fence pieces this morning, stacking them on top of each other. Kenzie got hers all stacked up. Kenzie said hers was a "ladder". For Joslyn it was a "pencil" - very creative.

2/1/13

Kenzie ate several bites of her malt-o-meal and raisins at breakfast. Kenzie ate all of her mixed fruit, all of the noodles out of her spaghetti and a couple bites of the meat.

She has been either announcing that she is going to grandma and grandpas at "around noon" or that grandma and grandpa are going to come pick her up and take her to the farm. Regardless of how it is going down, it is always "around noon" or "after lunch time".

She has been pretty physical with her friends today. She was both playing a little too roughly and also forgot to use her words multiple times, hitting or pushing instead.

Kenzie and Thomas were stacking up the play orange juice cups the knocking them over so they made a big crash repeatedly. Aaron, Riley and Emily playing on the other side. As soon as Aaron heard the first crash, he went running over laughing, even though he couldn't see what was going on from where he was. Emily, on the other hand, went over to tell them "Calm down, guys!" Gary and I cracked up!

Baby Reid was having some floor time this morning. Kenzie must have decided that he was either cold or needed some dress up clothes to grab because she had everything but his face totally buried. When I told her I wanted her to go sit by him and the pile, she looked a little apprehensive. I just wanted to get a picture, but I think she was afraid she was in trouble!