My sweet baby turned one!

My dear little Julienne turned one year this month!  I can't believe she is leaving baby-dom!  She is the sweetest baby, I love her so much!  It of course must be a product of both nature and nurture, being the third child and all, but she has such a laid back and friendly personality.  She smiles at everyone and while she won't just go to them (we are firmly in the stranger anxiety phase), she loves to flirt and play.
It has really been amazing to me to see her develop.  Part of it is my acute awareness of how brief each little stage is.  Part of it is really just my knowledge of child development, especially since I have been learning so much about Montessori.  I have called her my "Montessori baby" before, and while we are not a fully Montessori family, I have been doing what I can.  She can drink by herself from a cup.  She can play and keep herself entertained on the floor for a considerable amount of time.  She is already doing activities like opening and closing bottles, and she can be engrossed in these activities for 30-40 mintues at a time. 

She likes little things and sticking them in her mouth, and unfortunately, there is an abundance of little things with older sisters in the house.  She likes taking things in and out of small containers.
She crawled on her tummy army style until almost this month really, and now she occassionally crawls regularly on her hands and knees.  She is cruising well, but doesn't stand on her own yet.  Gabriela walked at almost 14 months and Annalise at 13.  She seems on track for that.
She likes baby dolls.  She is really loving playing with our wooden Melissa and Doug birthday cake.  She like getting the round wooden toppings and putting them in and out of her stacking block cups.  I have seen her zoom around her new pink little people car that she got for her birthday.  She has recently discovered the joy of opening and closing drawers.
She didn't start eating until really  11 months.  I have been doing a loose baby-led weaning with her, just waiting until she has desire and capability to feed herself.  I did start offering small bits of soft foods at around 6 months, but interest in eating didn't really skyrocket until 11 months.  She still gets most of her sustenance from breastmilk at this point, but she she is a little piggy when she starts eating foods she loves. 

Some of her favorites at one are: scrambled eggs, beans, Kix cereal, MEAT, (she loves meat!  I cut it into minute pieces, but either way, she chipmunks food that she likes and stuffs her little cheeks with it), soups, both blended and with broth and bits of veggies.  She loves carrots and likes broccoli.  She'll eat little pieces of cheese.  I basically just give her little pieces of everything that we eat.  I have really enjoyed baby led weaning with her, no hassle of fretting over her lack of eating.

Verbally, she says a lot of mono-syllable consonant and vowel combinations.  Her favorite little phrase is "digadigadiga".  She has said "mama" once with a purpose and I'm pretty sure she calls her dad "Da" and Gabriela, "Ga".  We really enjoy playing the echo game where I echo everything that she says.

She weighs 19 lbs and is 30 inches long, in the 30th and 70th percentile, respectively. 

So now permit me a trip down memory lane...

 

One day old...

 

 

 

One month old

 

 

 

Our Christmas baby

 

 

 

 

3 months old

 

A child of God...

 

Silly at 4 months

 

 

Our angel baby at 5 months

 

5 months with older sister

Six months old

 Seven months and just starting to try food

Happy 8 month old

 



Beachgoing at 9 months old

 

 

 



10 months and very mobile

 

 

Eleven months at a restaurant

 

 



 

Happy 1 year old at her party!

Trying to jump back in it

Here I am trying to jump back into blogging after a shameful almost two months. I just don't have time to blog!  But I want to, I have several posts thought out in my head and I just need to get them on the computer!  But I feel daunted when I think of all that I need to catch up on, I should just jump right in wherever I'm at and get started.   I want to make it a priority.  Nice things are happening in my life and I want to capture them!  Two of my girls had birthdays, I was registrar for the La Leche League conference, Benny has kept our garden growing and we have had a wonderful harvest and will continue to do so throughout the winter thanks to the cold-frames that he is building, and more.   We've had an exciting fall; full of trips and lots of learning.  School is going well, finally, after a rather rough start I have found a good groove with it.  The girls are really learning so much! 

Weekly Round up Sept. 24-28

Well, only my 5th week of homeschooling and it was a very difficult one for me.  I went head to head with a host of doubts and a dark cloud over my mind and spirit.  Schooling was at a minimum, but we did manage to muddle through and get some stuff done.  A bright spot was that we received our Cathechism book that I had to order twice as the first one was lost in the mail, Chat's with God's Little Ones.  It's a lovely book and very handy guide to teaching the Faith to the kids, broken down in daily "chats" of about 5 -10 minutes each.  Again, a big thanks to my mentor-friend for bringing this book to my attention.  After a dreary Monday, I decided to completely do something different on Tuesday, so I went to the fountain of information and goodness that is Pinterest, and found a great and free farm unit preschool printable pack from 1plus1plus1equals1.  Wow, that is a great site, you should check it out, tons of great printables and information.  I printed out a lapbook and the girls and I spent the morning putting it together.  It was a wonderful change of pace for all of us, Gabriela loves crafting and they both got a lot of cutting, coloring, and glueing practice as well as some phonics, matching, sorting, and game playing.  Annalise and Gabriela truly enjoyed it and I will definitely be doing some more lapbooking as it really combines the girls love of crafts with learning.  We reviewed the phonic sounds of the letters Qu, R, and S this week and read once from our seashore book.  We learned about the birth of Moses in our Bible studies.  Gabriela did one quick sandpaper grading activity.  Overall it was a super light week, we only schooled 3 days.

