3 Year Family Photos

We finally got our prints back from our 3 year photo shoot. The shoot was done the week after the kids birthday but it's taken us this long to find a free weekend to go back and view them. They did a fantastic job considering Cameron was not in a smiling mood that day...at all...which is why you will see more of Timo than Cameron. But I'm amazed at how many good shots they got!

Here is the website so you can view all the pictures...the password is snap26. Let me know if you have problems viewing. Grandparents/Aunts/Uncles, let me know which ones you like and I'll make prints for you!

http://ws002.smugmug.com/

The Spoken Word

Even though the kids have great vocabulary and you can understand what they are saying 85% of the time, there are still a few words that come out a little jumbled up. But I adore how they sound...

This is Timo saying hamburger...

Untitled from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Cameron is telling me what happened on Sesame Street...trying to say mosquito...

Untitled from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Rainy Day Projects

The rain has seemed endless here the past two to three weeks. It's such a struggle coming up with new activities and projects for the kids...cause really, how many times can you circle the three museums we have in the area? And with no naps anymore...the days are looooong!

I hit up the dollar store a few weeks ago for lots of craft ideas. I filled an entire craft box for under $10! And thanks to this book our friend Yang gave us for Christmas, we were ready for days upon days of learning through arts and crafts! This book is really great ideas for home schooling...most of the activities are geared toward slightly older kids...4-6 age range. But I found a few gold nuggets inside and put them to good use.

The first art projects were puppet bags and sheep. The bags were easy and fun to play with afterwards. The sheep idea I got off the Michael's website...trace their hand/cut out, then the fingers are the legs and the thumb is the head, cut out a cloud shape body and have fun with glue and cotton balls. It's a good craft to keep just to see how small their hands once were...


One day we did a bunch of sorting and color games. I put a bunch of different objects in a bowl and had them use tongs to separate them out into cups. The book recommends tongs and a way to help with motor skills.


Then sorting color pom poms into cups...I found this was more about following directions then learning colors. They already know their colors but they wanted to pick out their favorite colors and put them all in one cup. It took a lot to get them to follow directions correctly and not go their own way. And once they did it all right, they were so proud of themselves!
More motor skills...sticking clothes pins around the top of a cup...this fun lasted forever!
I didn't get pictures of this one day but we numbered cups 1-10 and had to put the correct number of pasta pieces in each cup. It was a great way for them to see 9 pieces was much more than 2 pieces...therefore 9 is larger than 2. That game really suck with them and they still count pieces of food on their plates to see who has more.

We have also learned lots of letters and slowly working on numbers...it's funny, Cameron seems to grasp the letters and alphabet faster and Timo gets numbers and can count pretty high. Wonder if that's a girl/boy thing?? Oh well, the sun is coming out this week and we'll be tackling the playgrounds, back yard and beaches again...we have LOTS of energy to burn off, that's for sure!

Superheros!

Another creative moment...being superheros! I'm not sure where they got the actual superhero part from, I think watching a Caillou episode, but the animal rescue came from Diego. They were running back and forth from their rooms, "rescuing" their stuffed animals from their room to the living room...and the long hallway was a cave they had to go through. They kept saying "superheros, to the rescue!" so I had an idea. I pulled out two pillowcases and two clothespins to make capes for them....oh my, what an awesome mommy I was!! The kids were in heaven and played their superhero game for over an hour...and have asked for their capes almost everyday since...

Superhero! from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Then it was time for lunch...the only way I got them to stop was to tell them "superheros need gas so they can rescue more animals...". Whatever works, my friend...whatever works...

Ice Skating

I kept hearing Cameron saying "Mommy, I'm ice skating" while I was cleaning the kitchen. I thought she was just running and sliding on the hardwood floor but she just kept saying it over and over...so I had to go see what she was doing. I peeked around the corner and I found this going down the hallway...

ice skating from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Where do they come up with these things???

Imagination Station

I feel like a big switch was clicked "on" in the kids brains when they hit 3 years old...their imagination! They always pretended to be different animals, make sounds, be a pirate or simple things like that, but now they are creating whole worlds around themselves. They also are becoming more and more creative on how to achieve different scenes they want to play out. So over the next few posts I'm going to show different adventures the kids go on...

This evening they were pretending to be caterpillars turning into butterflies. Back in my day, caterpillars formed a cocoon but now days it's called a chrysalis. I guess it was always called that but we were taught cocoon. But in all the kids books and tv shows it's called a chrysalis. Here is Cameron using her comforter and becoming a beautiful butterfly.

Untitled from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Oh how I miss naps! I'm pretty sure the days of napping have gone bye-bye...we haven't seen a nap in our house in a good three weeks! I try to do quiet time, in their beds with books and some small toys, so I can at least get the kitchen clean, some laundry done or just eat some lunch...but it doesn't last very long. They are either tearing all the covers off their beds to build a "tent", devising some great spider adventure/hunt or seeing how many toys and books they can pull out and pile in the middle of the floor. I won't even go into all the disasters I walk in on...like marker on the walls, window and bed, climbing on the dresser and pulling the clock and picture frames off the wall or Timo sneaking milk into his room, drinking and spitting it across the room at Cameron...it's been a tense few weeks to say the least...

