Wildwood Cottage

The Girls

Things around here have been busy since my last post, mainly because Claire turned 5 (!) and I've re-done her "curriculum" from scratch. There will hopefully be more about that later- for now, I've picked a couple of recent pictures to share.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile will recognize this furrowed brow-

 

She's intently studying The Scrambled States of America while wearing her favorite "footy" pajamas. This picture is Claire in a nutshell- a book, her CD player, bean bag, and that look of intense concentration I love so much.

Carly is skipping her afternoon nap today, so when I go in to get her shortly, she won't be as happy as she was in this picture.

She only recently discovered how to pull herself up to standing- I still can't believe how big she looks when she does it.

Time for the afternoon shift to start- if I'm lucky, Carly will look at books in her crib so I can look at a few myself!

One Year

Despite my best intentions, it's been longer than I wanted since my last post. I have so many ideas for the blog, but actually doing them is proving harder than I thought. A combination of a cold followed by Matt being out of town for a few days hasn't helped. I am more than ready for life to return to normal!

I have plenty of motivation to post today, though- Carly is 1! Here's what she looked like this time last year...

 

And here she is today (if you think the pictures look odd, they do- our camera is dying, but these were too cute not to post)-

 

I

I've found that I'm enjoying my time with Carly a bit more than I did when Claire was a baby- partly because I have some of idea of what I'm doing, and also because I know there won't be any more babies. I think what I've enjoyed most is seeing how much Carly adores Claire- all her biggest smiles and reactions are reserved for her. I sometimes think of how often we used to say that Claire was going to be an only child- look what we would have missed.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl! We love you!

A New Year

Hello Again! I've decided to try and take up blogging again after my long hiatus. I miss my blog friends and I only recently realized what a great way blogging is to document our day-to-day lives. As Carly's first birthday approaches, it dawned on my that I remember very little of Claire when she was that age, and it mad me sad to think of this part of Carly's life just slipping away in my memory. So, to anyone left who used to read this blog, there will be less lengthy book posts and more "life" posts. That also works better for me- book posts are great to read but a lot of work to compose! I'm changing things around a bit on the blog too, hopefully for the better. I'm looking forward to a fresh start for the new year- better blogging, better eating, better parenting- me, only better. :o)

Books About America

CJ has no interest in fireworks of any sort because they're too noisy, so we checked out a few books from the library to learn about other aspects of the 4th of July.

Are you familiar with Peter Spier? We have several of his books, and CJ adores them all because of the detailed illustrations. She loves to pore over his version of The Star Spangled Banner. It includes all of the verses of the song, and some amazing illustrations of flags on the beginning and end papers. I've already read this one several times!

Another big hit with CJ has been Steven Kellogg's Yankee Doodle. I loved Steven Kellogg's books as a kid, so it pleases me that she does as well. Once again, the detailed drawings really capture her attention, and she goes over them with a fine-toothed comb.

This Land Is Your Land by Woody Guthrie has lovely paintings in it by Kathy Jakobsen. It shows an amazing array of the wonders that make up this country, and CJ loves books that you can sing the words to.

I enjoy the illustrations in The Rooster Crows by Maud and Miska Petersham more than CJ does, but she still enjoys looking at it with me and committing some othe catchier rhymes to memory. This book won the Caldecott medal in 1946, and I can see why- they're lovely. I'll probably be adding this one to our "reference" shelf.

CJ is belting out "The Star Bangled Banner" right now- it's supposed to be quiet time, but I can't tell her to stop singing. Have a wonderful holiday!

Busy Girls

Getting some face-to-face time...

Trying out the high chair...

Singing...

And celebrating a five-month birthday with a bath. :o)

Books to Encourage Listening

May wasn't kind to us here at Wildwood Cottage- everyone except CWH came down with a cold. I nearly had a nervous breakdown when Rose came down with it, but luckily she had the mildest version of all of us. We're all well now, so I'm working on getting life back to normal. After being sick, I'm just happy to have the energy to clean house and update the blog!

CJ is a talker. I mean, she talks a lot. Sometimes, she says the funniest things that make me laugh out loud. Other times, she asks questions she already knows the answer to, which drives me up the wall. In order to work on her listening skills, I gathered a few books (what else?!) to hopefully get my point across in a gentle way.

