Sophie starts Kindergarden

Sophie started Kindergarten last week and I think it is going ok. She really misses preschool--her friends, the play time. Although she's getting along fine, I don't think she's connecting with many kids at school whereas last year she was such a leader. She does like her teacher so I'm hoping it'll just take a little time to make friends. In the meantime I hope her fire for school doesn't go out.


Sophie gave a talk on Sunday and did such an amazing job. She is really talented. She had a few drawings on a piece of paper to remind herself of the ideas but then spoke without any intervention. The primary president pulled me aside later and said she'd never seen anything like it. We are going to put the girls back in tennis. They seem excited about it and it seems like such a good sport for them to get into. They haven't asked about dance so as hard as it is for me to let that one go, I think I will try.

Last weekend we went down to Safford to visit the Hargis clans and had a blast. We went on a great hike and cought all sorts of wildlife: snakes, walking sticks, frogs, tadpoles, etc. There are 11 kids under 11 when you put them all together and the kids have so much fun together.

One positive thing about our new schedule is that I now get a lot more one on one time with Ellie. Last week she helped me unload the dishwasher every day(she's in charge of the bottles, sippy cups, etc). She folded the rags and helped me gather dirty laundry. We pretended we were hunters looking for tigers and we captured all the tigers and put them with their families (put dirty clothes in a hamper and sorted the colors). She had so much fun on the "hunt" that now tigers are her favorite animals.

Mathew started to wave a little. He usually does it while he's nursing. He also started doing little animal sounds--he roars like a tiger and whinnys like a horse. So now he's compartmentalized all of the animals into those two buckets--whinniers (more like a squeal) and growlers (more like a cat hiss). Elephants, monkeys, zebras area all on one side and bears, lions, dinosaurs are on the other. I didn't argue with him when he put the giraffes with the horses because I didn't have a better solution.