FYI

If you're teaching your child to learn to blow their nose, make sure that you also teach them what to do with the dirty Kleenex. I taught Ellie today to blow her nose since she is too old now for me to suction it (she let me suction her lovey Monkey's nose though). I walked into the room to catch her blowing her nose once on several Kleenex and then stuffing them back into the box! GROSS!

The Human Body

Mikayla has had a book for a few years now, Usborne First Encyclopedia of the Human Body. She's always been fascinated by it. Lately I've had a hard time getting her to use the bathroom. I have to force her to go before school in the morning, in the afternoon, and before bed. I have no idea how she can hold it that long. Anyway, out of frustration, I grabbed this book from her room and explained what urine is and why it isn't good to sit around inside your body. This is when I discovered that this is an Internet-linked book. You go to their website, type in the page number you're reading about in the book and there is interactive stuff. How did I not discover this sooner?! After all, the specific link on body elimination is soooo great (hear the hint of sarcasm?) Check it out yourself:

http://kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/_bfs_USmoviesource.html

There's another one that we actually learned a little from today. I'm not sure why they had to use an Arnold Schwarzineger type figure who says something like, "Help, my body is all floppy, help me find my skeletal system!" It is neat as he requests each system one by one and you have to click and drag each part to his empty body.

http://www.sciencenetlinks.com/interactives/systems.html

Knock Knock

Elyana has been trying hard to perfect the "knock knock" joke. For days now I've had to hear her say "knock knock" and then name a random object. Then, she laughs and there is never a punch line. This morning while the girls were eating, Ellie said, "Knock knock" We answered "Who's there?" She replied, "bah bah (this is what she calls her sippy cup of milk)" When we said, "bah bah who?" she accidentally let out a huge belch. She was so surprised by it that she laughed and said, "Ellie burpie!" Even though it was crude humor, it was hilarious because she finally told her first decent joke. I still think back to each time I was pregnant and Nate and I would worry, "What if this child doesn't have a since of humor and we drive them crazy?" Very funny. They have both kept the laughter constant in this house!

On a side note, the nice pumpkin paintings in the last post are looking sad. I used the wrong kind of paint and the downpour yesterday ruined them. Kayla's sad, but wants to paint them again. I don't want to use permanent paints because of the mess they would make. Kayla wants to use the same paints, but keep the pumpkin inside. I don't think it would last inside either. She also doesn't want to carve it (okay with me, such a mess, but fun). Any thoughts out there?

My Messy Ellie!

I've started to watch my friends baby, Hannah. I had the girls painting their pumpkins yesterday. Soon after, Hannah woke up from her nap and wanted a bottle. After I got her situated, I checked on the girls and found this disaster...



The other thing, is Elyana has been sticking things up her nose lately. When I picked her up from our PAIIR class today, she had obviously stuck a light green marker up her nostril. I took a picture because it looked so funny. There is of course the evidence of a recent snack on her face too. Oh yeah, the other thing is she has insisted on wearing her sunglasses a lot.


After the pumpkin finally dried, Ely has been taking it for walks in her stroller.

Fall Is Here

This weekend we played in the few leaves we managed to rake together. Sunday after Mikayla's swimming lesson, we all went to Northwoods Orchard. Their tiny Chesnut apples are ready to pick and are easy for the kids to munch on running errands. I discovered that Nate had never been to an orchard before so it was neat for him. Ellie loved to feed the little goats blades of grass and pet their baby bunnies. We even got to go on a wagon ride, just the four of us. Nice family weekend. I'm going to finish off this weekend by heading to the Mayo Fitness Center (I just joined last week) for a swim and a long sit in the hot tub and steam room. Anyway, here's some pictures of the girls I took of them playing in leaves. I try to take pictures of them the very first time each fall.

MP3 Players Don't Belong In Teeth!

After an hour of struggling with Ellie to get her to nap, I put in a movie for Mikayla and layed down. 10 minutes later, I'm wake up to hysterical crying. I bound down the stairs and find Mikayla sitting there with my MP3 player hanging out of her mouth. There's a little claw clasp at the end of the cord where you can attach headphones that go with it. That part was stuck good between her bottom two front teeth. "Why on earth did you stick it there?!" Her response was, "I wanted to listen to music!" "You don't listen to music with your teeth!" The more we pulled, the more I was afraid of a tooth busting or chipping and the more she screamed. Geez. So, what do I do? I call up Nate (like he would know what to do or something!!!) Here's his description of the conversation:

Phone call from Suzanne: "I have a situation and I don't know what to do… (crying in the background) Kayla got my MP3 player stuck in between her teeth!"

Crying, wailing, and gnashing of teeth/mp3 player and then later, Suzanne finally managed to pull it out. So then I overhear this through the phone:

"Mikayla don't ever put anything in between your teeth again!"
Kayla's response: "Why?"

Lessons learned, indeed.

Photos From Photoshoot

Here are a few of our favorite pictures that our friends Scott and Jen took to launch their new photography studio.