Nina at Painted Rainbows and Chamomile Tea recommended Quiet in the Garden by Aliki, and we have not been disappointed. It's truly a wonderful book. CJ loves the different sounds in the book, and we've worked on going outside and sitting as still as we can to see what will come along. She was thrilled to see a Tufted Titmouse land on our seed tray not six feet away during one listening exercise. Be sure and check the "Downloads" on the Harper Collins link for some activities connected with the book.

Nina also recommended A Listening Walk by Paul Showers some time ago. The book is illustrated by Aliki, so it has a similar feel to Quiet in the Garden, which is a plus in my opinion! It also nicely points out all of the different sounds you can hear if you just stop and listen- and stop talking. :o)

I wrote about Listen, Listen by Phillis Gershator previously, and it fit nicely with our theme. I adore Alison Jay's illustrations, and the seasonal aspect of the book works well with my renewed interest in Waldorf education.

Finally, we read A Quiet Place by Douglas Wood. I can't recommend this book highly enough. A boy trying to escape grown-ups talking and cleaning up his room finds many different quiet places to escape to in his imagination. The language is amazing- "...far-off thunderheads bloom like sky-flowers over the mesas.", and so are the illustrations. This one is a treasure.

I'll be stopping by to catch up on comments- I'm hoping it won't be another month before I post again!

Trains Again...

I thought I'd share the bulletin board I made for CJ due to her obsession with The Little Red Train books. In case you're wondering why it's on the floor, I've found that CJ enjoys the bulletin boards more when she can get up close and micro-analyze the pictures. Her favorite pictures on the board are the two pictures of The Little Red Train that I found using Google image search- what a surprise! I found the other train pictures, the crossing sign and word wall here. The pictures of Thomas the Train and his friends came from here, and the "sh" and "ch" trains along the bottom came from Sparklebox. I love that all of these are free (except for the ink and paper, of course)! Just in case your child becomes as big of a fan of Duffy as mine has, I stumbled across this. And they do ship to the US- I checked. :o)

CJ has a cold, and in between blowing her nose and keeping her away from Rose, we're reading Blueberries for Sal and doing some fun stuff along with it- I'm hoping to have a post up about that early next week. 

Priorities

Our day started off with a round of thunderstorms and LOTS of rain, so I decided to forget about mopping. Instead, we made these and played outside.

SO much more fun than mopping!

I'm Still Here...

Here I am typing the post I've been meaning to do for at least a week- finally! Rose is now 3 1/2 months old, and sleeping wonderfully since we introduced rice cereal. It's truly an amazing feeling to have energy again! I've been spending my time cleaning house- all I have left is the mopping (shudder). Projects I have lined up include: a major spring cleaning, re-vamping the blog, and starting to exercise again. It's hard to express how wonderful it is to have ideas of what I want to and the energy to do them! Having the time is another story. :o)

CJ is currently obsessed with a series of books about The Little Red Train by Benedict Blathwayt. I stumbled across a compilation of four of the stories at the library a couple of weeks ago, and she's been talking about it non-stop ever since. She has christened herself "Duffy"- the train driver's name, and Rose is now "Baby Duffy". CWH is Jack the Guard after another character in the stories. And me? I am simply "Train". I've chosen to be flattered by that as the train is such an important part of the story! I assembled a bulletin board for her this morning with nothing but trains on it- I hope to post about that soon.

First I'll be making the rounds of my favorite blogs to get caught up on comments, though. It's been too long, but I'm cautiously optimistic that life here is getting back on track (I can't stop talking about trains!).

Creativity at the Cottage

That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? :o)

We had an unusual number creative moments last week. First, CJ painted with corn syrup and food coloring.

It turned out very nicely, I thought- I wish you could see the shine it has. And of course CJ also had to paint the spoon and craft stick we used to spread the corn syrup around. I wasn't sure how hard it would be to clean up the sticky syrup, but it washed right off with warm water. This one gets an A+ in my book!

Next, we mixed up some pancake batter for Pancake Day.

CJ had a good time smearing the drops of food color around the batter, and eventually, we ended up with this-

Good, messy fun!

And lastly, CJ washed cars in shaving cream. This was my least favorite project because the mess to time of amusement ratio was completely out of whack. Here's what CJ thought of it-

I haven't captured a smile like that on camera in months, so maybe the mess was worth it after all. :o)