May was quite a busy month. It's hard to even remember back to everything. Luckily, Jada keeps a calendar. Unfortunately, it's hard to capture all the cute little things the girls do that way. We'll see what jogs my memory as we go along. Since Ellen had a lot of activities this month, I'll start with Phoebe.
Phoebe can now count to 10 using 1:1 correspondence. Our teaching tool, as with Ellen, is the stars on the head board of her toddler bed. She counts the 9 stars on there with us, and the 1 moon. She counts other things in books correctly too, and she knows how many of something that she has. She's working on letter recognition as well using her placemat at the table. She can identify "E" for "Ellie", "D" for "Daddy, duck" (since there is a duck next to the picture), "M" for "Mommy", and "P" for "Phoebe". For some reason, I'm the only one that she associates with the animal on the place mat as well. Oh well, I can live with that. We've got her in pull-ups now during the day, but she's still in diapers at nap and bed time. She can dress herself pretty well, though with the wacky warm weather earlier in the month she really wanted to wear dresses a lot. She talks and sings a lot now too. She's just a lot of fun. She's gotten better about staying in her bed at nap time, but we emptied her room of just about everything she could play with including the crib which we're storing at her Godmother's house. (We just don't have any more room). She asks "Why" a lot more than I remember Ellen asking it. And she's very expressive with her eye brows. I don't know that I've ever mentioned that before, but she really has some great faces...which she's also experimenting with thanks to her sister. Of course, she doesn't make them when we try to take a picture. She's still sucking her thumb, so we're going to need to work on that yet. Phoebe also had one illness this month, it was a strong fever for one day, and then she was fine the next. It was so sad while she was sick though, but she was such a trooper patiently waiting for me to get back from the store with some acetaminophen. Ellen got the same thing the following weekend.
Ellen has had many trips this month, as I mentioned. The month started with trip to the Zoo for her zoo class on underwater animals. We went down and looked at the Otters and Sea Lions. It was too loud in the observation areas to hear much though. I was a bit disappointed. I was hoping for more behind the scenes things, but I guess there's only so much they can do for the classes. We went back to the classroom for activities and story time. The next day, I took the morning off to take Ellen and Phoebe on a field trip with Ellen's class to Dyuck's Peachy Pig farm. The kids were able to get up really close to the animals. The girls fed the chicken, hens, ducks, turkeys, and a horse. We also looked at the huge pigs there. Ellen got really brave while we were there. She used a port-a-potty and held a baby rabbit. The girls had fun. There will be some pictures posted on the trip. Later in the month, Ellen had a school picnic. Well, it was going to be a picnic at a park, but due to the weather, it had to be moved in doors to the school and turned into a carnival. It was still fun. Phoebe won a Hostess snack cake in a cake walk game, both girls dug up buried treasure in a sand table, Ellen even got her face painted. The best part was a professional puppet show where they performed Dr. Seuss' "Horton Hatches the Egg". At first, I sat down with the girls until all the other kids started coming around us. Not wanting to block their view, I got up to move to the outside rim of the crowd. I expected Phoebe to be more scared, but she sat right next to her sister the whole time after they looked over to make sure they could still see me. They laughed and clapped along with every one else. They both really enjoyed it. It was around that time that I realized that they didn't really need me after all *sniff*.
We also did a bunch of other things this month as a family. We took the girls out on the tandem in the trailer to a park that we like to go to in the mornings. They always enjoy that. The next weekend I did Reach the Beach which was a 103 mile ride from Beaverton to Pacific City. Jada took the girls to Ellen's ballet class that morning while I did the ride, and they met me at the coast in the afternoon. I actually finished about 20 minutes before they arrived. I made pretty good time this year. The next weekend, we all did a charity walk for the Foundation for Retinal Research. One of Phoebe's friends has a degenerative eye disease that will render her legally blind by the time she's in grade school. Her mom and dad, who we met in child birth class when Jada was pg with Ellen, put the whole thing together. It was a 5k walk. Phoebe was in the stroller, but Ellen tried to walk it. After about half way, I picked her up and carried her piggy back for a while until we caught back up with Jada and Phoebe. Then I let her walk for a while and rested. Then I picked her up again. We went like that all the way back to the finish line. There was entertainment and a playground at the park where we finished up. Ellen and Phoebe played on the swings pretty much the whole time.
The next weekend, we all went to the zoo in the morning. They were having a Lego Exhibition by a local school, and the butterfly exhibit opened for the summer. Unfortunately, it was quite chilly and windy that morning, so the butterflies weren't moving around much. The Lego's were cool though. They were projects put together by grade school aged kids. It was pretty evenly split between static displays and the kits with motors including their final project which was a scripted (on old Mac Classics) and narrated story of one of the Zoo elephant's trips around Los Angeles. It was creative. We were clicking the girls into the car just as it started to rain, so we timed it just right.
Memorial day weekend closed out the month. Jada and I continued our training for the Cycle Oregon: The Weekend. We are up to 40 miles now. Jada's doing a great job. The farmer's market had it's first crop of fresh, local Oregon strawberries, and we had a picnic with Phoebe's Godmother's family. The girls all had fun playing together, and we were blessed with some more freak sunshine during our whole picnic time. Jada and I went out that weekend too so we could finally see Episode III. We enjoyed it. Then finally, we went over to our friend's house for a BBQ to sample some new recipes.
Next month brings the end of the school year, Nana, Bapa, Auntie M, and our Cycle Oregon trip. Should be another action packed month.
Journal entry: June 5, 2005