DingoDen Update (Elora 10 weeks, Delenn 2 1/2, Logan over 4 1/2)

Today (Sunday, April 6th), Elora turned 9 weeks old. Everyone comments
how big she has gotten. She's begun to fill out to look like a proper
baby rather than a newborn. Her legs, for example, are plump with cute
little folds rather than the scrawny little stick legs she was born
with. The biggest changes though are in her awareness of her own body
and of her surroundings. She has beautiful smiles for the people in her
view. And just in the last week or so she has begun to coo. If Mom or
Dad does a sing-songy coo at her, she'll repeat the sound. She also has
better control of her arms and legs and spends hours during the day
hitting at her mobiles on the play mat or kicking the toys in her
chair. Last week she slept lots at night -- as I recall, she even slept
one night from 10:30 until 5am. Her sleeping habits are just a little
more routine. She seems to enjoy/need to spend time with the folks in
the evening after the big kids have gone to sleep. She won't settle and
go to sleep until she nestles into bed right next to Mom.

Mom has had an ample (overly ample!) milk supply for Elora. As a
consequence, Elora takes in large amounts of milk (often spluttering on
the copious amounts). As you might imagine, she burps much more than
the others ever did. Luckily Elora waves her arms like a windmill to be
burped.

As you'll see from pictures, Elora has not lost the dark brown hair she
was born with. Instead, she has very white-blond roots! A reverse dye job!

Last week Daddy had to go into work (March 31). This was after having three weeks off for paternity leave. The kids definitely missed him and would ask throughout the day where he was.

Logan had his last day at the Steiner School kindy (preschool) on
Thursday (April 3). He enjoyed the party, but since he never settled in
we decided it'd be easier to have him home. In the mornings when it was
time to go off to kindy, Logan would say he didn't want to go. It
always took some convincing to get him to go -- and then once we were
there he wouldn't let Daddy or I leave. To be honest, Daddy and I are
happy with the decision too. Logan's much happier and more settled.
Now we're truly homeschoolers.

APRIL 16th:

I said I'd get back to writing this blog entry -- and well over a week
has gone by!)

Logan continues to do well with his reading. He's gone through about 50
or 60 small readers (Bob Books, Animal Antics and some generic readers
we bought) -- which mostly still entail short 3-5 letter words. He's
trying hard to read words whenever we're out and about. As for other
"schoolish" kinds of things we do -- I'd say we excell at "recess" and
"free play." Just where we should be as a preschooler, right?! You
think I'm kidding, but with Elora in the picture now it's harder to find
too much one-on-one time. We still read lots of books. Often we'll read a book or two during snack time. We always read for about a half hour before "Quiet Time." And we also read for about a half hour before bed. Daddy excells at telling wonderful stories as well. He takes the kids on "Logan and Delenn" adventures (that usually has them zooming off on a star fighter while tending to or bringing along some kind of animal... a few nights ago it was puppies, tonight it was a rabbit.) If Elora is awake, she shares in 'book time' as well, sitting in Mommy's lap as we all read together.

I'd say I get about fifteen to twenty-five minutes of quality alone-time with Logan and Delenn. Logan does quite a variety of things, but generally only one thing per day. For example,
we've read science books (funny kid's books on the skeleton or blood or
volcanoes, etc.), done math (working with an abacus mainly --
recognizing the double digits and sliding that number of beads over (65,
27) or doing simple addition (2+3, 4+5) -- again using the abacus. Our
current lapbook is on bats, but this will probably be a work in progress
for several weeks! I try to take the kids outbush or somewhere a bit
different once a week or so. Last Saturday we went to the Desert Park.
We were going to go to Emily Gap earlier this week but got sidetracked
with the starfighter play in the backyard so went on a picnic instead.

As a cute aside -- Logan wanted to play in the dark and we closed all
the windows and shutters and doors to the house to make it as dark as
possible. Before playing the 'ghost' game, Logan proclaimed, "Wow, this
is as dark as a dead rat!" Don't know where that came from, but now
Daddy can't help but think of things being as dark as a dead rat anymore.

Last week Logan started playing soccer. He was very excited. Daddy is
his coach for the Under 6 team (he coaches 7 kids; 4 kids play at a time
in the soccer games). Mom is the assistant coach. Practices are
Wednesdays at 5pm. Luckily Delenn and Elora have been splendid the
first two practices so Mom was able to help out 97% of the time. With
so many exuberant kids it definitely takes two adults (if not more with
the parents that get roped into helping!) It was funny watching the herd
move up and down the field in our first little practice soccer game.
Games against another team will be on Saturday mornings (11:30am).

As for Delenn's special time with Mommy -- has usually been "doll house"
(as we mentioned in the pictures). Sometimes Mommy brings in other
things (like puzzles, beads, etc.) and we talk about colors, letters (on
the blocks) or whatever, but mostly we just play together. Delenn can
identify about 10 letters or so (has been singing the alphabet song for
ages) and can count easily up to 12 -- and sometimes to 20.

Lest you worry that Elora is not getting quality Mom time, she is with me during "Quiet Time" and I revel in the smiles and coos she shares with me then. Daddy and I enjoy alone time with her when the older kids go to bed as well.

Delenn often calls Logan 'Boy'. Like, she'll say in the morning, "Eat
your cereal, boy", or "Come on boy, let's go outside" and she'll always
put an strong emphasis on the word boy (as if she was talking down to
her 'boy' slave). Also, she uses the word dizzy a lot for anytime she
doesn't want to do something. Like when it's cleanup time and Daddy
asks her to help, sometimes she'll get up and put the back of her hand
against her forehead, while feigning a womanly fainting spell, and say
aloud, "I'm dizzy" or "I'm too dizzy" in a slow southern drawl.
Anything to get out of something.

A few weeks ago Daddy severely sprained his ankle which means that he
will not (cannot) play soccer this season. That leaves Mom pretty busy
with hockey games on Saturday late afternoons and soccer on Sundays.
Daddy is a real trooper taking on all three kids (and a bottle of
expressed milk on hand in the fridge). Mommy is SO happy to have the
outlet to run around and think only of chasing a ball around for a
couple of hours! Mom also still plays (oboe) in the Alexandria
Quartet. That has been quite fun lately as we've been learning a number
of new pieces (Haydn, JS Bach, Berlioz, among others). We have a concert
coming up at the end of May.