Thursday, December 12, 2013

Story Time!

I did it.  I really did it.  This blog post is for you, John! Before the end of the year 2013, I did it.  I took John to story time at the library.
I am so ecstatic about this for a few reasons:
  1. John is 18 months old and NEEDS to explore and get out of the house.  I honestly don't know how people do it when they live in small apartments with no yards.  I am grateful for my home.
  2. I have been wanting to pay more attention to John since I have been vigorously teaching his older brother and sister now since September.  The poor little guy is a bit neglected, if I do say so myself.  He plays so well while I am teaching that sometimes I take that for granted.  Lately, he has taken to doing anything to get my attention!  Like writing on walls, throwing things, squealing at the top of his lungs.  ugh.  Oh wait, why am I being so hard on myself?  I think this just may be 18 month old behavior...
  3. I LOVE John!  
The trick about teaching a multi-age group is that special care really needs to be taken in making sure each child gets what he/she needs.  It is so easy to lose track of this, I think.  When I taught in public school and had four different reading groups and many levels within those levels, it was just so hard to meet all the needs of my students.  Now, being at home with my three, I just don't know how I even did it with a large class!  I think every day I realized that I could do only what I could do and that was that.  Every child is such a unique human being with such possibility and potential.

Please enjoy some pictures below of this baby-turned-toddler!  By the way, I think these pictures are way yummier than all the food pictures I see in my recipe blogs.  
John out and about at the PBS station in Richmond.  Thank goodness  for this balloon, it distracted him long enough for Emmett to finish his craft. 
Out and about at Crump Park in Richmond.  Freezing cold but this baby has to explore!!
John and Me.  No reason for this picture, I just loved it when I was picking out the other ones to put in here.  
Love this picture.  Tasting snowflakes for the first time. 



Below you will find four pictures of John in his crib.  This is to illustrate how he earned the nickname, "Jacob Marley".  He rattles that crib like Jacob Marley rattles those chains.  I do not have a monitor hooked up in my house.  I know when to get John because I can hear that crib a rattlin'.  Now, for the record, most of the time he is NOT fussing, just playing, but I think these pictures are funny.  Poor Jacob, neglected, no one coming to get him out of his chains! Oh, I mean, crib...
I digress a little.   It is time to get back to story time.  With all those background pics above, we can see now how much John needs socialization.  haha.  He did a great job at story time today.  Even though he was more interested in pushing the chairs in and out and climbing in the chairs and out, he stayed for the whole thing.  His big sister, Carmen, even loved the stories and dances.  After the stories, they participated in the activity.  They put stickers on gingerbread houses.  I have to say John was hysterical when he got a sticker stuck to his hand and couldn't shake it off.  He just kept flapping it and flapping it and smacking himself in his face and everything.  


Here is Carmen and John with their stickers and sheets. 
ADORABLE!  John clapping for himself after he put his sticker on the sheet. 
Total concentration
Carmen enjoyed story time, too.  We are going to go more often.  

Emmett is apparently too grown up for story time now since he stayed outside the room and read books and worked on the computer.  Sigh...they grow up so fast.  It his high time John pick up where he left off.  Right?  After all, below is a picture of Emmett waiting for us at the car.  Hilarious.  I guess all those story times at the library really paid off.

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