Josiah is 3!

Josiah is 3!

We had a fun day full of surprises.  Of course I had every intention of documenting every detail with pictures.  I took some at breakfast and some with dessert.  Yep.  That’s my life.

 

 

 

 

My favorite part of the day though was hearing how excited he was that it was his birthday.  We did have a hard time explaining why everyone wasn’t coming over for his party since it was his birthday.  We sort of solved the problem by telling him that he gets to have two birthdays.  For a few hours he thought it meant he wasn’t really 3 yet.  Once we got past that, he made sure everyone we saw knew it was his birthday…and that they wished him a “Happy Birthday” in case they forgot to do it on their own.  J

 

 

 

 

I’ve seen these questionnaires on Pinterest and have filled out different ones for my pregnancies and when the boys were younger.  This one is fun because they are his answers.  Some of them he talked about just throughout the past couple of days and I wrote down what he said.  Others I asked him directly and recorded his response.  I got the questions from this site: http://www.lansdownelife.com/2012/06/kids-birthday-interview-questionnaire.html.  I copied and pasted so I could change the font and color.  I also reworded some of the questions so they would make more sense for our life.

 

Nicknames:

        Siah—that’s what Caleb calls me, Goober (supplied by Dad who doesn’t know my ulterior motives in asking these questions), Josiah Daniel, Bruba—that’s what Nate calls me

How old are you?

        Three (with 3 fingers held up)

What is your favorite color?

        I do not like green at all.  I like blue and red.

What is your favorite animal?

        My favorite animal is giraffes.

What is your favorite book?

        My favorite book is Andy and the Lion.  My other favorite book is Where is the Poky Little Puppy?

What is your favorite thing to watch on the TV?

        Jonah (Veggie Tales movie)

What is your favorite song?

        My favorite song is “ABCs.”

What is your favorite food?

        My favorite food is nothing.  I don’t like anything.  I like candy, apples, persimmons, and I like pizza.

What is your favorite drink?

        My favorite drink is egg nog.

What is your favorite breakfast food?

        Sometimes oatmeal, sometimes waffles, sometimes breakfast burritos.

What is your favorite snack?

        My favorite snack is peanut butter and jelly.

What is your favorite thing to wear?

        My favorite thing to wear is shirts I can put on by myself.

What is your favorite game?

        My favorite game is nothing at all.

What is your favorite toy?

        Nothing is my favorite toy.
        What is the thing you like to play all the time?
        I like to play animals.

Which friends do you like to play with?

        My friends.  What are their names? Desi, and what are my other friends’ names?  I can’t remember Mommy.  My friends who live in Terrebonne?

What is your favorite thing to do?

        My favorite thing to do is get candy.

What is your favorite thing to do outside?

        Outside, nothing.

What is your favorite holiday?

        Nothing.

What do you like to sleep with at night?

        A blanket to keep me warm.

Where is your favorite place to go?

        To Costco.

What is your favorite restaurant?

        My favorite restaurant is the one with French fries—like the one by our house.  And my favorite doughnut place is the one by our house around the corner.

Where do you want to go on vacation?

        To a swimming pool.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

        A muffin maker

What did you do on your birthday?

        Ate ice cream!  And went to Costco!  (We also had a Birthday Boy Breakfast with blueberry bagels & cream cheese (requested by him), bananas and bacon.  Then we had a day of surprises where we went to a thrift store where he picked out a couple of “new” books, got his free birthday drink at Dutch Brothers, visited Daddy at work, came home for lunch and naps, went to his cousins’ house to play, went to Costco and got pizza, and then came home to eat and have ice cream and then watched a Curious George show.)

Josiah got a card in the mail from Grandma and Pap with $3
which he has decided he will use to pay his bills.

 

There was a fun family party too with an If You Give a Moose a Muffin theme to go along with wanting to be a muffin maker.  More on that coming soon.

Getting Caught Up

I realize that it's been forever since I've written.  Now that I've gotten caught up on the lives of the three bloggers I follow, I feel inspired to post something.  This is an odds and ends post and is in no particular order.

