How I spend my days

Due to popular demand... I finally got my hands on some photos of the girls that I take care of. I could have had pictures sooner but I didn't think to ask their parents for copies (good thinking I know. Who ever heard of parents taking pics of their kids?) Anyway, I took some highlights of what Sarah and Jessie had and Hans and I got a few more of our own. They are way cute right?!? So in case you forgot or don't know Maya is going to be 3 in December so I guess if I did my math right she is almost 2 1/2. I know if I was a parent I guess I would know precisely how many weeks she is but that knowledge is lost on me at this time. Sophie is going to be the big numero uno in August so she is just over 9 months.
The butterfly pictures turned out pretty good. We watched them from caterpillar to butterfly and let them go "fly free" to be with the flowers in their new home. It was fascinating and I liked it so well I got another set to do with the Cub Scout boys. Well, truthfully the first set was supposed to be for them but it didn't work out so Maya got to watch these ones. PS... thanks Mom for sending it up!
I also found out that taking photos of kids is not all its cracked up to be. I find it amazing that parents get the pictures they do. I had a rough time getting many to turn out especially with both of them. Hats off to anyone who has fine-tuned this skill and I would love to get pointers since I have many years of picture taking ahead of me.
Maya is really into Cars (the movie and anything to do with it), her bears, coloring, watching her movies,reading stories (well having them read to her) but she memorizes like crazy and "reads" the books all the time. We try to hit story time every week at the library and get a new stack of books to read for the week-- I try to get ones that go with our learning poster theme but it is Ketchikan and not all books are available. I will say that they do have quite a good set up for the Children's library even though we are such a small island. The kids do enjoy going there and it is a good resource.
Maya of course loves to play kitchen, have picnics, go for walks and play group. She can talk a mile a minute and you can almost see her little brain taking in everything around her. It's fun to see her personality develop even more. She makes me laugh all day long with the things she comes up with. The cutest thing I can think of she did recently was one day when I had a killer migraine I was laying on the floor with a pillow just resting for a minute and she was coloring and just watching me and asked if I had an owie (how do you spell that?). I said yes, my head was hurting so she said she was going to "fix" me. She went looking for her doctor kit and couldn't find it but came back and kissed my eye since that where I was rubbing it and said, "Does that make it feel better?" I said almost and so she kissed it again and said, "Now is it better?" I didn't have the heart to tell her it still hurt so I said it felt much better. Kids with their innocence are so funny... she was helping me the way we help her, by kissing it better. So funny. Its funny to listen to her talk about what has happened in her life the last little while. All time is either yesterday or tomorrow no matter when it is. She is mastering the potty business (much to my happiness) and is becoming a big girl. As I always tell her when she tells me how big she is.. getting bigger all the time Maya.
Sophie is a character and is really starting to test everything out. She smiles every time she wakes up in her crib and many other times all day long. She puts her arms up in the air for some reason but recently we have been giving her high fives--which she finds super hilarious. She enjoys when we clap hands or have her do it but doesn't yet do it herself although she can clap her feet together.. no joke, which in my book ranks up there real high. She likes to hear her own voice ie she is really into screaming.. ha ha. no really. I am hoping we can find a remedy for that sooner than later. She is eating more and more foods all the time and is getting much better with her coordination with feeding herself Cheerios and such. She does this really funny clicking noise with her mouth and a noise that I can only describe as sounding along the lines of a dolphin. She likes to ride in the car, go for walks, read books, be sang to and generally get into anything Maya is doing (which really ticks Maya off most of the time) I say welcome to having a little sister Maya. They will work it out eventually I am sure, there is always a pecking order right? She does this army crawl scoot sort of thing right now but is working really hard at full out crawling. I had been waiting for her to start moving around and now I am not sure I like it. She is starting to find everything to get into and gets herself hurt by slamming her head into things like the table legs and cries. I guess we will all get the hang of it all.
My favorite is when she giggles when I tickle her or kiss on her neck or blow on her tummy. You can tell inside she wants to communicate with us more but her verbal skills are just not allowing for it... could account for most of the screaming.
Well, I guess that is it for now. I will keep you posted as we get more photos and tell you what is new with us since this is what I do now with the majority of my day.
So here you go folks. Enjoy the slide show. We have a lot of fun together and on the not-so-fun times we work through it and there is always tomorrow to try again. Plus, I am getting lots of practice for my own bunch when they get here.