Sunday, January 30, 2011

4

Four years ago today, this little angel came into our lives.

She has added spunk, snuggles, and laughter to our family.

Smooshed between two brothers, she's learned to be ultra girly and ultra tough at the same time.


 

She loves princesses, fairies, and My Little Pony.

Her younger brother calls her "Bubby" a nickname that we all have adopted.
Her older brother bosses her around.  But he will still play ponies with her.

There is no one in the world like her and no one else could have blessed our family in the way sweet Melody has.


 

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Comparisons

Melody and Jack are about as different as night and day.

Jack is my intense, rigid, and studious child.  He looks forward to the opportunity to do extra credit and his idea of play time is organizing matchbox cars by color.



Melody, a free spirit, is perfectly content waltzing around just singing to herself.  "Blonde" actually can describe her in many ways.  She is vastly unorganized. While she loves to collect "treasures" the moment she collects one she "loses" it.  While recently visiting my parents, Melody was walking down the hall with Grammy in tow.  Grammy walked into another room and when Melody turned around and noticed she was no longer behind her said, with the most forlorn expression you can imagine, "I lost my Grammy!"



Jack has been working on a project for school in which they had to research an animal.  He choose an Eagle.  He has been working on it for a few days.  Today, in carpool, Melody started talking about the Eagle project.  I was floored when I realized she knew just as much about Eagles as Jack did!
This is not the first time it happens.  She frequently surprises me, in fact, with how bright she is.

That's disappointing to me.  Not that she's bright but that I'm surprised by it.

Jack is such a bright child and has such a love of academics that he often overshadows his sister.

I know it's not good to compare my children.  Nor do I want to short change one by labeling them "the smart one" and the something else.

Does anyone else struggle with this? How do you foster the individual personalities of each child, while still teaching them important values and how to make wise choices?


Friday, January 14, 2011

How Time Flies...

I just realized today that I have barely updated everyone on Sasha and he is leaving tomorrow!

Time flies so fast!

I guess after that first week we just got so used to having him around it just slipped my mind.  That and the fact that we have been busy doing all kinds of fun stuff.


We took a tour of the World Of Coke where, along with seeing a 4-D movie we also tried over 60 varieties of Coke from countries all around the world.

I learned two things; There are a lot of gross cokes out there (including Diet Coke.  Yuck).  Coca-cola Classic is still best coke.


We had fun at the Children's Museum.  Jack and Sasha were big enough to try out the Velcro wall.

Alex and Sasha accompanied Jack to Lake Altoona for a very frigid 24+ hours while Jack earned his Polar Bear badge for Cub Scouts.
Even Sasha, who frequently laughs at us for thinking our winter is cold, got a little chilly!
And we enjoyed an extended winter break when we got 3+ inches of snow and ice this week.  (Yes, that's right.  I have been trapped in my house for four - soon to be five - days with four children.  But that's really material for another post.)  We sledded, built snowmen, ate icicles, and threw snowballs.  I say we but I really mean them. I observed all this from the warmth of my living room with a cup of hot chocolate.



It's hard to believe he's going back to Ukraine tomorrow.  We will all miss him.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The Snowy Day

We have had two snow days already this week!
I would say that this is a rare event but it's actually become almost a yearly event for Atlanta now.
The snow day was the perfect excuse for a few things:

bust out the boogie-board
try out the new Flip camera
go sledding!!



Bonus points to anyone who can guess where "cold blew in" Jack.  Heehee.