Allison

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Today was a very special day for Katherine. She and her classmates at Eton had a big party – including a valentine swap, lots of snacks, face painting, games, crafts…She and Audrey climbed in the car at pickup today regaling me with the contents of their bags. Little did I know that a valentine swap including swapping candy and treats! Katherine’s bag was a hodge podge of valentines, candy, chocolate, pencils and such. We spent quite a bit of time in the car, with Audrey and I trying to convince Katherine that she should share some of her treats with Allison. Audrey’s reasoning…”Katherine, it’s greedy not to share.” Katherine finally came around and decided to share her non-chokable candy with Allison. Allison received one M&M and one Smarty – and of course wanted more. “Please …. Katherine, Share…Please…” I then settled matters by bringing out dessert, a little box of candy with four pieces of chocolate. All discussion of M&Ms and the M&Ms went away. Katherine took the cake for slow chocolate eating, finally finishing her little caramel after 10 minutes. Allison ate her coconut candy in about 5 minutes. She finally stuffed half of the chocolate in her mouth and went off to play.

Allison celebrated as well at Toby School yesterday. The little ones swapped valentines, brought in snacks to share and spent much time eating. According to Patty, Allison had a very proud moment where Ms. Ginny sings a song and then throws a stuffed snake. Having seen this myself in previous years, I can attest that this can take the kids and parents aback. But, Allison rallied, ran and brought the snack back to her teacher.

J…All Gone…Meola

Allison has been working with a little wooden alphabet puzzle for a couple months now. At first, she learned which pieces went where, often trying to put the H in the N and vice-versa. Then, she learned to put the puzzle together more and more quickly – now finishing the puzzle in a couple minutes very steadily in one sitting.

Little did I know that this puzzle was so attractive to the dog. A couple weeks ago, Katherine shrieked, “Mom…Bisco is eating the puzzle!” I ran into the family room to see Bisco chomping on a puzzle piece. I extracted the letter J from his mouth and threw it out. Allison quickly learned what happened. For the next couple days she would work on the puzzle, point at the J area and say, “J … All Gone” or “J…Meola.” I finally found a replacement puzzle that doesn’t make sounds, have lower case, or any other fancy features. The old puzzle is now serving as spare parts (Bisco ate F the other day) and Allison can complete her puzzle at home. Interestingly enough, she has also started to learn her letters. She can recognize “A, B, H, J, K, M, Q, S, W, Y” and is trying to enuciate the letter sounds as well. She’s well on her way to learning her letters!

Do It Again! Read Again!

It’s becoming quite clear that Allison’s strengths are her spatial, verbal and musical skills. She often speaks in three word phrases and is picking up slang. For instance, Steve was roughhousing with the kids when we heard her pipe up and say, “That Cool!!” Or, she’ll run around and say, “Superman! Garbage Can!” (long story) or when playing with Katherine, “Share” or “My Turn” or “Allison Turn” or “Do it Again!” For instance, the other day Katherine originated a new game. It involves attaching a Slinky to the top of Allison’s little marble run with balls. One adult holds the run, another holds the other end of the Slinky allowing the kids to stuff balls down the Slinky and into the ball run. Allison was beside herself. She squealed; she danced in place with her little feet going up and down; she talked incessantly “Do it Again! Do it Again!” Speaking of spatial skills, other favorite games are building blocks, new Wedgits and Little People Amusement Park. Allison will call out “build house” and then run to her building blocks – looking for her cylindrical, colored wooden blocks. We try to see who can stack these blocks end on end and when they fall, Allison squeals “KABoom.”

Musically speaking, Allison’s repertoire of songs is long and growing. She sings many of her favorite baby songs and others from Toby School (Fish Swimming in the Water), songs that she’s picked up from my Mom (like Row, Row, Row Your Boat or a little Chinese song about Tigers), and songs that she’s picked up from Patty. Allison learns useful songs from Katherine like the Days of the Week song – starting out strong with Sunday and then petering a bit out with Thursday, Friday and Saturday before she belts out “These are the days of the week!”

