Stuck Inside

So, it's like really hot outside. So incredibly hot that it makes me want to curl up and die. We've been mostly stuck inside recently except for a few morning excursions, a few swimming days, and a trip to the museum. One day when we were running errands, Huston said his nose was watering. He meant "sweating" but it was so cute.

I've been doing my best to come up with more creative, structured things to keep the kids busy and actually teach them stuff. Considering that I was a teacher, you'd think I'd be better about that, but I've been terrible. I just thought it would naturally happen, but the truth is, I have to be intentional about it. I'm discovering that's true for just about everything with parenting. Parenting on Purpose, Intentional Parenting, Parenting with a Vision. Whatever you call it, it takes effort and planning. And sometimes I'm just lazy. But I'm trying not to be.

Sooooo... we've done a few things lately. Nothing mind blowing. We've played felt board stories to go along with Brown Bear Brown Bear (Arden loves this book). We've been doing a Bible story a week and a letter a week. Last week we read books about Creation and made a little book about the 7 days of creation. We also did the letter A. The kids got on Starfall.com on the computer and Huston clicked around on the different activities. I downloaded a few toddler/preschool apps for my iphone and ipod and let the kids play with them. Arden likes to say "boop, boop" every time she hits a button. Huston likes to select all the wrong answers first and laugh hysterically, then pick the correct one when it's the only choice left.

Our friends, the Casburns, are in town. When they came to our house to play, Arden freaked out over their sweet baby, Elise. She kept saying "baby, baby, hold it, hold it, touch it, touch it." She realllly likes babies.
In pooping news, I think Huston has turned a corner. He pooped on the potty four times this past week and the most recent two episodes were perfect (no mess involved). Hallelujah! I think I prayed more about his pooping than about any other single thing in my life. I cannot tell you what a relief it is that he finally seems to be willing to do this. At some points on this journey, I really thought the day would never come.

Now that I've started rambling, I think I'll continue....

Ever since Kid's Kamp, Huston has been obsessed with watching his Kid's Kamp dvd, which has all of the skits from the week on it. He has been walking around reciting lines from it, many of which are scripture, to my delight. One day we were in a store with other kids around, and he started saying, "You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. Honor your mother and your father." It was awesome. And hilarious. At lunch this sunday he picked up and separated the two sides of his hot dog bun, held them up so they looked like the two stone tablets Moses held, and started reciting the 10 commandments again. It was also awesome and hilarious.

Arden is talking a lot more in sentences these days. Her ability to learn new vocabulary words and string them together is just unbelievable. I haven't been able to record the words she knows, because she knows so many. She'll say, "More, more! Water please!" or she'll read a page of Brown Bear Brown Bear by saying "Purple Cat Purple Cat. See. I see Froggie... me." She loves to do everything her big brother does, loves to try to count (she says 1, 3, 5! but can count in order past 5 to about 8 or 9), loves to play in the bathtub, and loves reading stories. Both of the kids continue to love watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and during the intro, Arden will shout all of the characters names as they appear: "Daisy! Donald! Goofy!"

I've been getting a bunch of boxes of the kids' old clothes down and washing and tagging them to sell in the JBF sale this fall. It's making me sneezy (because there's a lot of dust, I guess), weepy (over their tiny, tiny clothes... oh so very weepy), and achy (from hunching over and pinning and folding and typing). The house looks like a children's clothing store exploded in it.

Oh, and the other morning I looked out the window and saw this:

It was pretty freaky. Of course, since we're city folk, I called someone to come and pick up the snake in case it was poisonous. It wasn't. So I guess we payed $160 to relocate it to the lake for nothing. I hope it appreciates our efforts.