But on one of the more calm days, Cameron came clicking out of their room with her princess shoes on, wanting to know if nap time was over..

I escorted her back to her room with the firm instructions that nap time isn't over until Mommy comes into your room and says it's over. As I walked in their room, I saw Timo on the floor like this...

I asked him what he was doing..."I just getting ready for a party...Mommy, I'm a prince!" At least he knows the difference between a prince and a princess...even if he doesn't know that princes' don't wear the sparkly tiaras!

Painting!

After the last disaster of painting when the kids were about 1 1/2years old, I decided no painting until they were in college. Well, that didn't exactly stick and I decided to give it another try at 3years old. They love arts and crafts so much, I thought they might be ready. So I made a little painting kit as one of their birthday presents...a little box filled with finger paints, water colors, washable paint, brushes and smocks (large bibs with sleeves). We were set for success!

We tackled the washable paints first and what a difference a year and a half makes! The kids understood dipping the brush in water between each color and how to only paint on the paper!! Cameron's art is so different than Timo's. She is very neat and clean, purposeful in her designs...while Timo just randomly paints colors, one on top of the other, using the whole piece of paper and his imagination.

painting from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Then a few weeks later we broke out the finger paints. This one I was really nervous about. I think it helped that we practiced with paint brushes first, they knew the rules going into it. But I have to say, I rather prefer using the brushes. There wasn't really an easy way to clean hand between colors so I gave them bowls of water...but then water was all over their hands and arms and table..just a big mess. They had fun but Mommy was a wreck just watching the mess unfold.

I think they got tired of their hands being messy and wet so the finger painting didn't last as long. They asked for their brushes and started painting the bowls...think we're ready for one of the pottery painting shops?

Recycle Reuse

We're one step closer to getting the coloring playhouse out of our dinning room. I was taking it down and the kids discovered it's very slick surface...perfect for sliding on! I came in the dinning room and found them running and sliding across the houe...the fun has lasted for days!! We like to recycle and reuse all our toys as much as possible!

Untitled from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Keep On Singing

Cameron loves to sing. She is always singing something...either with words, makes up her own words or even her own language. I think for her, it's all about learning her voice and how to make it go up and down to different notes and tones. But if you ask her, she will tell you exactly what her song is about...even if you can't understand a word she is singing!

This was the last day of our coloring house. I was ready to have my living room back so I told them to color all they wanted because the house was going bye-bye for a while. Cameron grabbed her crayons and spend quite a bit of time on these birds...just coloring and singing...

Coloring and singing from Sara ko on Vimeo.

Bye, Bye Paci

Something clicked when the kids were about to turn 3 years old...they suddenly became aware of how big they were...or rather what a "big boy" and what a "big girl" they were. Maybe it's because we kept telling them they were growing up too fast or we constantly told Timo what a big boy he was every time he cleaned up his toys or told Cameron she was a big girl for going potty all by herself...or maybe because they both seemed to suddenly grow out of their shoes and we went shopping to get them bigger shoes. Whatever it is, they seem to just glow every time we tell them how big they are. So we decided to keep ridding this phase to make a few transitions for them...the biggest one...no more pacifiers for sleeping. Dum, dum, dum...

We set the weekend for Presidents' Day weekend because it was a holiday weekend and Young had an extra day off...just in case was had a few sleepless nights. I started talking about the Paci Fairy coming to trade their pacis with a toy and give their pacis to all the little babies..."because only babies use pacis, not big kids like Timo and Cameron." I could tell the importance of the first talk about the Paci Fairy on Timo because when his daddy came home from work that evening, it was the first thing out of Timo's mouth..."Daddy, the Paci Fairy is coming to take our pacis. I'm a big boy!"

The closer the day got the more anxiety I had. The kids had never slept without their pacis. Would they even know how to sleep without them?? Ugh, I was so stressed out. But luckily the kids weren't and it went pretty smooth the first night. We had them leave their pacis on their nightstand for the Fairy, had a few cries and whimpers, one wake up each in the middle of the night but that was it. Great! That was easy! Or so I thought. Then came the second night...oh boy. I think the "fun" of the Paci Fairy wore off and it wasn't "fun" anymore. We finally got them to sleep two hours after bedtime, two middle of the night wake up for each and a bright and early wake up the next morning. Not fun. I was seriously considering them keeping their pacis till they went to collage.

But after one more rocky, but better night they got it...Voila! Here they are...pacifier free! Yay!

Even though the kids haven't asked about their pacis since the second night, their sleep has been a roller coaster for the past two weeks. The naps are pretty much non existent now. I think we're had three very short naps over the past two weeks. And nighttime sleep has shortened by at least an hour...falling asleep 30 later than normal and waking up 30 mins or more earlier. And because of the loss of sleep, the whining has escalated, tempers are shorter and I'm noticing it's harder for them to concentrate on one activity for as long as they could just a few weeks ago. I've talked to several experienced moms and our pediatrician, all whom took pacis away around 3 years old, and they say it takes a few weeks to even out. I hope by "a few weeks" they mean "two weeks" and it evens out around our house soon! I know it was the right thing to do but "OUCH!" it hurts!