Allison’s new favorite books: Any Dora book she can find, There’s a Wocket in my Pocket (She calls it “Pocket”), Twinkle Twinkle (lights up and plays music), Chugga Chugga Choo Choo (an old favorite from Katherine) and Where’s Coco (otherwise known as “Coco”).

We’ve also reached a milestone. After virtually everything being yellow, Allison is learning her colors. We’re starting with primary colors for now, and her batting average is increasing.

Get Down PLEASE

I must say this at least 20 times a day. In the late afternoon, I let the kids play in the family room while I cook in the kitchen. This works out pretty well because I can see just about everything that goes on – like when Allison climbs over the sofa to reach the window ledge and back again. Or, Katherine will lay out a blanket on the floor and practice jumping off the couch with her sister. Their new trick is having one of them sit on the little blue chair and then the other pull the back of the chair down. Needless to say, I’m not as efficient as I’d like to be because I have to intervene at times. I’m hoping that common sense will kick in soon before someone truly gets hurt.

Snows Days…

7 Days of School

It’s a wonder I have any hair left on my head at all. I think I might have pulled it all out the last several weeks. Why? We’ve had only SEVEN days of school since December 14th. Between holidays and at least 5 snow days, our school routine is almost non-existent. This has resulted in very squirrely behavior of late, which I seriously hope dissipates as we get back into our school routine. Today was Katherine’s first day back at school in a week, and she had a hard time getting back into the swing of things.

Katherine Bush

Allison loves to say her sister’s name. A few weeks ago, Katherine told us that she wanted to nap in the minivan on the way to the Museum of Flight. No sooner did we leave the driveway did Allison start in…”Kathrine…Kafrine…Kathrine…” On and on this went. Finally, Katherine complained, “I can’t sleep because Allison keeps saying my name.” Now this has progressed. Allison runs around saying “Katherine Bush!!!” She’s so proud that she can say her sister’s first and last name.

Holiday Pictures

I’m not sure if we’ve uploaded all the Christmas pictures yet, but this is a sampling. My favorite picture of the kids is the one in front of the Molbak’s Poinsettia tree. They had just mowed down a scone and milk and were in good spirits. My other favorite is of Allison stacking crayons, because this gives you a good idea of how she plays. She’s very deliberate and concentrated in her efforts. She’s since moved on to stacking wooden blocks – counting as she stacks her cylindrical blocks higher and higher until they fall!

More Changes

Steve is back at work. After 6 years away, he’s back at Microsoft…but this time in Research. It’s only been 2 years and 2 months since I left, but it seems the company sure has changed a lot. Of course, if we think back to when we started years ago, the change is even more marked. But, all that said, I’m looking forward to the routine. Katherine is going thru the adjustment of not spending as much time with Steve, but I think she’ll be fine in a couple weeks (fingers crossed, knock on wood).

From the Mouth of Babes

From the Mouth of Babes

Two very appropriate remarks came today from our daughters when Steve and I turned on the presidential speech tonight.

Allison’s reaction: “Monkey” She may have been trying to tell us to change the channel to Curious George, or maybe she just thinks George Bush is a monkey.

Katherine’s reaction: “His face looks red.” We explained that with our new TV we would see things that we hadn’t seen before and that the red was from his makeup.

What Else is New?

Over the course of four weeks, we’ve had a 8 night power outage followed by Christmas, New Years, The Flu (Christine), and then The Snowstorm. Newspaper articles claim this is because of El Nino and not global warming…I think it’s all of the above and plus some bad karma.

1) The 8 Nights Without Power. Outside of family in Duvall, we seem to have set the dubious record among friends for the length of time without power before Christmas. In a nutshell, everything was fine except for no laundry, oven and no high-speed Internet connection. Oh, and Allison had a nasty cold and couldn’t breath or sleep without a humidifier, which we couldn’t run at night (since we tried to turn off the generator before 10PM each night). So we shipped her off to my mom’s for a couple nights. We were starting to get a bit worried when we STILL didn’t have power as we headed to bed the Thursday before Christimas. Thankfully all was restored that evening before Sharon and Jamey arrived the following Friday night. One last aside: we lost a rather large pine tree in our back yard which didn’t hit anything.

