"I" is for Ice Cream, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Indians

We woke up to the coldest day we've had since January 2008 and the coldest November 18th up here in 50 years according to Ray's Weather. The winds sure helped make the snow pretty as it fell horizontally. ;) We had preschool at Daphne's and learned about the letter "I." It was great! We read about and sang the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and then made some of our own. Then, we read about ice cream and enjoyed ice cream sundaes ("Life is short, eat dessert first")! Indian headdresses were next and Daph had asked Candace and me to come up with Indian names for our children...more on that later. Oh, enough about later, let's look at the pictures!

All suited up for the snowy and blustery weather outside. I tried to get the snow on our deck in the picture.
Our Indians..."Glass Slipper" (MF) as she loves Cinderella, "Running Bear" (Heath), "Wild Horse" (Evie), and "Lil Turkey Caller" (Ruthie)

Now here they are with their face paint. They each chose the color(s) they wanted and, for the most part, had their initials put on their cheeks.

Here are the girls at home with their "Itsy Bitsy Spiders." We covered paper towel rolls with aluminum foil. Then, Daph had made spiders out of egg carton pieces (we put on the eyes and nose), attached string to their "hair," and fed the string down the tube. At the end of the string we tied a wooden letter of the first letter of each child's name. Daphne got this idea from www.abchomepreschool.com which is a great site for anyone to check out. Daph, as usual, did a great job and we were all ready to go home and rest after a yummy lunch.

This last shot may seem unusual but is a picture of victory in our home. Since she was about 16/17 months old MF has been ready to be potty trained as she could tell us when her diaper was dirty. That was about the same time we were going to be moving in and I didn't want her to be trained and then regress so I decided to wait until the summer. Well, MF being as timid as she is was scared and would not even sit on the potty to pretend! Talking about being a "big girl" and wearing panties like Evie didn't even seem to encourage her. We didn't want it to be a traumatic experience for her and just thought we'd let her warm up to the idea and continue to expose her to it. She didn't walk until she was 18 months old and we have learned that she will take to things very quickly when she's ready. Well, recently I have seen that MF really does need to just be potty trained and decided we'd get over this fear of the potty last Sunday. We started with getting her to sit on it with her pants on, then in just her diaper, and worked up to sitting with her diaper off. There were tears shed and we had to work from me holding onto her, to holding her hand, and then to her doing it on her own. This past Sunday night before their bath I told MF to sit on the potty and she did without question. We are so proud of her! She hasn't done anything in the potty yet but I will really embark on that after the first of the year when our traveling will be done and we'll have a week at the house to really get it done. I'm ready to be done with two sets of diapers! :)