Kiefer went skating for the first time!

Don took Kiefer skating today. He got some video of the event too!

Posting video in chronological order:

“Anywhere is walking distance, if you've got the time.” -Stephen Wright

Ella has started walking with a bit of proficiency in the last week. She had been cruising and reaching from one piece of furniture to another for about a month, but has finally taken the leap to try walking for transportation as opposed to crawling.

She is such a stubborn little girl that she accepts help from nobody. If you reach your hand out to her or try to hold her hands for her to walk, she'll actually bat your hand away with disgust. The only walking aide she will use to help her learn to walk is her grocery cart and lawn mower; she loves both!

I was baiting her with her pacifier today to try to lure her a little further out of her comfort zone but that only made her mad because I kept taking it away!

Here is a video of our little walker. Kiefer is in the video too. He is listing train names from Thomas the Train.

Kiefer and the Owl

This week I took Kiefer to Storytime at the local Library. It is an hour or un-parented story and craft time in a classroom setting for kids aged 3-5.

The teacher was phenomenal; she read stories and helped them do some crafts. One of the crafts was coloring an owl picture. The teacher gave them crayons, glue and tissue paper to decorate the owl. I made a big deal of the picture to Kiefer and told him how great it was, but it really didn't look that remarkable. It had some green crayon on it, 2 pieces of tissue paper, a whole bunch of glue and some scribbles.

The scribbles on the piece of paper looked deliberate to me though. I asked him what the scribbles were and he kept saying "owl" over and over again. Then he clearly sounded out to me the sounds of A and L. Sure enough his scribbles were an "a" and backwards "L". Get it? A-L? (Owl???) He was sounding out owl and figured it was an "A"and an "L". It makes a whole lot of sense to a 3 year old to spell it that way!

I was so surprised he was able to compute that and I am so proud! Not bad for a recently turned 3 year old!