2) Christmas. We have many stories which I’ll take the time to writeup later.

We only broke four cheap and one really expensive glass ornament this year putting up the tree. I view that as rather a pleasant surprise – but then again we put all the ornaments in the top half of the tree!
Katherine was extremely disappointed that we didn’t have lights outside the house. Given the state of our power and having just watched “An Inconvenient Truth”, Christmas lights just didn’t happen this year.
The girls had fun playing with their pink advent calendar, wrangling over candy for the gingerbread house, and going to Seattle to see the Christmas sights. It may have been day 6 or 7 of the outage when I told Steve we needed some holiday spirit. We bundled up the kids, dragged them to see the gingerbread houses built by architects, the Teddy Bear Suite (“where are the sweets??”) and the holiday carousel.
Sharon and Jamey stayed in town for 3 days. We made pies, took the kids for a long walk, had hot pot, watched a Seahawks game, made oatmeal cookies for Santa and generally played with Christmas toys and gifts.

3) The Flu. I also managed to come down with a mysterious 30 hour flu. There were no symptoms otherwise – fell asleep in the playroom while the kids were running around and then started to feel chilled. Steve had just shipped Katherine to my mom’s house for a sleepover. When he came home, I gave him Allison and then went into quarantine in the bedroom for 2 days. The kids were great. Katherine wrote a get well card (mom, we will take care of you!). Allison charged in whenever she could find the door open. I would see her bounce up on to the bench and shout “Mama!” with a big smile. Steve took care of the kids (with help from my mom and Patty) and provided bus service for Tylenol, water, etc. All is well now. Fingers crossed no one else gets this very strange bug.

4) The Snowstorm. Tonight we learned a valuable lesson – to not procrastinate before snowstorms. Steve and I had an errand that had to be completed before dinner. Well, we didn’t head out until 4PM, just as the snowstorm started to hit. We had some difficulty coming home, steering around cars stuck in ditches, accidents, cars parked on the side of the road. And, this was all on a 1 mile stretch of Union Hill Road! We were very glad to pull into the driveway unscathed. I suspect tomorrow will be full of snow day activities – snowmen, food dyed snowballs, tromping around the neighborhood.

“I’ll get it”

Allison’s development continues at a rapid clip; she’s now 20 months old. Rather than editorialize, I’ll just give some sample conversations from the last day or so…

Mom: “Allison, I think some of the missing puzzle pieces are in your sister’s room. Shall we go upstairs and get it?”

Allison “I’ll get it.” (crawling up the stairs)

———-

Dad: “Allison, did you go pee-pee or pooh-pee?”

Allison: “I did.”

————-

Mom: “Katherine, would you like apple juice or orange juice?”

Allison: “apple juice”

—————-

Dad: “Allison, what comes after sixteen?”

Allison: “Sefenteen”

———-

Other items of interest

Regularly we hear 2 word phrases like: “Daddy’s coffee”, “Sister backpack”, “Get it”, “Coming!!” She can repeat almost any word reasonably well. She also has been heard to holler for her sister, “Sister…Sister…Kathfrine!!” or the dog “Bico!”
She can count up to 20 in English now and tries to count all sorts of things including pieces of food, stairs…anything!
She also intersperses Chinese in her conversation, letting me know “maola” when she’s finished her food or “hi yow” when she wants more or “diowla” when she’s dropped food. Hopefully, our little conversations will have affect with Katherine too.
If I had to guess, because I’ve totally lost count, I’d say she easily has a 250-300 word vocabulary. She can sing the ABC song start to finish including “LMNOP” and is trying to learning the Leapfrog alphabet song from Katherine and me.
She visits the little potty seat in the downstairs bathroom once or twice a day with clothes on. She will also get herself a bit of toilet paper and pretend to wipe herself when she stands up.
Allison loves to play with the alphabet wooden puzzle. She can put all the letters in their correct spot and say a few of the letters unprompted and correctly.

