Yesterday was the four-month anniversary of the Pipilodi's birth. And he's doing FI--INE! The baby boy is a hefty, healthy, scrumptiously rolly polly 17.6 lbs! It is widely agreed upon, by friends and family alike, that he is MOST definitely the MOST smiley baby ever to exist. He will even grin at you in the middle of crying. Seriously. He tries so hard to please. It's the sweetest thing EVER! Just this week he has discovered his voice and proved his Mommy right; I told The Chief way back when that as soon as Pip started vocalizing there would be no silencing him. So true. He yaks and shrieks, squeals and moans, coughs and splutters, all to the delight of his enraptured family. He's a busy baby boy, jumping in his Jumperoo, twirling in his Exersaucer, and performing brilliant kicks and shakes during tummy time. When I put him down to sleep, he soothes himself into slumber, alternately talking to himself then sucking his thumb. When I feed him, he gulps his way through mealtime, finishing in record time for any Bagel baby! He loves to scratch his fingers over any surface (but especially in his crib), experimenting with a fistful of fingernails and the wide variety of textures available in the Bagel home (the boy's a budding scientist already, see?!). He also loves to attack the shoulders of whoever happens to be toting him around, spit-up on anyone remotely close to him, watch his crazy big brothers, and stare adoringly at his daddy (for many loooong minutes at a time). He has light blond hair and I think his eyes will either be green or else hazel like Buddha's. (The Chief adamantly disagrees with this assessment. He says dark brown.)
At four months, The Pipster is UNIVERSALLY ADORED. We are so grateful to have him in our family.
To celebrate IL Pipidore's four-month existence anniversary, Grandma and Grandpa Bagel, Buddha, Bugga, and I carted him all over the San Diego Zoo. This may explain the fact that, as I write this, he is now going on
15 hours ofUNINTERRUPTEDsleep!
Sheesh! You really know how to celebrate, Mr. Pipilo, you party animal, you!
Now could you please wake up and nurse . . . I'm dyin' here!!!
This week has been ALL about reading. Despite the unusually dreary weather we've been experiencing, we dove right back into our Astronomy studies with a whole week of reading, discussion, and experiments revolving around the sun (pun intended). It was a fun week but the boys got sick again and even took the baby down with them this time. Now we're busy taking trips to Henry's and filling the kids up with homeopathic remedies. Pipilo actually has an appointment with the doctor on Monday just to be on the safe side and rule out pertussis though it's way more likely that he simply has a little virus that his older brothers gifted him.
We had fun this week. Here are some of the books we read:
This last book is where we were directed to have fun with the following experiment in order to better understand day and night.
We also got a subscription to Astronomy Magazine and got the December issue in the mail during this week. It was fun browsing through there, seeing the fantastic pictures from space, and finding out that there are some really great astronomical events (including a meteor shower and a full lunar eclipse) coming up in December. I'm especially excited about the former since I spent a while performing a fruitless search on the Internet for the next meteor shower the Northern Hemisphere might be able to witness. Astronomy Magazine to the rescue!
And, of course, we listened to the Solar System song from Larry and Kathy Troxel's Geography Songs - over and over and over again. :D We LOVE that CD.
Monday was Columbus Day. Bugga wanted to know why they didn't call it Christopher Day. :D We read the D'Aulaire book about Columbus. It's a fabulous read. Even I learned stuff I never knew!
Later we combined FHE (Family Home Evening) with homeschool and read in the Book of Mormon where Nephi describes his vision of Christopher Columbus:
1 Nephi 13: 10-15
10 And it came to pass that I looked and beheld many waters; and they divided the Gentiles from the seed of my brethren.
11 And it came to pass that the angel said unto me: Behold the wrath of God is upon the seed of they brethren.
12 And I looked and beheld a man [Christopher Columbus] among the Gentiles, who was separated by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.
13 And it came to pass that I beheld the Spirit of God, that it wrought upon other Gentiles [pilgrims]; and they went forth out of captivity, upon the many waters.
14 And it came to pass that I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise [colonization of America]; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten.
15 And I beheld the Spirit of the Lord, that it was upon the Gentiles, and they did prosper and obtain the land for their inheritance; and I beheld that they were white, and exceedingly fair and beautiful, like unto my people before they were slain.
For our FHE activity we made little models of the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, using an egg carton, paint, Playdough, toothpicks, construction paper, and glue. The boys had a great time, but I learned how tedious sail construction is! :D
We broke into our Halloween candy supply for our FHE treat and closed the evening singing Listen, Listen from the LDS Children's Songbook to remind the kids to always listen to the still, small voice of the Spirit, just like Columbus did. Bugga gave our closing prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for the candy he got to eat. Buddha, my little food mentor, refused the candy and ate a fruit leather instead (more on this phenomenon later).
