Today Jan met with some folks from Gannett.
Today Bree tried infant rice cereal for the 1st time. ICK! She spat it out right away! Anya tried it too. She thought it wasn’t very good either.
Liya’s favorite blankety is missing! :( It disappeared early this week, and we haven’t seen it since. Usually when a security object goes missing, it turns up within a day or so, so we’re all a little concerned the blanket hasn’t shown up by now. The blanket was a gift from Microsoft when Anya was a born. It’s a simple white soft blanket with little colored handprints on it. Until the blankety shows up, we’ve replaced it with a blanket that would be nearly identical if it weren’t for the fact that it’s essentially unused. We tried using that blanket as a substitute for times when we needed to wash Liya’s favorite one, but even as an infant Liya could tell the difference. She seemed to do this by smell more than anything else. Now that she’s older, she’s apparently able to rationalize the use of nearly identical blanket as being preferable to having no blanket at all.
Today Grandma and Liya were driving along singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” together. When they got to the line about, “you’ll go down in history”, we sometimes add “… like Columbus!” Grandma improvised the line, “… like Napolean!” Liya corrected her:
Liya: No, it’s “Like Pinocchio”.
Grandma: Pinocchio? Why Pinocchio?
Liya: He was the first one to discover America.
Grandma: You mean, Columbus?
Liya: Yeah.
12:50PM PST, Angela heard a “thunk.” Bree had rolled over from her front and was now on her back! She looked a little upset, but Siri (our nanny) and Angela smiled and made a big deal of it, so Bree tentatively smiled. She still seems a bit confused about what happened, but seems happy to have our attention.
Sabriya is six months old today!
Angela’s discovered that Bree has entered the stage where she likes to knock over towers. Angela set up a small tower of four stacking cups next to Sabriya, who looked at it and then knocked it over. Bree played this game for a long time.
“Short and well rehearsed.” That’s the gist of an article we read this weekend in Wondertime magazine about performances that kids put on. If a kid says, “We have a show for you!”, ask them, “Did you rehearse?” The hope is that the result will be more interesting. Tonight we tried this for the first time. Anya and Liya put on a little dance performance, which they duly rehearsed and kept short. We even made a little movie of it.
Anya read an entire chapter of a “Magic Tree House” book (“Hour of the Olympics”) to herself this morning.
Anya’s kindergarten class had their Ice House competition today. Each student had to build a little house for an ice cube, and bring it to school for a competition to see whose house would preserve the ice cube the longest.
We did three different experiments over the past week to determine what sorts of things helped: which material, how thick, etc. The girls were surprised to discover, for example, that covering a cup holding an ice cube with Jan’s winter jacket kept the ice cube together longer than covering the cup with paper. Another experiment determined that letting the meltwater drip away preserved an ice cube longer than letting an ice cube sit in its own meltwater.
Anya ended up building her ice house herself out of high-density foam blocks and tape. Her ice house kept her ice cube whole for a little more than two hours. The winning ice house was made by classmate Thomas, who used Styrofoam.
Sabriya has a new superpower: rolling over when no one is looking. She’s done this several times now, including tonight. She was just crying in her crib, and when Jan went into check on her, he discovered she had flipped over. We’ll catch her in the act one of these days…