All in all, the girls are doing really well. Katherine continues to love full day at Eton. Lots of works fall out of her backpack each day – and the stories are really too precious.

I’ll sort thru pictures tomorrow night and post before the weekend.

Allison’s Vocabulary

She Said What?
Allison’s vocabulary continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Now at 19 months, she surprises us with new developments every day:

We often hear her singing the ABC song to herself. Very clearly she will sing, until L (mumble…) and then picking up again at QRS. She sings this to herself, to us, to anyone who will listen. Often she accompanies herself by swinging her two arms back and forth. Part of this I suspect is to get our attention, because we will often stop our conversation to listen to her singing. Other times, she just seems to sing for the joy of it.

She also sings: Itsy Bitsy Spider (with hand motions), Twinkle Twinkle, Rain Rain Go Away, and Rock a Bye Baby. In the evenings, she’ll request songs for bed by putting her hand on my face and saying “Tinkle” or “down rain” or “bye.” If I don’t hear her, she’ll keep patting my cheek. Other times, she’ll say “Allison!” so we’ll sing her name as part of the song. Katherine loves to participate in this routine by sitting her her little rocking chair next to ours and singing along – solo or as part of the chorus.

She astounded me today as I heard her counting in Spanish as she climbed the stairs. According to Patty, Allison can count in Spanish from 1-10. On her way to Toby School, she watched the UPS trucks pull out of the nearby depot, and she started to count them in Spanish! And, I’ve also heard Allison many times counting in Mandarin from 1-10 – and English…She truly is a trilanguage kid.

Thanks to her sister, Allison loves Leapfrog. Occasionally they’ll watch the Letter Factory – which appeals to Allison because of the music. When Katherine is at school, Allison will climb on the sofa, and say hopefully “QRS?” or “ABC?” If I don’t accede to her request, she’ll find the remote and point it at the TV. I also found her once putting the Leapfrog DVD in our DVD player! Has this had any affect? Well, tonight, she sang “The A says Ah, the A says Ah….” I tried to sing along with the “The B says…” and she said “Ah!!” Thankfully we’ve got a while to learn phonetics!

I would say that her vocabulary now exceeds 150 spoken words. She’ll blurt out two words at times, like tonight when she said “Got it!”

Much of this credit should go to my mom and Patty who have been immersing Allison in Chinese and Spanish. I also know that my mom has been drilling Allison with numbers and letters, and she’s been absorbing it!

Sibling Dynamics

I shouldn’t paint too rosy of a picture at home because we certainly have our challenges. One of the big challenges is managing Allison’s belief that everything is MINE! And, Katherine can’t figure out how to work/share with her sister who doesn’t understand sharing. It results in toys going away, items being removed from a very unhappy Allison and generally normal but not fun sibling dynamics. Thankfully we have a few concrete rules which the kids follow:

No one has to share their lambies. Have I mentioned that Allison adores and sleeps with mama lambey, the gigantic version of Katherine’s stuffed Amela lamb?
If they can’t share, it goes up. (I believe that Katherine works this rule at times though.)
Toys with small pieces get played with when Allison isn’t around. Allison unfortunately loves to play with chokable items, like the cherries in Hi Ho Cherrio or puzzle pieces or game pieces…

FINALLY FULL DAY

Katherine is now a full day kid at Eton. This means lunch at school and pick up mid afternoon. This is really convenient given Allison’s mid day nap. Katherine is also really proud and happy to hang with her friends the entire day. She’s even mentioned wanting to be at Clubhouse (daycare after school) so she can be with friends the rest of the afternoon. Her work production is certaining going up now. Her backpack is chock full of stuff from two work cycles – one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

Unbenowst to us, the teachers had started Katherine on simple reading of three letter words. (This is all good since we’ve been playing reading games with her too…) She showed Steve on Saturday a work in which she pulls out three letter words, sounds them out and then puts the item next to the word. For instance, sounding out l-o-g then a picture of a log goes next to the word card. Writing continues to develop as well. She can now write a wobbly Katherine in mixed upper and lower case, which is kind of legible in a preschool kind of way. She also showed Steve during Father/Daughter Day a work in which she took two baskets of items with two items each and added them up to produce four.

