Random Picture Post!

The "Pete the Cat" series of books is worth more than gold in this house!!! I have to read all the Pete books every day, multiple times a day. I don't mind though, because I get lots of snuggles :) 

Mila knows the books by heart and fills in words when I pause! 

Taking a smooch break :) 

I love that Mila kisses with her tongue out...I hope she never kisses the "right" way, these ones are priceless...but poor Sofia here HAHA! Sofia DID take her binky out to receive the kiss though :) 

Oh Mila and those legs! 

Sofia snuggles! 

Uncle Mike and Aunt Carol went away and brought back this shirt for Mila! The story goes like this....

The first time Uncle Mike babysat Mila I told him if she gets upset just to sing to her. I told him that "Jesus Loves Me" was her favorite. He said he didn't know the words to that one so well, so instead he started singing her "Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffet. It quickly became her new favorite song so every time Uncle Mike sees Mila, he sings her the song and she absolutely loves it! It's their little "thing." :) Thus, the shirt! Clearly she loves it, right??? 

Zoya loves listening to music on the iPod! 

We moved this chair from Mila's room into the living room. I used it to rock all three of the girls when they were younger....Sofia loves it and it sure has a lot of memories for me :)

This child is W.I.L.D. and exhausts me beyond belief nearly every single day! Good thing I love her  so much!!!!!!! ;)

Oh Zoya girl! I can't believe she will be SIX YEARS OLD in just over a month!! :( 

The 2 little ladies love "pillow diving." Now that Mila is more confident with her gross motor skills, she absolutely can't get enough of this game! 

Pure joy!!!! 

She throws her head back, closes her eyes and squeals right before she dives! 

And this picture cracks me up....an optical illusion that makes her look like she has no legs and is floating! 

Sofia INSISTS on pulling her pant legs up, usually above her knee....This started a few weeks ago and I can't figure it out for the life of me! She can't stand having her pants the "right" way anymore! Probably a sensory issue! I look at this picture and I can HEAR her through the picture :)

Zoya really loves playing with her babies and changing them, dressing them, undressing them, and repeat! She is so gentle and sweet with her baby dolls, I just love watching her! Lately I've been finding baby dolls and animals all around the house covered with blankets "asleep." After she's in bed for the night I almost always find at least one doll "sleeping" somewhere and it always makes me smile! 

These two were REALLY quiet so I went to check on them and found this! Sofia is "sleeping" on the trampoline, Zoya covered her up and is reading her a story!!!! <3 p="">

Zoya is in a Montessori class and one of the ideas behind this method is to follow the child's learning...don't push teaching of things they're not yet interested in and just follow them and take cues from them. I think this is the best thing I've learned from the Montessori method. We hadn't pushed Zoya writing much, but worked on fine motor strengthening in so many other ways. We did teach her to write her name for functional reasons, but beyond that she wasn't too interested in writing until recently. A couple weeks ago she got out her beloved Magna Doodle and wrote her teacher's name, brought it to me and said LOOK MOM! (and she said her teacher's name). I couldn't believe it! When I asked her teacher she said they'd been working on writing Zoya's full name and the teacher's name and clearly she was ready to roll with the whole writing thing! Since then every day she has wanted to write letters and words and asks me to help her! She can do all the letters with straight lines and some with curved lines. She asks me how to write lots of things and if I spell them for her she can write so many words!!! I had a "teacher idea" and set up this little "writing workshop" for her. She loved it! It's hard to see, but I wrote each name on an index card and put it next to each family member's picture. Then on the cards to the right she wrote the names. 

She did all the names/letters except for "S" for Sofia. I was amazed by her motivation and desire to WRITE! 

Oh these two girls....I'm thinking preschool can wait another year ;) 

Sensory Learning

Sensory play is so important for all kids, but especially important for kids who lacked those experiences early on in life (orphans) and for children with Down Syndrome (as many children with DS have some sensory needs). Zoya and Mila are polar opposites in so many ways. One of those ways is how different they are with their sensory profiles. When Zoya came home she was very sensory defensive in most areas. She freaked out with loud and sudden noises. She got easily overwhelmed in large crowds. We had to leave worship at church because the music was too loud. She couldn't stand to be spun around or even tipped back ever so slightly. She hated swinging in the baby swing. She was scared of a lot. A lot of things helped her become less sensory defensive, including Therapeutic Listening, and a healthy sensory "diet" of sorts. Mila on the other hand is such a huge sensory seeker and dare devil when it comes to sound and movement! She however, has a harder time using her hands to explore her environment so these activities will be great for Mila when she is a little older too!

 One common sensory activity is shaving cream play. We took it up a notch and had an hour of "sensory learning" experience. 

First we practiced some letters in the shaving cream. We focused a lot on "Z" and "o" getting her ready to write her name. 

Zoya wrote these letters by herself and told me what they were. Now, if I said "write a letter 'p' she probably couldn't do it, but she likes to doodle and then tell me what letters or numbers her doodles look like. It's a good start!

She is starting her big "Z"

First line across...

Slant to the left...

Pull back across!

"I did it!"

Just playing :)

I'm getting better at tolerating messes...clearly I have my own sensory issues!

Another activity we did was drawing horizontal lines to practice our pre-writing skills. She had to connect the correct colored bears. 

We sorted our bears by color

To "up" the sensory experience we added rice...here was Zoya's initial thought. She got over it easily and thought it was cool!

I told her "hands up and don't move" while I pushed her over to the sink to clean up!

We finished our sensory play by playing in soapy water for another 20 minutes!

"Yes, mom?"

Here is an example of how we carried over the sensory learning to "paper/pencil" skills. I'll post more on this another time! This is her letter Z done all by herself on a small sentence strip. We used the stickers as guides for her to know where to draw her lines to make the Z!