Uh-Oh

Annie's new phrase is uh-oooooohhhhh. It's cute. She waves, says dog, mama, dada, cat, and that. She points to an object and asks "that" so we tell her what it is. She did moo when I showed her a cow last night. Her vocabulary is growing a lot right now. She is walking a lot more now. I guess she decided it's time to get off the ground and that walking really is better. She still loves to stick everything in her mouth. I pulled a piece of foam out of her mouth this morning before I fed her. She loves to be doing anything the big kids are doing. Last night she colored pictures with the Daisy troup and pretended to paint a pumpkin just like them. Then, of course, she ate the remaining portion of Madeline's cupcake. You know, the part WITHOUT the frosting. Anna loves sweets just like her mom. Thank goodness the girls got that from me. I need someone to eat my treats.

Madeline can now write sentences. She's very good at sounding out words and identifying the different sounds in the word. Today she had to write a sentence about a pumpkin that she drew. She wrote "It is a Halloween pumpkin". I know it's not rocket science but she's doing well. She is well above her peers. Art classes continue to go well. The teacher has repeatedly noted her natural artistic talent. She enjoys her weekly Spanish lessons and is working on the different sounds in the alphabet. She joined Daisy's. I wasn't too keen on that but she wanted to try it out for awhile to see if she liked it. She's had two meetings so far. Yesterday's meeting was actually a Halloween party. I secretly hope Daisy's is a short lived membership because I am not really into the Girl Scout thing (even though I was in it as a child). I did agree to help them with any government, city planning, or mapping patches that they might want to earn. Dance class continues. She'll have a recital in May.

We attended conferences for Madeline last week. We found out that Madeline is very social *shocker*, that she doesn't like to follow directions *again, shocker* and often has trouble keeping her mitts to herself and staying in her seat *wow, that came out of left field*. She's doing well in all of her subjects (math, social studies, reading and science). Ryan was in Las Vegas yesterday and during dinner the babysitter (8th grade) said she was doing a report on Egypt. Madeline said something about not knowing much about Egypt. Sarah (the sitter) said "you'll learn about Egypt sometime" and then I asked Maddie if she knew anything about Egypt. She propmtly replied "Tombs, mummies and pyramids. The mummies have white wraps on them". I think Sarah just about fell off her chair. I kindof chuckled because of her reaction. It was probably the Magic Treehouse books that reminded Madeline of Egypt but who knows. Regardless, Madeline is doing well. She still needs to be evaluated by the High Ability Learner liason at the school. Obviously, we believe she'll be noted as gifted and receive additional challenges through the HAL program. At this point I don't think there's any subject that is more difficult than the others. She does need to work on the names of letters in the alphabet because the Montessori program ingrained the idea of "sounds" rather than "names" of letters. So she can read perfectly well, but couldn't spell out the word for you using the names of the letters as easily. Once we spend a little bit of time on it I am sure she'll pick it up right away.