Katherine is very proud of her works. Today she burst in the house waving a book at me. “Look Mama at the book I made.” She flipped thru to show me the 5 senses of Christmas which had a jingle bell, candy cane, fluffly beard, etc. I expressed admiration with only a slight caveat “It seems to be Veronica’s book. Do you think she has yours?” “Oh Yes, Mama” We tucked Veronica’s book in her backpack. I hope she comes home with her work on Thursday so she can admire it more over the holidays. 🙂

She’s increasingly getting attached to her teachers. For the auction, she insisted that we try and buy her teacher experience – time spent with her teacher learning about horses. Katherine also told me very clearly that her teachers HAD to have Burts Bees for Christmas (we did that last year for her teachers at MCH) and a gift card. So, she came with me to the store and picked out their gifts.

Katherine really is growing up very quickly.

The Trip Trap Chair

I caved this month and told Steve that it was time to buy two of these rather expensive chairs. Allison (aka Danger Girl) had developed a habit of climbing on the kitchen chairs and standing up to eat! Despite us telling her “tushie or knees” we’d find her standing up, waving her food at us. This of course resulting in several tumbles onto the floor.

I was convinced the only way to deal with this was to buy this chair which allows Allison to sit at the table while belted in. She generally refuses to sit in a high chair for more than say 5 minutes…So, tonight Steve came home with two chairs – one to keep Allison seated and the other to ensure peace among siblings.

The kids love the chairs! So, did the purchase have the desired results? Yes, until after dinner. While we cleaned, Danger Girl climbed the chair and sat on the bottom ledge playing with the straps on the top ledge/seat. I explained that it was unsafe, peeled her off the chair at least 3 times with much crying. I guess we’ve solved one problem, standing with eating, and introduced another…

Visiting Santa

We may get one more year of Santa Claus with Katherine, before she figures out what’s up. This year she’s started to ask some hard questions like “how does he open the door to the fireplace?” and “how does he get back up the fireplace?” Not as familiar with the Santa lore, I defer these questions to Steve who explains, “it’s magic.” Ha!

She may have also noticed this past Saturday at the Toby School party that Santa was wearing tennis shoes.

Katherine did express her concern that she needed to visit Santa for two reasons.

1) Santa gives out candy canes. Katherine is obsessed with candy canes.
2) Santa apparently doesn’t know what she wants unless she tells him (or so Steve says).

So, we dragged both kids to Santa at Redmond Town Center last Friday after school to see the big guy. He was very nice. Allison predictably wouldn’t go near him. So, we now have a picture of our entire family with Santa. Katherine explained to Santa that she wanted a watch and a wallet for Christmas. She was stymied when he asked what kind of wallet. It will all work out – princess digital watch and a hello kitty wallet.

Why the princess watch? For my birthday, I asked for two things – a cheap Timex watch and a coupon holder. I explained to Steve my new rule – the cheaper the watch the longer it lasts. This is evidenced by my Ebel, which now has to go back for repairs AGAIN and my Timex running watch which still works after 8 years. Steve dragged the kids to Target and what did Katherine see in the watch department? A cheesy, pink watch with a princess on the band.

The Blog Lag

Everyone has been most kind in not pointing out that I haven’t blogged in ages. The lag can be attributed to the Eton Auction – specifically the silent auction. We had the auction on Sunday the 3rd, and the house is finally settled back down. It was a pretty crazy November, but all is now back to normal just in time for the holidays!

Halloween & Birthdays

Halloween & Birthdays

It seems that late October and early November are always a big blur. That is likely because Steve’s and Katherine’s birthday are almost a week apart, and then there is…Halloween!

