Quick Trip to Eagar

Matt is going to be out of town for a while so Friday afternoon we decided to drop everything and take a quick trip to Eagar. October is our favorite time of the year there. It was super windy one of the days but we had a great time enjoying the colors and the pumpkins.

2007.10 Eagar trip

Weeks seem to be flying. It's finally cooled down so I'm starting to walk Sophie and Ellie to school. Mathew is obsessed with screaming...that's all he does. I'm really trying to wean him. I've tried before but failed I'm hoping it works this time.

We've found 2 scorpions in the last 4 days. Saturday, I almost stepped on one with my bare foot in the garage and then today we found a dead one at the bottom of the pool. We have black widows outside too that we keep finding. Oh well.

Mathew's first words

I took Mathew to the doctor's office on Wednesday and he is 95 percentile for his head size, 50th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight. The doctor told me I need to feed him more. He told me I needed to talk to him more to get him to start saying things so I've started to work on it more. Although it's been months since he's been imitating--for example, putting phones to his ear and saying "DAAaa" which basically means hello but he hasn't properly articulated any words. Well now he'll point to his eye and say "aaahhh" and point to the lights and say "aaaaahhhh". If I ask him to point to one of those things he does. Do those count as first words? He is constantly imitating what we do. He insists on eating what we are eating and will scream his lungs out if we dont give him his food on a plate and with utensils. He also plays with dolls and pretends to feed them with bottles--smacking his lips while he feeds them. He is probably better at picking up toys than Ellie. He'll go around and put toys in bins.

puff

There's a man that's been going to Sophie's school to talk about composers once a week--he also plays different instruments. Sophie has been fascinated with it and comes home describing in great detail everything he played and how it sounded. The first time she heard the violin she acting like she was overwhelmed with how beautiful it was. She is so articulate--she described the music so beautifully.

Last week the guy brought his guitar and taught them puff the magic dragon. Sophie came home and sang the whole thing to me. Then she proceeded to explain to me what the song meant--When she got to the part about the boy growing up, I could see tears welling up in her eyes. She was explaining that when kids grow up they don't have time to play with their toys and that Puff would never see his best friend again. The way she described it was so touching that it brought tears to my eyes too. Then she stopped and said..."Mom-- look at us, we're both crying about a song". We both laughed through our tears. It was such a tender moment, I wish I had her gift of description to better document it.

Running out of action

Ellie's new thing is she is constantly saying she is an "action girl". It is something she made up and it means she's a good girl. We were walking out to the car and it was really hot she started crying that she wanted me to carry her and she said she "ran out of action".

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.