Maggie used her allowance to buy something. We had to go pick up pictures from Walgreen's and she asked if she could bring her money and buy a toy, to which of course I said yes. She counted out her bills and then we looked at all the toys to figure out which ones she could afford. Every time she saw something she really liked but was too much, I just said she would have to save up to get that item. She finally picked something and paid for it and got her own receipt. We've also been counting her money once a week which is a great math lesson. :)
Ruby is in love with fans. I do not know what it is about fans but it's adorable. She will stop nursing to gaze lovingly at the fan in our room. She will laugh at (with?) the fan. My friend Sean has a theory about this that he summed up in the phrase, Ah, the great booby in the sky. Perhaps.
On Christmas night we went over to Richard's best friend's parents' house (got that?). I've never been there before but Maggie has. We parked right in front of Richard's car and when we got out, I noticed there were no numbers on any of the houses. I looked at the house Richard was parked in front of and Maggie said, oh I remember this house. So we went up and rang the bell. And rang it again. And again. Finally a man came to the door. Maggie burst in and took off her shoes. The guy looked at us like we were crazy and I asked if he knew Richard. No, he didn't. Oh good Lord. I was like Maggie get your shoes on and get out of this poor man's house. Quite embarrassing.
We've mostly gotten back to our regularly scheduled life. Let's see. School is back to normal. We're still doing regular reading but I've also added DEAR (Drop Everything And Read). We had this in our school when I taught (also called SSR (Silent Sustained Reading)) but it was actually created in the Ramona books (which we've read the whole series twice). So that's been fun. I added spelling and it's going quite well. Math is pretty much the same and we're doing science and building projects.
One of my New Years' resolutions was to have more fun time with Maggie. We're together pretty much 24/7 but we didn't have enough time that was dedicated to fun, with no goal or expectation. So I added some things to our schedule. Friday is Game Night. This has been surprisingly fun. Maggie is finally at a point where she is willing to accept you have to follow the rules of a board game. We even played Monopoly!
Saturday is Movie Night. I just let her pick out movies during our weekly Library day. Sunday, I have dubbed Sunday Funday (stolen from Laurie) and I try to plan some kind of fun activity (visit with family or friends, park, movie, etc.). This week we went to the drive in theater to see Star Wars. I was desperate to see it for two reasons. One, it freaking Star Wars!!! Two, Maggie has seen it and she tried to spoil it for me a million times. She would say, there's just this one really surprising part and I would scream, nooooooo. Michelle told us about a drive in theater in Fort Worth (less than 5 miles from us) where we would sit in our car and the sound comes through your radio. Ruby slept and/or nursed for the whole movie. We could adjust the volume throughout. Beautiful. It was soooooooo good. I laughed and cried. Unfortunately, the crying was more sobbing, ugly cry but still oh it was so good. AND it didn't get ruined for me.
Another resolution was to have Maggie eating three healthy meals at our table with no screens. We got into bad habits during my pregnancy so I thought this was going to be a tall order but it's gone quite well. Eating at the table has been fine. She balked the first time I told her no screens but then she asked if I would read to her. This has been great because we haven't been able to read at bedtime because of Ruby so now we read our chapter books during our meals. We finished the Little House on the Prairie books and read The Story of Diva and Flea and now we're reading The Story of the World. We have a bit of a time with finding meals we are both happy with but we've got a few and I continue to make new things that hopefully she'll like.
I decided to help with this I would let her learn to cook so maybe she would be more likely to try new things. I got her a cookbook for Christmas and I'm letting her do most of the work. She picks out the recipes and we make a grocery list and then she does the vast majority of the work and I keep my mouth shut and don't freak out about the mess. :) Her first recipe was french toast and it was yummy.
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