Steve’s birthday was a low key event this year, with a dinner at his parents house and then an evening out with the kids. Funny enough, we went to Todai for dinner – and the kids just ate up a storm. Steve held Allison during dessert, pressed on her big belly, and she burped! Yes, Allison continues to eat, and Katherine continues to grow!

Following his birthday was four days of Halloween festivities. First we had a potluck party where the kids just had a blast. Then we went to the Trilogy Halloween party – more fun. The following day, Katherine went to the Space Needle with her Bush grandparents to celebrate her birthday in advance. Finally, both kids had parties at their schools the day of Halloween followed by some very chilly trick or treating.

To keep things low key, we decided to take the girls around to half a dozen or so houses in the neighborhood. They activated their little light sticks, grabbed their pumpkins, jumped in the red wagon and we took off. At the first two houses, Allison tried to go in the front door when the neighbors answered (very logical eh?). Then she learned from her sister that she was supposed to stick her hand in a bowl to get candy and put it in her bucket. Finally she learned that most kids in the neighborhood were walking. We ended the evening with Allison tripping over her bucket every few steps, as she insisted on “waaa”lking from house to house. She even cried when we entered our home – knocking on our front door as if to say “we need to go to more houses!”

These Halloween pictures show the girls after trick or treating, investigating their buckets and playing with their grandparents as they waited for others to arrive at our house. When that happened, Katherine and one of us would jump up, Katherine would insist on holding the big bowl of candy and tell the kids “take two pieces please!”

I should also explain their attire and outfits this year. Katherine decided that she and her sister would be Minnie Mouse this year. To that end, I ordered some outfits from Disney.com, and they arrived a couple weeks before Halloween. These outfits sort of worked out for Halloween. It turns out that it was close to freezing that evening. Both girls wore long underwear (hence the pink shirts); Allison wore a full body Hanna pink fleece under her Minnie outfit. Katherine wore pants and her shirt under her dress, and her winter coat over it. So, it really wasn’t clear what they were, but they had a great time nonetheless.”

No sooner had we recovered (sort of) from Halloween and Katherine’s birthday party arrived. I decided this year to have it at Emerald City Gymnastics, because it would accommodate a large group of kids and appeal to boys and girls. Katherine’s initial inclination was to invite her entire class – which is virtually impossible unless we went to an inflatable party. So, we scaled it down, with a close group of friends from school attending as well as other friends and cousins.

Aside from one injury, the kids had a great time tumbling, jumping and burning energy. Within 90 minutes, they had a fun workout, ate cake and ice cream and ripped open presents. We’re going to try and achieve some semblance of normalcy tomorrow and get everyone ready for school on Monday.

Allison’s Developments

I’ve been delinquent in reporting her progress on the site, so let’s see if I can summarize. In short, Allison’s vocabulary has blossomed. We have a list of written words on the fridge that she uses – in total I’d say she has a vocabulary of 50-75 words in English, Mandarin and Spanish. She’s able to clearly communicate what she wants to those who understand her sounds/words and understand her needs/wants. Allison is regularly singing too. We sing many songs together, and she tries to warble along with sounds that mimic the words in the song. Songs include Twinkle Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider, ABC Alphabet, and several songs from Kindermusik. There is one song that we sing in class that involves dusters and we sing, “dust dust dust.” She loves that song. It’s really safe to say, without explicitly comparing word counts and such, that Allison is just as verbal as her older sister was at 18 months.

Allison has several nicknames: “Danger Girl,” “Miss Panipa,” and “Barnicle Girl.” The first and third are well deserved because she gets into EVERYTHING and likes to cling to me. Katherine calls her the second for no good reason at all. The funny thing is that if this nickname sticks we have no good explanation for it!