1.  Nate (Jonathan) turned one on the 4th.  I'm not sure how that happened because I definitely did not give my consent.  But it did and then he took his first three steps a couple of days later.  Since then he's been taking three or four steps here or there but he definitely prefers crawling.  It's faster and he can keep up with (or keep away from) his big brother that way.  I plan on someday doing his own one year post.  :'/

2.  Josiah is 2 1/2, which also happened without my consent.  These are trying times where my self-control is tested almost as often as his is being developed!  Sometimes I fear he may think is name is actually pronounced with a sigh.  Privileges are granted and consequences are given although many days it feels like the consequences far exceed any privileges.  I miss a preschool room where the whole space is designed to allow children to touch and explore.  The house is not set up that way.  :P

3.  Culver Christian Preschool is finishing its 6th year this week!  It seems like yesterday that we were starting, but my first preschool class is in 4th grade already!!!  And this year marks my being out of the classroom (acting only as Director) for as long as I was Teacher.  :O

4.  Next month I will have lived in Oregon for 10 years!!!  Wow!  It's the longest I've ever lived in one city, except that I've actually lived in three cities in that amount of time, but since the whole region has the same number of people as the city of El Cajon it's kind of like the same thing.  I did live in our house on Cuyamaca the longest I've ever lived in one home though.  :D

5.  All of my socks have started to wear out at the same time.  (I mentioned it was ODDS and ends!)  Seriously...all of them are getting holes.  And we're talking about CUTE socks here!  Then I stopped to think about the fact that I got most of them while I was in college and that I graduated over 10 years ago, and then I wasn't so upset with the sock manufacturers anymore. :}

6.  Danny and I celebrated our anniversary last week.  And by celebrated I mean that he went to work and came home and I cooked dinner (maybe Thai chicken and fried rice?) and we ate.  Our first anniversary was fun and I planned a whole special afternoon and evening.  (It was a Sunday so we just celebrated after church.)  I wanted to do what our friends do where each of them plans the celebration every other year as a surprise.  Last year we had a new baby so Danny brought flowers and a card.  This year I had lots of ideas but didn't really feel like making them happen.  So Danny called as he was leaving work to see if I had already started dinner because if not we could go out to eat.  However, please see #1 and #2 and tell me how much fun restaurant eating is, so I declined.  :{

7.  My brother is getting married next month and it seems impossible that he is old enough to get married.  He has been working really hard at getting his new house all fixed up so it will be ready for he and his new wife to move into after the wedding.  Then he got robbed last night and I think people who steal things SUCK...and I don't usually use that word.  He works so hard and does anything anyone asks him and he has had a stinky last few months.  He needs prayers and blessings poured out on him. :[

8.  My sister lives in Portland which is only about 3 1/2 hours away and she tries to come home about once a month, but I think that it's entirely too far.  I see her best friend more often than I see her (which is okay because I love her too, but she is also moving to Portland next month).  It also seems impossible that she can have her own apartment.  Anyway, I don't like Portland because it is far away.  :(

9.  I got to go shopping yesterday--by myself--and take advantage of Kohl's Memorial Day sale.  I had two coupons too, so in addition to great sales I got my dress for the wedding FREE!  I really love free!  And I got each of the boys a shirt for Christmas...and no, it's not too early to shop for Christmas!  For those of you who want to know how I did it: My dress was normally $50, on sale for $24.99.  I needed to spend at least $30 to use my $10 off coupon.  The boys' shirts were normally $14, on sale for $5 each.  I couldn't just get one of them a shirt.  (My mom heart would not allow it even though it would have made for better savings.)  So, I had $34.99 worth of sale clothing items, a $10 off of $30 purchase coupon from the Sunday paper advertisement, and a $15 off of $15 coupon they had mailed me.  My total was $9.99 for everything!!!  I love those free money coupons and always use them to get a shirt for me or a new towel or something.  Don't waste those and don't feel like you have to spend more that the $10 or $15 that they are worth.  End free shopping rant now.  :*

That's it...that's my odds and ends to get you caught up on my life. 

<3 Jenna

The Littlest Readers

When I was babysitting for kids while growing up (I started at 12 and continued through most of college as my only source of employment), I had no problem when the kids asked for the same story to be read multiple times.  When I was teaching preschool, my class would often ask for the same closing story weeks in a row.  It was not until I had my own children asking for the very.same.story over and over and over again with no end in sight—no parents coming to claim these precious ones which would end the never ending story—that I realized why all those other parents didn’t read the same story over and over to their kids too.