 

Golden beads: learning how denominations or made up of groups of 10

 

 

Grading sandpaper

 

 

Beginning sounds clipping

 

 

 

Coloring

 

 

 

 

 

 

Animal nomenclature cards

 

 

 

 

We finished the week by going to St. Ann's art class and learned about angels and St. Michael the Archangel, just in time for his feast day.  The girls made a crafty angel.

 

 

 

Weekly Review, Sept. 17-21

This week proved to be the beginning of a couple of really hard weeks for me in homeschooling.  I don't know if I had just poured everything into reading and planning and the first month that I was already feeling burnt out, if the honeymoon period was over or if I just have really overextended myself in both my expectations and abilities.  I presume it was a bit of it all.  I have managed to keep up the basic phonics work, handwriting, bible study and a tiny bit of math.  In Bible, the girls learned about Joseph and his coat and his time in Egypt.  We went through the sounds of K, L, M, and N and did some word building.  I introduced the Golden Bead Material to Gabriela.  She really enjoyed manipulating it, but then wanted to play with it.  I did not let her play with it for fun, and I'm a bit confused on how to proceed with this aspect of the montessori materials.   The girls collected some leaves and did leaf rubbings and we threaded and colored pasta necklaces as well.  I read some chapters from our Seashore book and the girls watched some more Salsa episodes. 

 

Coloring Pasta Necklaces

 

 

Open-ended crafting, Annalise put that little triangle together on her own

 

 

Gabriela playing with the Golden Bead Material

 

 

Annalise word building.  She begs to do it like her sister.  It requires a lot of active involvement on my part but she is definitely learning her phonics and well on her way to reading. 

 

 

 

 

 

Number writing practice with sandpaper numbers.  The use of sandpaper numbers and letters has really been fruitful for Gabriela's penmanship learning.

 

 

Julienne doing a litte practical life bottle opening practice (no she hasn't mastered it, yet!)

 

 

I took some pictures on our weekly library outing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Consignment Score

A couple of weeks ago I went Mommy and Me consigment store in Ballantyne.  It is a boutique style consigment store, but they were clearancing their summer selections for 70% off.  And where there is clearance, I shall go!  I totally scored two gorgeous smocked dresses for the older girls at $4.50 each!  What a steal, especially when you consider Gabriela's dress is 100% cotton and hand smocked.  I love this old-fashioned (and modest!) style of dress for the girls, but they are very pricey.  I was tickled with my purchases!  The girls donned their dresses right away as we went out to dinner right after we purchased them, it was lovely. 

 

 

Cousins at Play

I am very lucky to live near my family and have my kids grow up with their cousins.   I try to get together once a week for a park play date with the cousins. 

 

 

 

Spiritual Reading

Whenever I need to learn about something, I take it to the books.  A bookworm at heart, I love to read, to learn.  So naturally, as I am exploring my Faith more deeply, I have taken to spiritual reading.  My parish has a wonderful lending library FULL of wonderful books.  I just walk in and let the Holy Spirit guide my hands and eyes and I peruse the shelves.  The first book I picked up was The Holy Longing by Ronald Rolheiser.  This book is written by a Catholic priest but it is written for a larger Christian audience and especially for those who may be floundering in their faith.  As I feel I am green in my spiritual understanding, it really appealed to.  He does make some statements that will make my traditional friends balk.  However, I felt that it adhered to Catholic theology faithfully but most importantly, he reached out and made some pretty deep theological concepts very simple and straight forward to understand.  I gained an understanding of the Incarnation, the Paschal Mystery, our sexuality, and a spirituality in general that frankly I had never understood.  To think that all this time I did not realize what the Body of Christ meant, only on a very superficial level!

Another great book I just read is A Mother's Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot, recommended by a friend.  This book is about developing a Rule of Life much in the same way that those in religious orders live their life.  It is an organizational book but also very inspirational and helps you on your quest to not only order your home, but your soul as well.  I found it very inspiring as she truly spoke to my core; how difficult it is to live out the vocation of marriage and motherhood and how we can live out God's will and become holy in the process.  Definitely a very Catholic book but just what I needed to read this past week as I faced down the barrel of the hardships of mothering and homeschooling.