Graduation

Last Tuesday Sara had her recital and graduated from Music Makers I to Music Makers II.  I tried to get video and pics even though I was holding a wiggly Brennan.  This is the best I could do.

Floor piano key exercise

Old Brass Wagon song

Two Black Keys

Graduation

She has improved so much this semester. At the beginning she couldn't play any of the keys purposefully and she couldn't put her thumb on Do but by the end of this class she can do it pretty well.  Dan and I have worked pretty heavily with her at home just to get her fingers on the right keys and get them rounded like "rainbows" as we tell her.

I'm looking forward to taking her to Music Makers II even though the classes are getting progressively difficult for me having Brennan along.  He is getting more active and her classes are getting longer.  The teacher has encouraged me that Brennan will be fine and that if we wants to hold an instrument at some point we'll just hand him one and it's no big deal.  I really want to keep up Sara's lessons because in the end it really will matter.  Giving a kid the gift of music is a lifelong gift and it's more important than any 45 minutes of struggling I have to go through with Brennan, it's all temporary and she's maturing by the day.  She already does most of the class by herself now anyway.

Plus soon she will be in school and I won't have this special time to spend with her in her music class.   For now, she'll be a Music Maker II starting this week.  Even if she does not stick with Piano, maybe this will give her a music foundation to start with if she ever wants to pick up another instrument.  It can't hurt.

In other news, Sara counted to 10 by herself this week, backwards and forwards with the help of a cheat sheet she carries around.  We wrote all the numbers down on a piece of paper, and she "studies" with it.  It kind of perplexed us that she knows so many numbers, specifically the numbers that are on the Thomas series trains, but she can't count in sequence from 1 to the number 10, so we tried to motivate her to do it.  We told her she could have a donut if she counted to 10 and today she did.  She loves donuts and after we made the offer it only took her one day to learn how.

Also we've been teaching her small words to read in her books like, the, is, and, he, too, etc.  I've pointed out that a double "o" in a word like school, too, and tool makes the "oo" sound and she's caught on to that pretty well, tonight she read the word "zoo" by herself.  I think she'll catch on pretty quick.  She loves her books so much and I know she wants to learn to read, especially her Thomas books which she already knows by heart anyway.

Lastly in the updates, here she is at the table reading her "Big Backyard" magazine that Granny KP gets her.  She was telling us all about this walrus, saying that he is a bad walrus that does not take his baths, he's angry, and poops in his diaper but she was going to give him big hugs and kisses and make him nice again.  We never know what she is going to say.

She recently wanted to watch a nature documentary that turned out to be a really violent one where whales ate seals, seals squished their pups, and bloody walruses jabbed each other with their tusks.   We turned it off and she threw a fit because she wanted to watch it but the reality of it was starting to bother us.  It is cool that she likes to watch nature shows though, especially ones about marine life, she asks for them specifically.

A great weekend for Sara

Saturday night we went over to Jane's house (aka the wild kingdom.  Jane has a 10 year old son that Sara loves, she follows him around like a little sheep.  He has a huge bearded dragon lizard and a new chinchilla that he took out of the cage and let run around the house.  Sara also got to feed the chinchilla raisins and Liz, the bearded dragon, carrots.  She also had fun playing the ukulele and chasing various other pets around the house. 

Sunday Grandpa and Granny KP came down and they  had a blast.  They all went on a walk to the park and played in the snow. I'm pretty sure Sara had the time of her life after being cooped up in the house for several weeks. Thanks Dad for these photos:

Also, Granny KP spoke French to Sara while she was here.  It was so fun.  I hope as Sara learns more French that they can eventually have small conversations together.  It would be wonderful!
We are so thankful for all of Sara's Grandparents, they really add depth and happiness to her life.   She is a very lucky little girl.

Beach musings

Today Sara talked all day about going to the beach in May in Florida.  She asked me all kinds of questions, like where is Florida (so we did her US puzzle) and do they have Sushi there like they have in California (not sure where she got that one).  Also she asked if we could take our fish in the fish tank to the beach and let them play or if we could bring Dolphins home, so we had a conversation about freshwater vs salt water animals.

Then she wanted to talk about sand and seashells.  She said we could make sand castles, sand bread, and sand knives, for sandwiches.  I thought it was pretty clever.  We just happened to read a book today that talked about looking inside the shells you find at the beach to make sure they don't have any creatures in them, and if they do, throw them back.  She promises she will check every shell.

I'm so excited to take her to Panama City where I spent time as a kid.  I can't wait to see what we find on the beach and hopefully the water will be warm in May.  Also, it would be fun to take her to the touristy shell shops that have all kinds of shells you can buy and let her pick out some like I did when I was a kid.  I'm also glad Brennan will be able to sit up by then and play in the sand and water too.

Sara has been wanting to hold, hug, and tickle Brennan a lot.  Sometimes it makes me nervous but he's learning to squeal if he's uncomfortable.  As he gets bigger and bigger I'm sure they will do more together.  Here's a cute series of pics I took of them tonight.

 



 

Cousins

I got this pic from Sara's cousin's blog, it turned out better than the one I took (thanks Jessie!).  Sara had a blast tubing with all her cousins over Christmas.  Lots of her cousins were visiting from Hawaii and I'm glad she got a chance to spend time with them.  Sara did great tubing, she even wanted to pull her own tube.  Dan and I were surprised how well she took to it.  We thought she might be afraid. 

We really love that about her personality, that she seems fearless to try new things and to keep trying them.

While Nanna was here, we went to a sushi restaurant and Sara even tried sushi and loved it.  I'm really excited about that because this sushi place is my very favorite and hopefully she'll go again with us.  Now all we have to do is get Brennan eating sushi.

Also, I learned how to make paragraphs on this infernal new blogger format, yay me and yay readers!

Skiing

Sara has been adjusting to not having her Nanna here full time.  It's been a bit rough for Dan and I too but we're all OK.  I'm re-resolved to spend more time with her.

For Christmas Nanna got us the French version of Rosetta Stone.  Today we did a ten minute lesson twice.  She was interested in it and got some of the answers right.  I think it will be fun to see what she can pick up. We learned the French words for boy, girl, man, woman, reading, running, drinking and eating.

Sara surprised us today with her new "Jesus I'm sneezing" "Jesus" song.  She likes to make up songs to entertain us and this one was a doozie. 

Also today it snowed.  It was the first time we've had snow since she got her skis.  She and Daddy went in the back yard to try them out.   She actually did really well and she really liked it too.  They skied around the yard for a half hour. 

Dan and I have noticed this about her personality, she is persistant and not afraid to keep trying.