Finger Painting

Today is the first of a handful of days where there is no Kindergarten for one reason or another.  We had big plans for today, to ride the T and see the fountain and the duck.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't having any of it, and rain was forecast for the day.  So, instead, Rowan came over to play, and we did some finger painting.

I love how the three girls started off daintily drawing with their fingers, and then finally started delving into hand prints and mixing some of the colors.

Carefully, one fingerprint at a time, apply paint to paper

Colorful self-portrait

Drawing the rainbow

Vivian often has red hair in her self-portraits at the moment

Rowan refused to look AND smile.  I caught a smile anyways.

Hand-painting is much more fun!

Ready for hand front-, back- and side-prints

Rowan's picture

Vivian's picture

Annelee's picture

Biker Chicks

Let's start with an only semi-related note.  This is gone and we finally have a beautiful working front-door again.  While it was very annoying that we had to go through the garage all the time, I didn't think it had stopped us from enjoying being out front ... but it clearly had, because as soon as we had a bit of free time today, the girls demanded to go out front and ride their bikes for the first time in a long time.

Rowan was very sweet and passed her old and too small bike onto Annelee, so she graduated to a full bike with pedals, and did quite well.  Vivian then demanded that I take her training wheels off, and I have to confess I did this only reluctantly.  I didn't think she was quite ready for this.  But I'm glad I did it anyways, because after just a few times of me jogging down the street holding her up, Vivian managed to ride the bike all by herself!!!  The video below is one of her first successful solo attempts, and still quite wobbly.  By late afternoon, she was much more proficient.

I'm proud of her achievement, but I have to say, I'm even more proud of her getting right back on that bike after taking a big tumble down  a slope where she scraped and bruised her hip.  She's turning into quite the dedicated tough cookie when she wants to be, and I like that a lot.

All photos and videos are from my cell phone, so the quality is not the greatest, but it shows you how well they are both doing, anyways.

Still struggling to maintain speed when she isn't going downhill, but she loves the bike much more than the balance bike

No problem with speed here ... look how her skirt is flapping in the wind!

Click here if you can't view the video of Annelee below:



Click here if you can't view the video of Vivian below:

Before and After

The work on our front-porch and pergola is progressing and it will be awesome once it is done, but in the meantime, there are some inconveniences of having work done on the house.  The biggest by far is the lack of a front-door.  As the workers were pulling off some stuff around the old door to get the measurements for the new door; the old door became so unstable, they had to take it out and board up the hole.  Do you have any idea how many times a day you just quickly pop outside to do this or that?

Or how ugly a boarded up front door space is?  I was contemplating a front lawn sign that reads "We ARE current with our mortgage payments and our house is NOT being repossessed".  I finally abandoned the idea in favor of spending $12 on various paints and letting our girls and Rowan go wild painting. 

I think the results turned out fabulous, but I would still give up the painting in a heart-beat if that meant our door would be delivered earlier than the currently scheduled date of October 10th!

Before:

Ready to paint!

 During:

Hard at work

After:

They may have to work on their pose.  And, yes, the adults did get roped into finishing off the top that they couldn't reach.

Kindergarten!

Extended Care started on Tuesday, Kindergarten on Thursday.  After an extremely tearful departure from Preschool (apparently, both Vivian and the teachers were in tears throughout the day), Vivian seems to have no problem settling into Extended Care and Kindergarten. 

The transition was greatly helped because her best buddy Gregory is also in her ExCare class; even though he goes to a different Kindergarten.

Annelee is taking the transition harder, almost bursting into tears when we all dropped Vivian off at ExCare and Annelee couldn't stay and Vivian wasn't coming with us. 

Annelee does like KG drop-off and pick-up on Mondays and Fridays though.  Today, she ran up to Vivian (who was already lined up with the other kids to go inside) and gave her a big hug.  Very sweet!

Here are some photos from the official first day of KG.

If the backpack looks big on her, can you imagine how her classmates (who are all shorter, of course) look?

Not to be left out, Annelee donned her backpack (not that you can see it in the picture) and I had to quickly modify the sign, and she got to take a picture, too.

Homework

Vivian has two days of Extended Care under her belt.  Today, she complained to Will that he was picking her up too early because they were in the middle of a fun game.  I think she's settling in nicely.

Yesterday, she got to meet her Kindergarten teacher, Mrs Munson, for a brief interview.  She got her first piece of homework (?!?!?!) to bring to her first class tomorrow.   Luckily, it just involved filling out a paper with her name, favorite activity, food and color and a picture in the middle.

Needless to say, we were taking photos this evening.  A good thing, because I haven't been doing nearly enough of that lately.

Annelee, of course, needed to have her picture taken, too.

Annelee seems to be taking the whole transition to Kindergarten the hardest.  She keeps telling me that she is now going to go to KG, too, and doesn't like it when I point out that she needs to be 5 years old.  When we dropped Vivian off at EC today, she almost cried because she wasn't allowed to stay and Vivian wasn't coming with us.  Poor girl.

So, here are the photos from our impromptu session.

I'm pretty sure that a beginning Kindergartener isn't allowed to look so big already!

Curly-headed preschooler

Shopping with Supergirl and Rapunzel

Next week, we'll have a preschooler and a kindergartener.  I am glad to report that this does not mean that they are too big for dress-up or wearing their costumes out in public.  This is who I went shopping with today. 

Paint Face

I have a number of posts that I need to get on here.  One even about another face painting event.  But I thought I might as well start with a recent one first, and then work backwards.

Casey and Ernie came to see us this weekend.  Much fun was had by all.  The girls were spoiled (as usual), and it was lovely to see that Annelee now has well and truly caught onto the good that is aunts and uncles and ran up to Casey and Ernie when they arrived, demanded to sit on both of their laps, that they play with her, etc.  Vivian has been doing that for years, of course, so it looks as if she's got competition.  Luckily, both got plenty of attention.  Casey and Ernie in return got their fair share of babylove, good food (thanks, Will, for feeding us all so wonderfully).  We hung out, the adults went out on the town Saturday night ... and ... we created a tradition (doing something a second time makes it a tradition, right)? 

The girls demanded that Casey paint their faces, and that they get to paint ours.  Just like last time.

The girls' skills have improved a bit, although Annelee still snuck some arm-painting in, despite clear instructions to stick to Casey's face only. 

Can't wait to see what creations they come up with next time!

Group Photo of the results

Butterfly

Disco Diva

Abstract I (by Annelee) and II (by Vivian)