5/29/12

Just a note to let you know I am not doing actual journals today.  Gary hurt his back over the weekend and we don't have a sub so I was doing almost everything while Gary hung out, monitored the room and used lots of verbal guidance techniques to help as much as possible.  Anyway, I wasn't really able to focus on specifics of that the kiddos were doing.  I do know that they did amazingly well since it was a long weekend, things were different here with me doing more of the stuff and Gary not mobile...  Sorry for the inconvenience.  We are working on getting a sub for Wednesday through Friday so Gary can just relax, not stress over the extra work for me and just concentrate on healing up...

Morgan had no melt-downs even though there were a couple close calls.  : ) 

5/25/12

Morgan ate all of her rice and raisins at breakfast.  At lunch she ate all of her meatloaf, french bread and dried apricots.  She also had a couple bites of her cooked carrots. 

Morgan was such a wonderful listener, helper and friend today.  She also just had a very contented and peaceful look on her face most of the morning.  It was awesome.  She seemed very happy with and proud of herself for making good choices.  For example, Emily was upset because she stumbled and fell into the wall and bonked her elbow.  Morgan came over with one of the stuffed bunnies, handed it to her and asked, "Will this help you feel better?"  Oh...  : ) 

 Morgan had each foot in a play bowl and was pretending to "skate" around the big room.  She make it look so fun that Kenzie had to do it also, except Kenzie called it, "skaping".  : ) 

Kenzie had Morgan lay down on the step today and was leaning over her intent on pretending to put something in her ears.  When I asked Kenzie what she was putting in Morgan's ears she quickly said, "eye drops".  Well, of course!  I should have known that!  : ) 

 Just so you know in case Morgan starts singing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" song, Alayna's favorite song has now switched from "Jesus Loves Me" to "Ring of Fire" and she wants to sing it all the time!  : ) 

5/24/12

Morgan ate all of her fresh strawberries and second on cinnamon toast at breakfast.  We subbed the strawberries for grapes this morning because Wal-Mart didn't have grapes when I went shopping.  At lunch she ate everything -- chicken, dinner roll, mashed potatoes and canned cherries. 

Morgan talked about her birthday in October several times first thing this morning.  I don't think she liked the idea of Jadey being ahead of her in anything!  : )  She and Jadey did play together pretty well for a while this morning though.  Morgan invited her, "Wanna put babies to sleep, Jadey?" and Jadey was excited about it. 

I have noticed the last couple days that Morgan has been very deliberate about making a point of telling Gary specifically about different things.  The first thing was that "Mommy helped brown bear wave at me" and the second was that she had laid out her own nap mat to help me this morning. 

Morgan was alternating between "doing laundry" and "make a mess" by putting all of the dress-ups on the table (washing machine) and them swiping them all off onto the floor.  She then started putting the doll blankets with it too.  She called them "blaundlies" instead of blankets on accident and cracked up and then kept calling them that!  : )

We played a game called "Hug a Bug" today.  We have played it plenty in the past, but we felt this group of kiddos have been too young to do it until now.  It is similar to 'Musical chairs' in theory, but helps the kiddos with spacial issues and build friendships.  We play dance music and then when we stop the music we announce "Hug a bug!  Find someone to hug nicely!"  They then each find a friend to give a hug and we turn the music on.  They really enjoyed it, but tired of it quickly.  Definitely something we will try again. 

5/23/12

Morgan ate all of her peaches and a bite of her whole wheat bagel at breakfast.  At lunch she ate second on home-made macaroni and cheese and all of her salad with ranch and her corn. 

Morgan had a very good day today -- no melt-downs or even close to it!  : )  She spent the first half-hour or more in direct interaction with me.  We "visited" about her night last night and her day today a little, but mostly she just wanted to cuddle/wrestle mildly with me, look at books with me and just hang out.  It was fun! 

The street sweeper was a hit for all of the kiddos this morning.  Either the sprayer or the actual sweeper came by at least 4 times this morning and the loved that.  They were all plastered to the window.  The actual street sweeper looked up and saw them as he creeped along the sidewalk, waved and smiled so big!  He obviously thought it was as cute as we did!  : ) 


Kenzie and Morgan played together most of the morning very peacefully.  Jadey was home celebrating turning three with her mom today so there wasn't the three way dynamic.  It is amazing how different it is when any of the three are absent.  That third person just makes it challenging to keep it peaceful -- takes way more problem solving skills and is pretty much past their developmental level for the most part. 