Tuesday we continued our Columbus exploration (Since the exact date of his first landing in the New World was October 12, 1492, after all.) with a ValueTales read aloud, a new song to remember the little poem "In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," and a popcorn-supplemented Christopher Columbus movie moment courtesy of Living Scriptures'Animated Hero Classics. The boys also played with their model ships they made the night before, outfitting them with Lego captains and crews and sailing them across their world meal placemats. :D
Wednesday we had an unschooling moment resulting in the wonderful chaos and mayhem of unscripted play and learning. In other words, I let the kids do whatever they wanted with our homeschool manipulatives and they came up with an epic mess of creativity and innovation, blending pattern practice and math units with Lego citizens and daring rescues. It was quite inspiring.
Thursday we went ahead and threw structure to the wind, scrapping our Astronomy altogether and declaring this week's learning to be a mini unit focused on Christopher Columbus. Thanks to some timely purchases and a very generous Grandpa (My dad allowed me to borrow a TON of their awesome books that I remember reading as a kid!), we have a lot of material to facilitate this brief obsession with the legendary explorer (such as, The Story of Columbus Reader). One of the items we used on this particular day was a dramatized story-telling of the life of Christopher Columbus from Living Principles of America. (This was also purchased from Living Scriptures - have I mentioned that I LOVE their stuff? No? Hm. Well, I do.) At three years old, I didn't expect the Buggster to sit still through this. And he didn't. But he did grab his Lego men and crawl around on the floor next to the computer, playing while listening. Every now and then I would hear him repeat something from the CD/story as if one Lego man was telling it to another, so I knew he was paying attention in his own busy way. :D Buddha, however, sat on the rocking chair next to the computer the whole time and even asked questions when he didn't understand something. I have decided that I'm a huge fan of dramatized storytellings on CD.
Friday we read I, Christopher Columbus, then worked on our world map for Geography, filling in the country names as we sang the songs from Geography Songs (we LOVE this CD and highly recommend it). We also read another account of Christopher Columbus from A Child's History of the World. It was short and sweet. And after that, we read yet another Columbus book called You Wouldn't Want to Sail with Christopher Columbus! It's a funny book all about the hardships of ocean travel way back in the day. The Chief stayed home to make sure our patio cover was put up properly the second time around (yes, they actually had to rip down the first one because the hole for the fan was not centered). He and Bugga played cards, putting three-letter words together by matching up the pictures. And Buddha did a math page that used the sums of his problems as a key for spelling out Columbus-related words. It was a low-key day as we sat about waiting for the great backyard invasion to be finished.
School this week consisted of a much more relaxed, unschooling-type method than we regularly employ at home. Because we were traveling (and especially because we were traveling to my parents' house), we enjoyed TONS of reading with Granny and Grandpa, arts and crafts galore (Granny is so amazing to provide this stuff for her grandsons and supervise throughout. She is such a FABULOUS Granny!!), adventure and discovery in the great outdoors, and even a field trip to the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City to satisfy our Astronomy lust.
The following is a photo presentation of our "school" this week.
Read Fest 2010.
Construction and Math.
Visiting the Bookstore.
{At Deseret Book they have this entire wall of Book of Mormon action figures. Bugga was in heaven, I tell you. He LOVES action figures. Granny told the boys she would buy them one each and it took Bugga over 20 minutes to decide which one he wanted. He settled on wicked King Noah. Lovely.}
{Granny didn't think eight-year-old cousin Caleb could read these illustrated classics, but I told her that if Buddha could, he could. So she pulled one down and tested him. He cruised right through a few sentences and Granny left with a new book for Caleb to read. :D}
Fall Color Tour: Provo & American Fork Canyons.
Lessons in Negotiation.
{Buddha had been creating art for Uncle Daniel for weeks and weeks. When he found out we were taking this trip to Utah and that Uncle Daniel would be there, he was elated! He talked to no end about how he was going to get to negotiate prices on his art that Uncle Daniel was going to buy from him. Needless to say, he has a very generous uncle and the little bugger quite made out like a bandit.}
Hiking the Y.
{You should have seen them hit the dirt when they spied a Millipede. Classic boys.}
LaVell Edwards Farmer's Market.
Clark Planetarium.
Great-Granny's 96th Birthday Bash.
BYU v. SDSU (We won one!) :D
There are SO many more fun pictures from each of these activities that I plan to share in the days and weeks to come. We drove out the day after the BYU game, sorry to say good-bye to those we left behind, excited to get back home to our own beds and daily routine (or lack thereof, to be more honest).
