Chloe's projects

week ending june 21, 2009:

Week ending June 21, 2009: Today is Father’s Day, so I thought I’d write a little about the twins and their father. Through their years the twins have taken turns with which parent is the favorite, sometimes each will prefer a different parent, sometimes the same. Right now Alex definitely prefers Dad. Alex’s favorite thing to do is play the Star Wars game on the Wii. It has different episodes and different levels within each episode, so they’ve been playing for months and haven’t completed all the levels. Casey is impressed with how Alex can sometimes figure out the quirks of the game before Casey does, for instance Alex will say, Dad, only Jar Jar can jump high enough to get on that ledge, you have to change your character to Jar Jar. I play with Alex sometimes, but Alex makes it clear that he prefers when playing with his father.

Both kids like sharing the boat hobby with their dad. While Casey works on the boat the kids will stand in the cockpit and turn the steering wheel and adjust the throttles while making up imaginative stories about where they are traveling and what conditions they encounter. Alex doesn’t really like to draw very much, but when he does draw, it is either rockets, or boats. Both kids look forward to fishing each year. We ran the boat over to Kentmorr restaurant this year, but we haven’t done any fishing in the bay yet. We were supposed to go today, but there was a small craft advisory.

Both kids also like playing on the trampoline with their dad. With the 3 of them on there, they violate the weight restriction, so Casey just lays down and pretends to “get” them as they run in circles around him. They also like to jump over him or lay next to him and pretend to be baby animals on the trampoline.

Everyday Casey comes home for work just before the dinner is finished and then we all 4 sit down at the table together and talk about our days. The kids like to tell about a trip to the library, or a neat rock that they found, and sometimes they realize that they’d like to hear about his day too. He tries to tell them little bits about what he does using preschool analogies. Sometimes they try to give Daddy advice like “you should tell your friends at work that they have to help out more because it is not nice to make one person do more work than the others.” The twins have been to see his office and eaten lunch in the cafeteria in his office building. We’ve done a tour of the Capitol building (well, part of a tour anyway before the twins got bored).

The picture is of the kids playing with Casey one evening. They decided they wanted to give him “rock star” hair, so they tried to make it stick up but putting water on it and combing, but Casey’s hair is so short and curly that it wouldn’t cooperate. So then they got the idea to put ALL of Chloe’s barrettes in his hair and he cooperated. Daddy does a lot of stuff like that that he probably never imagined he would do such as knowing which songs are sung my Hannah Montana, which Disney princess comes from which movie (and what color dress and hair she has), and the difference between Imagination Movers and The Wiggles.

week ending june 14, 2009:

Week ending June 14: This week Chloe saw her gastroenterologist. I reported that even on the strongest dose of Nexium Chloe has good days and bad days and on bad days Chloe will complain of having “swallow some stuff”, meaning that the reflux comes all the way up to her throat. The doctor advised that we stop giving her juice, sodas and any other acid foods, and started her on a drug called Carafate that is an ulcer drug that coats the stomach. The new medicine tastes chalky and we are supposed to give it to her 3 times a day on an empty stomach. She’s awake 12 hours a day and eats 5 times, so she never really has an empty stomach, but we are doing the best we can with the timing.

The gastroenterologist is in Baltimore, so I promised the kids a trip to the Science Center afterward. Here are the pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/ScienceCenterJun09#

Also this week we went to Ocean City for the Air Show. Before the Annapolis Air Show I bought the kids sound protection and we brought them with us. We stayed at MomMom’s condo on 18th street and the “drop zone” for the event was on 16th street, very convenient! I’ve never seen the beach that crowded. Unfortunately less than halfway through the 1st day the show was put on hold for clouds/fog. We really couldn’t see the aircraft if they were much above the water. We (and almost everyone else) stayed on the beach waiting to see if the show would resume. After a while we got hot and tried to head to water only to find that people had placed their blankets and chairs so close to each other there was hardly a path. The show never did resume that day, but the kids weren’t disappointed. They liked digging in the sand and jumping on the 4 moon bounces that were set up in the “kid zone”. The second day looked just as overcast, so I decided we’d do the rides on the boardwalk instead of the air show. Even though it was Sunday, there were no lines for the rides and the kids rode everything they were tall enough for. It was a great trip! Here are the pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/OcJun09#

week ending june 7, 2009

Week ending June 7, 2009: I sent a mass e-mail to all the parents from Alex and Chloe’s preschool class and we successfully set up a play date with one girl at a local park and all 3 kids played very nicely for about 2 hours at a big playground. We’ve got another date set up for next week with a few other kids.
This was also the week of our community yard sale. I’ve been piling the kids’ stuff up in the garage for months in preparation and this week made another pass through the house looking for stuff to sell. I encouraged the kids to help me find stuff to sell by promising them a portion of the proceeds. The sale was well advertised and the community was packed. I sold $197 of stuff including a few items that I’d tried to sell at Grammy Carole’s yard sale a few years ago. Chloe’s been seeing commercials on TV for “Lucky the Incredible Wonderpup” and so she knew that was what she wanted to spend her money on. Alex wanted Star Wars Legos. Since he’s been playing the Star Wars game on the Wii, he’s very into Star Wars, and he really enjoyed the Lego store in FL. It turns out that a Lego store had just opened in the mall nearest us and they were having a promotion where kids could put blocks together to contribute to an 8 ft high R2D2 they were building, so we contributed a few blocks. Chloe learned how to use Lucky pretty easily. He has about 8 commands that have to be given with very specific words in a specific sequence, and she learned it. She took the dog to a family BBQ and showed off all his tricks. Alex’s Legos were kids aged 8-12, but he put the whole thing together almost without help.

week ending may 31, 2009

Week ending May 31, 2009: OK, so I’m a few weeks behind. No one seems to be complaining, so I think the blog may have outlived its usefulness. This week we’re adapting to summer vacation. I was trying to think of a project for the kids to work on over the summer that would keep them practicing their letters and their writing, but both kids are really resistant to writing practice and they won’t do the writing workbooks. So I thought that they could copy one of their favorite books. To ease into it I thought they could write one word a day for the 1st week, 2 words/day the 2nd etc. until the whole book was written. I thought they’d be excited to “write a book” and that writing just one word would be so easy they wouldn’t even complain about it. I was mistaken. They complained up a storm every day about writing one single word! Oh well. I’m going to persist.

Also this week we went strawberry picking. There is only one U-Pick strawberry farm in our county and they lost over half their crop due to bad weather before the harvesting season so there weren’t many berries left when we got there. There was a misty rain, but we braved it and scoured a row of plants to find 2 pounds of berries. The kids had a good time and I’m glad that they really look forward to the simple pleasure of the strawberry farm.

Casey and I had our anniversary trip on the boat. We piloted over to a marina in Rock Hall on the Eastern Shore, walked into town for dinner, and then slept on the boat. Except for a passing shower on Sunday morning, it couldn’t have gone better. The twins stayed at Grammy Barb’s house, and I mentioned two weeks ago that Chloe had been worried about missing me while I was away. She kept right on worrying all the way up until Grammy Barb picked them up, and then she was fine for the 24 hours I was gone.

Pictures from this week: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/LastWeekOfMay2009#