Morgan was using the curler mic again today to sing with.  She was singing about "tomatoes" first of all and then started singing "Okee-dokee", which may have really been the "hokey pokey", but I'm not sure.  : ) 

Kenzie and Morgan were wearing the bath robes for quite a while this morning, calling them their "bath towel" and pretending to be bathing.  They would go over to one of the corners and say, "shower, shower, shower..." then go over to the mirror, presumably to see if they were clean.  : )  

5/22/12

Morgan ate all of her pears and about half of her blueberry muffin at breakfast.  At lunch she ate all of her sweet potatoes, about half of her tuna on saltines and her taste of oranges.  She was wanting to be done after she ate that (which was just fine, except I was still feeding Riley her baby cereal and she thought she was starving).  I told Morgan I would be happy to wash her right after I had finished feeding Riley and that started a 20+ minute meltdown.  Since the kiddos weren't finished eating yet, we actually had to move her out of the room and that really amped it up.  She hadn't even had any close calls before that incident. 

After breakfast this morning Morgan and Joslyn somehow decided that one of the play over easy eggs would make a great eye patch.  They took turns putting the "patch" on each other's eye and laughing about it. 


The 6 oldest kiddos plus Thomas were really moving in packs today.  They ALL were reading stories on the couch and chair then they all transferred to the other side of the room and found curlers to use as their microphones.  After singing at the top of their lungs for a while, they then abandoned that and raced over to dance to the music, then they went to the table to have "breakfast", then back to the couch and chair to read again.  It literally was like that until we split into our small groups!  Crazy kiddos! 


Morgan and Kenzie decided "we play hide-and-seek" then commenced to play something more like "peek-a-boo" around the back of the big yellow chair.  Whatever game it was, they were having a blast! 


All of the kiddos really enjoyed drawing with the magna doodles today.  They were talking with each other what they made.  One of the kiddos asked Morgan what she was making and Morgan answered "a butterfly" with no hesitation. 

5/21/12

Morgan told me she put cream on her nose at home to "make it feel better".  That was after she had been examining it in the mirror. 

All of the kiddos were kind of clinging and after breakfast they all wanted to "cuddle" me at once.  To help them be able to all be close to me at once and still have minimal conflict I started singing them songs.  We started with some of the old favorites and then I moved on to ones we don't sing as often and then a couple that I don't think we have every sang with this specific group.  One of them was the "Chin up" song from Charlotte's Web.  They loved it and requested it over and over again.  Morgan also really liked the "More we get together" song and was singing it independently off and on the rest of the morning. 

We held, hugged and had Tucker the Turtle give us a reminder lesson about how to "Think like a turtle".  That reminded me that I still need to make copies of that information for you.  I will try to do that in the next day or so. 

5/18/12

Morgan ate all of her prunes and oatmeal at breakfast.  At lunch she ate all of her hashbrown casserole and her biscuit and had a couple bites of her mandarin oranges. 

Morgan didn't have any melt-downs and only one close call today.  She and Kenzie played together most of the morning with Jadey entering the mix a couple times successfully.  One of the times it wasn't going to be successful and both Morgan and Kenzie were becoming frustrated, so I asked if they wanted to go play in one of the back rooms together.  They loved it and played there while I cooked the oatmeal for breakfast.  They were mostly playing with the keyboards and singing.  It was pretty cute. I kept popping in on them to see how things were going and they did great. 

Morgan, Kenzie and Jadey suddenly decided that one of the sets of curlers was a microphone.  They each had one of them and were singing real and made-up songs at the top of their lungs.  Part of the time they were singing the same song together, but more often they were each singing a different song, which made it a little chaotic to say the least!  : )  One of the songs that Morgan sang over and over was "Baby beluga". 

I scrubbed off my fingernail polish today during outside time and you would have thought it was the best "activity" we have had ever for most of the kiddos!  Kenzie, Morgan and Jadey basically watched for the entire 10 nails and had lots of questions during the process. 

It has been so nice to be able to have morning and afternoon outside time most days lately.  It is good for all of us!  : )