The Good The Bad andThe Cute and a little Ugly

We have had a crazy few weeks. I really could do multiple post but my brain doesn't work that way so its alllll going in this one.
First some good. We bought a piano!!! I love it. We bought it from a guy who refurbishes pianos so it's like new but at a used price. Everything about it is beautiful. The feel of it, the sound of it and we got lucky because it looks beautiful as well. Erin is ecstatic over it. So we went to the local music store and bought some piano books and I have started teaching her how to play. We have done 2 lessons thus far and she is soaking it all in. She loves to sit and practice and she loves to just play whatever and sing. Lily loves to do that too.

See I told you it was beautiful!

Now some more good and hopefully cute. Erin, Lily and I celebrated St Patties day by getting hair cuts. (Thats a celebration right?) Anyways for the first time in my life I have a long hair cut. I am still not sure what I think of it, but I think I like it. This was also Lily's first hair cut. she was excited and loved it. Erin was way over due on a hair cut (well we all were thats how I got long hair) and we cut like 5 inches off.


Yes this is after we cut 5 inches off.
Okay now for some bad ugly and end with good. Bad: My beautiful children broke two of my windows.


Ugly: water gathered in between the broken panes and began to grow a science experiment.
Not necessarily ugly, but not pretty either: The way our old windows looked outside.Good: New beautiful windows. They also have some really great features, like they can open on both sides, the screen moves, I can take them out easily to clean them but they are more secure from outside and harder to break into. Also they are guaranteed so if my beautiful children break them again we don't have to buy new ones.


Cute and then bad: I was working on smocking the girls Easter dresses and looked up to see daddy and the three girls. So cute.But lets take a close look at Lily. Oh no it is 7 o-clock and Lily is asleep. This is highly unusual. Plus she got a fever. Darn it Lily has strep.

Plus when we had Lily checked we had this little one looked over too. She had a runny nose and a cough. Well this poor babe has RSV. Darn it. Best part is she now has a 60% chance of getting asthma. Oh I sure am going to pray for her.

Ugly: I woke up one Saturday morning recently covered in a rash head to toe and itching like crazy! I immediately went to the doctor. Apparently I have some food allergy. To what? We have no clue. Thankfully it hasn't happened since and I pray that it wont. My mom and my darling husband were both hoping I was allergic to the somoas I had eaten the day before so they could finish them off, but I am very happy to say it was not my precious samoa cookies.

Good: The good thing about dad doing school on-line is he can take the baby with him to school.

Cute: Yes my children sure are cute

Two Birds With 1 Stone

For those of you who are around us frequently know that Lily doesn't talk much. It really isn't a big surprise because who can get a word in edgewise with Erin around? We did speech therapy for a good part of last year and she was progressing nicely. So we decided to stop and since then her progress has slowed. I wasn't planning on putting Lily in 3 yr old preschool, but I am thinking it might help with her speech. So as I was feeding Kaylee at 2:30am the other morning I was thinking about Lily and speech. Trying to think of other ways to help her. I have some flash cards but truth be told we both hate them so it doesn't happen much. So what is something that she would enjoy that would encourage her speech? I remembered working in a preschool for a short time and one of the things they did to help get the kids excited about learning letters of the alphabet was to have a letter of the day and hide copies of it all over and when the kids found them it was super exciting and no matter what you were doing at that moment they were also learning letters. I thought I could transfer this idea and do a word of the day with Lily.
Well to make a long story short (I know it's a little late for that) the idea kept growing in my mind and now is a typed formal lesson plan that will benefit both the girls.
Here is a peak of what it looks like:
1- Focus on words from one book. The first book I am using is Charlie Cooks Favorite Book.
First word of focus from this book is: BOOK (brilliant I know)We will also focus on: walk, chair, dragon, frog, nest, green, crown, fish, cake, head, and boy. (Lily can say some of these words, but this will help encourage the activity)
2- Hide pictures of books with the word book printed on the bottom of the picture, all over the house.
3- When one of the girls finds a pic we stop what we are doing and Lily repeats the word while Erin reads the word. So we have 30 sec lessons spread throughout the day.
4- Read the focus book each night and whenever we run across the focus word Erin will read it and Lily will repeat it.
5- Once a day have a 5ish min focus on the word. Erin will read it then read other word similar (ie. took, look, nook) Lily will repeat it and words similar in meaning (ie. read, pages, words).
So in this one activity I will engage both girls, help Erin with reading and Lily with her speech. I have a total of 12 focus words from this first book and I am printing off all my material at once which will lighten the load of the small amount of work that it is. I hope this goes as well as I think it will. I will update you at the end of this book how it went.
While we are at it do you have any fun ideas to help your children in either of these areas? I would love to hear them.