Talitha's increasing skills

Now she's really creeping along. She can get to any toy she wants in the living room, though sometimes her brother and sister don't like that. She can pull up to stand too, she used the couch cover to stand and then Mom's legs to get to the coffee table. Then she cruised all the way to the other end of the table.

She can eat cheerios or kix or puffs now too! Sometimes she gets them stuck in her palm, rather than pinching them in her finger and thumb and that can get frustrating. But she enjoys her snacks. She's working on drinking from a sippy cup too.

Hannah's songs

Hannah loves to sing. She has a few favorites. Jesus Love Me is one and The Gospel Song (which we sing pretty often and even sing at our small group meetings with friends from church) is another. We recently got a new kid's music album called "Slugs & Bugs & Lullabies" by Andrew Peterson. On the way home from storytime at the library this week she was singing from that album, "dump tuck, dump tuck, dig a dirt" (the line goes "dump truck, dump truck, digging up the dirt"). The neat thing is she likes to sing along with the music, unlike Nathanael who is still shy and doesn't want to sing aloud much and not with other people. Much of the time, though, only her parents can understand her songs, but she knows them well.

Lyrics to the Gospel Song by Bob Kauflin:

Holy God in love became
Perfect man to bear my blame
On the cross He took my sin
By His death I live again

Nathanael's schooling

We have added something new to Nathanael's schooling this semester--gym class. The seminary offers a gym class for 3-6 year-olds once a week. The theme is animal movements. His first class was this past week, and he learned about how lizards move. They creep and crawl. Several of his friends from church are in the class too, and he was so excited to go to "Daddy's school" and have his own class.

He is getting better at counting, and can count to 100 with just a few helps. He has learned to skip-count by 10's and is working on skip-counting by 5's next. He loves words and is getting better at sounding out words. He has a couple books he can read that Mom found online at various phonics sites with printable books, "Zac the Rat" and "In My Hat".

His bath letters are a great way to practice reading. One night Daddy had the word "FAR" on the bath wall and Nathanael sounded it out, "like far away, Dad." Then the letter "T" was added to the end. Nathanael looked at the word, thought for a bit, and a huge grin grew on his face and he said "that says fart!" and the bathroom errupted in hilarious laughter. Laura and the girls heard it in the other room and wondered what was so funny.

He's also working on rhyming. But sometimes he gets that confused with same beginning sound, example: "bat rhymes with hat, and frog rhymes with fire". One of the kids' new favorite shows, Word World, has helped with this some. Sometimes, he will come up with some innocently inappropriate rhymes. In the car the other day, "Mom, grass rhymes with..." Mom just said yes it does, and went on to the next conversation.

He loves to practice writing his name, at the doctor's office he'll get a piece of the exam table paper torn off and put on the floor and a crayon. He'll try to write his name all by himself, and before the doctor's visit is over, he'll have it at least once.

He still really enjoys "schoolwork" and asks for it every day. Hopefully by enjoyign it now, he'll grow to be a lover of learning later in life.

Hannah's quirks

Hannah has quite a few quirks.

• Her hair is getting long so we put it in a hair clip, she usually pulls the clip out at some point during the day, but we are never sure where it went.
• One day she flushed the potty, but we're not sure what went down, she only said "toy".
• She's taken to calling her brother and sister by their nick-names. We call Nathanael "Buddy" and Forest calls Talitha "Little Bit" (Hannah is "Little One"). Hannah will take a toy to Nathanael and say "Here ya go, Buh-deeee." When she uses her sister's nick-name, she says "ih bit." Sometimes only Mommy understands her.
• She is girly--obsessed with shoes, though she is not picky whose shoes they are.
• She has short legs which makes it hard for her to wear pj pants--she walks on them constantly. Sometimes she'll walk right out of them! Then she puts them in the dirty clothes hamper if it's morning.
• She has to have her bag to go to church--when she hears it's time to go to church she will say "bag, bag" untill we get it for her and she will want to carry it to the car and from the car to her classroom.
• One Sunday evening she was next to last to go out to the car (Mom and Talitha were lagging) and she noticed Nathanael's Bible was still in the house. She scrambled to obey Daddy and go, but grabbed the Bible yelling "Thanael, Bible!" on her way to the car.
• When she counts, she will start "one, two, three, two, one" because many games we play we will count down from three--we're working on correcting that one.

It will be fun to continue to see her personality develop and her language improve to be more understandable.

She's Mobile!

It's official--Talitha is on the move! She can get to where she wants to, though not very fast yet--which still frustrates her when it's her mom she's trying to get. But now she can get to that elusive toy, or forbidden object.

By the way, she's almost 16 pounds now, still our little peanut. Hannah was 18 pounds at this age, and Nathanael was 22 pounds. But we still like her ;) She is also playing with sounds and has several favorites: "nananana, mamamama, dadada" and she loves to blow "raspberries."

Nathanael is home!

Thank you so much for joining us in prayer to our LORD for our son's recovery. Nathanael was able to sleep through the night without needing supplemental oxygen. That was the first hurdle to going home. He has now completed two consecutive four-hour interval breathing treatments and is able to go home to continue managing his asthma. The LORD has been gracious to us during this time with encouraging messages from friends and family as well. A special thanks to those who took the time to come and visit Nathanael in his room, it really helped encourage him.

Ye fearful Saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread
are big with mercy, and shall break, with blessings on your head. - William Cowper