The Weekly Review: Week Four

Viral Video of the Week: At least three of my "friends" posted a link to this video on facebook. There were news articles about it. I'm sure you've probably already seen it. This is a youtube video a mother posted of her 17 month old twin boys having a babbling conversation in the kitchen. Everyone loves this video. It's adorable. It makes people laugh. My reaction was different. It made me sad and jealous and I'm proud of neither emotion. It just really emphasized for me that I never had that in my household with either of my babies. They did not babble normally (ok, at all really). It wasn't until I saw this video that I realized exactly what I'd missed out on.

Sibling Moment of the Week There are so many little conversations to choose from. Yesterday we came in from playing outside and Michael told Ava, rather bossily, to take her shoes off. She said, "O-tay Mai-Mai," and proceeded to take her shoes off. It was cute.

Michael’s Surprise Accomplishment of the Week: I picked Michael up from school and gathered the art projects they were sending home. There was a page that was pretty much all orange scribbles (a map he tells me). In the upper left hand corner of the page he had written his name. It wasn't perfect, by any means. I could recognize the first two letters, and the last one, and the ones in between were just scribbles, but it was instantly recognizable. He had done it completely on his own. His teachers hadn't helped him. I haven't been working with him on writing his name. It just came out of nowhere. I was very impressed.

Ava’s Song of the Week: Ava will cradle a baby squinkie in her hand and sing Rock-A-Bye Baby to it. Well, she sings something like, "Ra a baba" over and over, but still. It's adorable.

Project of the Week: Our library system will let you log in online and place books on hold. They send you an email when the books are ready at your local branch. Then all you have to do is drive there, pick them up off the shelf, and check them out. I spent an hour choosing board books for Ava and juvenile fiction for Michael. I threw in a couple of CDs (Raffi and Tom Chapin) and DVDs (Handy Manny) for fun. Today I picked them up. New books and entertainment for free. I'm going to try to do it once a week. Kudos to our county library system.

Conversations

Michael and Ava are starting to have actual conversations. He’ll say something to her, she’ll reply, he’ll respond, etc. They aren’t long, or complex, but there’s actual turn taking going on. I love it.

Here’s a conversation I listened to as I pushed them on the swing today. We have a tire swing that is square rather than round. They like it because they can sit on it together. (Obviously the tire isn’t real, it’s plastic but still fun.) Michael told Ava the tire was square. Ava said, “Circle.” Michael replied, “No, it’s a square.” Ava insisted, “Circle!” Michael explained, “No, it’s a square Ava! See, it has corners. And see the straight parts? It’s a square.” Without even considering his argument, Ava simply replied, “Circle.” At that point they got distracted with something else.

I loved overhearing the conversation. I also thought Michael did a pretty good job of identifying the key differences between a square and a circle. I was pretty impressed.

What did we do with a huge pile of mulch?

Our yard is a soggy mess for days after each rain. Last spring we invested in a backyard playset for the kids. We got it for a very reasonable price at Sams and built it ourselves in the only spot in the yard that was flat enough for it. It turned out that the absolute soggiest place in the entire yard, the spot that takes days and days to dry out after every rain, is directly under the swings. We put up with it for a season, but now that the kids are a little older and able to use the playset a bit more independently (yea!) I didn’t want us held back by the constant mud. (As a quick aside, last year Ava could climb up but not down. She would climb to the highest level and then wail for me to come get her. Not so much fun for Mama.)

What I would love would be to have a landscaping company come in and install a patio and a drainage system for the yard. That's just a dream though. Instead, we decided to order $100 of high quality playground mulch from a great local company that delivers for free. They dumped the pile in our driveway.

My parents came over for the evening. When we all started the project the kids were very excited. They used buckets and sand table shovels to help fill the wheelbarrow. When it was full one or the other would ride on top around the side yard and into the back to be dumped out along with the mulch. They loved it. Several times Michael took his huge Tonka dump truck and pushed it to the driveway to have Daddy or Grandpa fill it with a shovel. He’d then push it all the way back and dump it on the pile below the playset that I was raking into shape. When the kids got bored with helping, my mom took over their entertainment while my dad and husband continued to fill the wheelbarrow and push it around back to dump wherever I directed them to go next. I did all the raking.

It took about two hours of labor from three adults, but the result looks great. All of the mud from yesterday’s rain is completely covered up. And the whole project was done for a reasonable cost. I think it looks great and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. I’m calling it a success.