I was reminded today though, just how important repetitive reading is.  Take heart other parents out there like me—there is a purpose behind reading the same story over and over again.  Reading skills are developed over time.  They begin in infancy (some would say they even start in the womb as you read out loud to your baby and your baby listens to the cadence of your reading voice) as your baby chews away on board books and snatches them from your hand rather than turning the page.  At 10-months-old, Nate doesn’t love to sit through an entire book yet.  In his Christmas stocking though, he got two little chubby books with an animal picture on one side and the animal name on the other.  These are his books (very different from Josiah’s books, mind you).  They are from Dollar Tree (both for a dollar couldn’t be passed up) and are by no means great children’s literature.  When we read the farm one though, I say the name of the animal while pointing at it and make the animal sound.  He is rarely sitting in my lap, preferring to hold onto my arm and bounce while we read.  Last week he started copying the “baa” of a sheep and the “moo” of a cow after me.  He is beginning to read.

It may not sound like reading to the rest of the world, but he is putting a word to a picture.  That’s all reading is.  A wise kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Corrine Larsen, teaches her students that, “reading is saying what you see.”  We look at these pictures we call letters and associate a sound with them and we put those pictures together and then we have a word that we read.  It will not be long before Nate sees a picture of a sheep and reads “baa” on his own.  How do I know?  Fast-forward a couple of years developmentally and look at Josiah.

 

Josiah took part in his first Summer Reading Program at the library when he was seven-months-old.  I have participated in these programs as long as I can remember (yes, even as an adult).  I love books.  I love free.  I love prizes.  Really, why wouldn’t I participate and drag my children along with me?  I don’t actually have to drag them because our library has excellent story times and this incredible early learning center that rivals the spaces at the preschools I’ve seen.   

His first summer there was only one board book left for him to choose from which he didn’t mind because he didn’t even know how to make choices yet.  (Today I would argue that at twenty-eight-months-old he still does not…it’s been that sort of a day.)  It was titled SPLASH and is a book with babies playing in water and one line of rhyming text per page.  It was perfect and we read and read and read that book.  He would even “read” it on his own when he was having some alone play time.  We talked about the pictures and sang Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie” song (there’s a rubber duck one baby is playing with) and talked about when he takes a bath or goes swimming.  I do not change the words when I am reading a story.  It means I can’t cheat and cut some out, but I do it because it is important for a child to hear the same words over and over as they relate to the picture on the page.  Eventually, I will begin tracking each of those words with my finger and the kids will learn that those series of letters are the word that I am saying.  

Today, the past two years paid off.  I have been sick and my throat is very sore, which limits the amount of reading I can do.  We had read a couple of books, we read SPLASH and Josiah asked for it again.  I had told him it would be our last book.  I told him I couldn’t read any more because of my voice hurting and could he read it to me.  He turned the book around, opened it up to the first page, and read.  Almost every single word.  Each sentence corresponding with the correct picture.  Turning the pages when it was time.  Then he hopped up and did something two, which he probably got a consequence for because as I mentioned earlier it has been that sort of a day.  But it stuck with me.  This is why I read the very.same.story over and over and over again with no end in sight—it’s so that I can raise readers.  And why raise a reader?  Because, as my very dear friend Sarah Simmons once told me, “If I can read it, I can do it.”

Thanks for reading,

Jenna

Try these pre-reading tips for repetitive readings at home:

• Read through the book and if another reading is requested, go through and talk about the pictures together instead of reading the text again.
• Ask questions while you are reading.  It can be as simple as, "Where is the dog?" to "Why do you think the character (use the character's name) did that?" or "How would that make you feel?"
• Limit the number of times you'll read a book in a row.  In our house, I'll read a book two times in a row.  I may still read it a dozen times in a day, but at least some variety is thrown in.  :)
• For old favorites, read and omit words allowing your child to fill those words in.  This is especially easy with rhyming books, but can eventually be done with any words.  Those words at the end of sentences seem to be the easiest for children to provide.

How do you get through repetitive readings in your house?