What does Allison call Katherine? She calls her “shisher” (sister) and very rarely Katherine. One of her favorite past-times is point to something that belongs to someone in the house like a big shoe and say “Dada!” Allison’s sense of humor is developing nicely – she cracks up at funny songs like one that she learned at Toby School. It goes like this: “I’m stirring and stirring and stirring my brew (x3)” “Tiptoe Tiptoe Tiptoe …. BOO!” We did this over Halloween, and she would scream with laughter. Other funny examples are putting her little foot inside other people’s shoes or boots and making a beeline for the pink booster in the back of the mini-van.

While distraction works, we are a point where we do have to say No to Allison sometimes when she climbs or egregiously tries to take her sister’s stuff. She gets so mad and screams or yells a few times before moving on to something else. The good news is that she recovers pretty quickly (fingers crossed she stays even tempered when she’s older.

September Sails By

Where did the last 3 weeks go?

The month of September has flown by and October is almost halfway over. As reminded by my sister, it’s been a long stretch since we’ve posted pictures. So, here’s the latest batch of news and pictures…The kids are continuing to develop in new and interesting ways, Allison most notably and Katherine in a more discrete, but yet positive way.

So, to answer my own question, the last week we spent helping Allison thru the latest bout of teething and green snot. Last Saturday, we noticed a slightly drippy nose (uh oh). On Sunday, it became clear that we were in for a rough week – congestion and crankiness especially at night. I think I managed about four hours of sleep Sunday night. All became clear when Steve poked his finger in her mouth to discover the last non-2 year old baby molar halfway emerged and her first fang (her upper right) poking out of her gums. Her upper left fang is causing swollen gums and may have started to appear this week. The good news is that she’s just about cleared up – I expect far fewer tissues tomorrow and perfect health on Monday. Steve, Katherine and I have fought off whatever lovely germs Allison shared with us. We’ve each probably had some slightly sore throat and tiredness, but have managed to wave off the nasal drip and congestion that Allison had.

Throughout the last 3 weeks, I’ve been busily engaging myself in pre-school activities, working on auction and Scholastic activities for Katherine’s classroom. Auction has been a great way to meet other Eton parents, and it’s all for a great cause. I also managed to attend a few hours of CASA training so I can more readily understand the work of a non-profit funded by Seattle SVP – Family Law CASA of King County. If you want to ever depress yourself immeasurably, just ask me to describe child neglect and the videos that I saw on Friday. It all reminded me so vividly how wonderful and privileged a life Katherine and Allison lead. I hope they understand this all someday.

Other noteworthy events or experiences:

Katherine’s classroom potluck at Eton. I managed to meet all the other first years and their attending parents. Katherine loved playing w/ classmates on the PE area in the parking lot. Allison was fearless, running around with the larger kids. I finally scooped her up so she wouldn’t wipe out on the asphalt!
Eton Cultural Fair. The parents organized a very cool fair with booths, professional dancers, food and arts/crafts. Katherine had a blast and checked everything out. Her favorite was probably the dancers – and the cake – and being with Audrey – and staying out after dark…We finally got home at 8PM.
Pumpkins! Unlike previous years, we went to the Root Connection coop to get our 3 pumpkins on our doorstep. Katherine is in full Halloween spirit. She’s convinced Patty to embark on ambitious decorating projects, like painted plate black spiders, carved pumpkins and all sorts of other stuff. Allison got into the spirit too and tried to paint Katherine and Patty. We only had to toss one pair of pants and a pair of socks (after Allison stepped in the paint), so it all worked out well! Katherine also went to Ruby’s birthday party at South 47 to pick up her last pumpkin, paint it and hang out with friends. She must have painted that thing for at least 45 minutes before I told her to let it dry before we took it home.
Mural. The mural was completed within a week. I’ve got several pictures, one of which has an empty spot where we put up a corkboard. I’ll have to see if I can get a full picture including fleece pillows that my mom sewed. The pillows are arranged under the tree along with a basket of books – it’s the kid’s reading corner. On occasion, its also my and Steve’s reading corner when we’re watching the kids play with their toys in the playroom.

It’s getting late. More tomorrow about Allison’s burgeoning, blossoming, tri-language vocabulary and Katherine’s developments at school.