October Happenings

Willem loves eating breakfast at school as do Ellie and Marley. Willem and Marley are pros now at getting their meal and they kindly donate their fruit each morning to Ellie, who willingly accepts. This morning in particular, Ellie insisted on sitting on her own chair rather than my lap. I'm pretty sure she'd stay at school all morning with Willem if she could. At first we weren't sure if we'd enjoy starting our day in the cafeteria, but it's turned into a wonderful ritual that we look forward to. Willem is taking pride in his independence but still has a strong desire to have me by his side. I know my days of him feeling this way decrease each day so I'm making the most of it.

Ellie is very into stacking right now. She will play with this stacking cone for half an hour. Removing all the pieces and slowly stacking them back on again. Over and over. She handles objects in such an exacting and coordinated way that sometimes I forget she's barely over 1.

Willem's afternoon naps are fleeting unless we are in the car.

A Sunday afternoon with Cousin Cassidy.

United Nations day

In lieu of celebrating Halloween, Willem's school does United Nations Day where the kids pick a country of their heritage or that they are interested in learning about. Then they dress up in traditional clothing and bring a food item to share. This year Willem chose Holland. Well, his first choice was American which would have been much easier costume wise, but after discussing some other options, Holland won out.

This year we made spoekoek cookies which are usually served with coffee or tea.

Love that Jason caught this moment on camera! Willem likes to sneakily taste any dish we are making, especially sweets.

Willem "sneaking" a taste of flour. He likes to try each ingredient we put in to see what it's like.

Yes, hands were washed after each "sneaking".

All in a hard days work

Our proud Dutch/French man

The day prior Willem stopped playing, ran over to me and whispered in my ear, "Mom, I am doing the movable alphabet now". In his classroom this is one of the lessons the kids eagerly work toward. To receive this lesson, he needed to learn 16 phonetic sounds. Now he's off and sounding. Everyday he's telling us what different words start with. We're excited to see his confidence grow with each new skill he masters.

Ellie happily sitting in the audience at UN Day. Kind of chaotic, so we didn't get a picture of the kids together.

Grandmas Work= Lots of Fun

We are loving having Grandma here in town. We've gotten to visit her at work a couple of time this month and the kids have loved it. Both times they were given lots of candy and ooh'd and ahh'd over by the residents and employees. On this particular day we arrived at the end of lunchtime and were treated to a concert by an accordion player. Both kids were in awe and completely still while he performed.

We were able to go back a couple weeks later for trick or treating.

The lollipop that gives and gives...

The kids thought it was really funny that when you put the green lollipop in a glass of ice water, it turns the water green and when you remove the lollipop, it's clear again. They did this experiment over and over again.

Willem & The Violin

At the end of September Willem started Suzuki violin. We kept hearing about Suzuki in books and from friends and after reading up on how the approach was developed we were excited for Willem to start. One of the big selling points for us was that Suzuki is all about family, the parents and teacher works as a team to support the child in their development. Willem and I went to the first lesson and were given the assignment of making a box violin. That night we gathered our supplies and the next day we had a family night, each drawing pictures to decorate the violin.

After a few lessons with Ms. Megyn on the box violin, Willem was ready for the real violin. We had a lot of fun going to different violin shops and music stores. Some were places we pass on a regular basis and never had a reason to stop in. It was quite an adventure. Since Jason and I knew nothing about vioins, we were sponges as we met with the various luthiers and looked at violins that were identical to our untrained eyes. We also learned that violins break quite easily when dropped and agreed we wouldn't practice on tile or hardwood floors for the forseeable future.

Ultimately we found the right violin at Andrews Violin Shop with the wrangling help of Grandma. (Ellie was quite drawn to the large Bass').

Sunday with Dad & Friends

Jason's hours really kicked up this week so we were glad to have him home on Sunday. Willem challenged Jason to a game of Halloween Tic Tac Toe which is hilarious to watch. Willem loves playing the game but doesn't get the three in a row concept. Although we keep explaining how to play the game, I'm also cherishing this time where his enjoyment comes from the act of playing and not from the end result.

We got to spend the afternoon in the park with our friends the Baldwins and Bertolino's for Marina's birthday party. Ellie was Ms. Independent and joined older girls in playing in the sand while big brother Willem danced and played with his friends.

Cool Weather At Last

We had an entire week of high's in the 80's and Ellie and I made the most of it. Each morning we went for a walk. Ellie loves pointing out each dog, bird and plane she sees. We decided to explore our area and discovered the beauty of Indian School Park. A short 1/2 mile walk from our home, I truly felt like we found our own Central Park. Ellie loved seeing the ducks and the park was incredibly green with a skyline of downtown. We made new friends on the playground and enjoyed our Ellie and Mom time.

Each morning Ellie grabs her shoes and tries to open the front door. She is so happy when she is outside. We water the plants and check on the garden before heading on our walk.

A Day Out with the Renks

We caught up with our good friends, Jennifer, Isabella and Landon Renk from Iowa (well, currently So Cal) while they were in town. We always love their visits. We saw them last in February but Willem remembered his friend Isabella and could not wait to play with her again. This age is so fun because they can just pick up where they left off.

We headed to the Children's Museum and then came home to play, have dinner and catch up some more. One of these days we will visit the Renks and our other wonderful friends in Iowa again!

Isabella and Willem played so nicely together. It was really sweet to see how they shared and painted the dragon together.

Landon and Ellie will be good friends as well. They were quite entertaining as they are at the "mine" stage. The quad and cozy coupe were tough to share but we had a good chuckle watching the two of them "communicating".

Hard to believe the last time we snapped this picture, Landon and Ellie were inside of us.

Painting the play yard, hours of entertainment!