Clover Turns 2

My baby, my sweet Clover, is turning two! I recently read something online (I can't remember what) that described someone as "sweetness and light personified" and I thought, "that's Clover!" 

 Never have I met someone so joyful, sweet and kind. Her playfulness, her devotion to her sister and her mischievous spirit make her a pleasure to know.

I can't believe how much she has grown and changed this year. She's not a baby anymore and she reminds us every day by how clever, strong and independent she is. Even so, she will always be the baby of the family and holds a special place in our hearts.

Happy Birthday to my amazing little girl, you are beautiful inside and out!

Art Spaces

Just a quick update on the kids artwork and working spaces. Clover is really starting to come in to her own artistically. Above you can see some of her current work. She has been experimenting a lot with stickers, watercolors, pastels and markers.

Meanwhile Echo is starting to get more representational. Above is a picture she did of Clover. This was the first time she clearly drew a face and as anyone who has studied childhood development knows this is a huge milestone! I was very proud of this work. She has since done a lot more face drawings and also loves drawing and painting apple trees.

Echo has had her current art setup for a while now and her desk is working really well for her, it's great that she has a place to go when she wants to make something that is all her own.

Clover has her own desk now too which is a recent development! It's been wonderful to see her gaining independence through having her own work space. She often gets her own paper out of the paper drawer, takes it to her desk and starts working on a drawing.

I also try to leave a blank sheet of paper out on Clover's desk at all times so that she can feel inspired to go create :-) It's so fun to see what the girls work on when they are left to their own devices.

Our Unschooled Year So Far

Now that Echo is getting to be preschool aged things are really starting to take off in her education and it's such a joy to watch. We have had a very busy start to Fall and have been lucky to connect with a fantastic group of homeschoolers and unschoolers who are so inspiring and supportive. We've been doing a lot more out of the house with these other families and Echo's preschool alternative program that I take her to on Wednesdays but we have still had time to do lot's of fun stuff at home too.

As you can see in the top photo we have been doing some simple science experiments like the classic baking soda and vinegar volcano. We also found a really neat caterpillar which we observed and identified (FYI it's a Spicebush Swallowtail Caterpillar)

The girls have also been really in to painting lately and Clover is showing a lot of artistic talent just like her big sister! I have been moving the painting outside quite a bit because it tends to get messy. I love every minute of it though.

They really work well together and like to do a lot of collaborative work.

Echo also enjoys painting on Three dimensional objects like rocks. I love watching her get creative with her painting substrates.

We feel so fortunate to have stumbled upon a homeschool group that encourages and inspires us while we do project work both in and out of the home. It is such an exciting time in the lives of the girls and I love watching them each blossom in their own unique ways.

Clover Turns One

Oh my darling Clover! How are you one already? I am simultaneously amazed that it has already been a year since you were born and unable to imagine a world without you.

 
I can so vividly remember how I felt this time last year. Heavy and uncomfortable, sweating in the August heat and so eager to meet my little girl. I wondered what you would be like, I wondered how I would survive life with two kids under two years, I wondered if I would ever get a full nights sleep again.

When you arrived in the world, literally kicking and screaming, I thought you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. Not only were you beautiful, but you were also good. Sleeping through the night almost immediately and taking everything in stride.

Even now, a year later, I amazed by your calm intelligence, your sense of humor, your spunk and determination, not to mention those gorgeous brown eyes of yours. You are so different than your sister but just as wonderfully perfect and just as loved.

Happy first Birthday my sweet girl! We are so lucky to have you in our lives and I am so honored to be your mommy.

These are highlights from Clover's one year photo shoot, see the rest on my shutterfly at https://audreyalbright.shutterfly.com/pictures/6126 

Learning and Growing

As the kids are growing up we are really starting to get to the fun stuff! I love doing projects and activities with them, I feel like our homeschooling career is really starting to take off and it will only get better from here. Recently I bought some things from a teacher supply store and got a free lesson planning notebook. I'm not using it to plan lessons but I did start writing down what we do every day and categorizing it loosely. It's truly amazing how much we do each day, I really didn't realize until I wrote it down! 

A typical day looks something like this.

Art: Made pipe cleaner animal tails, painting with glitter glue

Science: water beads, magic growing sea animals, blowing bubbles

Language: Dictated a story, read Thumbelina, Beauty and the Beast and The Hat

Math: practiced counting with candy corns

Life Skills: Helped make lunch

Music: Listened to Disney Pandora Station

Physical Education: Dance party!

We don't plan our days very much but we sure manage to squeeze a lot in! It's exciting to watch the girls grow and learn all the time, they are so busy!

I've included a few photos of some of the activities we've been doing lately. It's impossible to document everything so this is just a little sample. Sorry for the poor quality, they were taken on my phone. 

The first two are the girls working on a collaborative painting together. Clover is doing really well in art making and is eating the art supplies less and less ;-). She seemed to really enjoy finger painting which is something Echo never really got in to. I was also happy that the girls worked so well together on this. The moments when they work on something together without fighting are brief but it is starting to happen more and more. In the top photo you can also see that they are enjoying some green beans picked fresh from my garden.

In the above photo you can see a letter Echo wrote to me. Her interest in writing has been steadily growing and her pretend letters are starting to look more like actual letters. She also dictated a story to me the other day, giving me a high hopes that she will be a writer just like her Uncle Logan some day. She told me this letter says "Dear Mommy, I love you".

 Last but not least, Aunt Jessie sent us an awesome stomp rocket! This thing is seriously fun and is great to shoot in our high ceilinged living room. Both the girls were fascinated with it. Jessie also sent us a book of science experiments from my Amazon wish list that looks really cool. We've only done one experiment so far but it was a lot of fun and the girls loved it!

We are doing so many fun and interesting things lately and planning so much more for the Fall. It's a very exciting time for us, watching the girls develop is such a joy!

An Artistic Saturday Morning

Echo's sunflower

We had a great day yesterday and lots of time for art! After our weekly excursion to the farmer's market we came home and had some creative time as a family (sometimes my life is so delicious, I love our weekends!). We bought Echo a new sketchbook and I got one to match so we did some sketching together. Echo decided to draw a picture of a sunflower Eric had bought for her. It very exciting because this was her first time drawing from observation. She did an amazing job! Her artistic talent is really starting to blossom. 

Echo posing with her flower and her drawing. 

 I also spent some time encouraging Clover to draw with a variety of materials. She ended up producing her very first work on paper! Such a big day for both Echo and Clover artistically! Clover will still start to chew the art supplies eventually but she will draw for a little while first. In any case She is getting a good introduction to using art materials.

Clover's first work on paper.

 Echo and I have also been doing a lot of collaborative work. I often draw a fish and she will draw the background.

It's so exciting to see these girls develop their artistic talents and so much fun for me to get to make art with them!

My Little Artist

I'm so excited to say that Clover is starting to make her first scribbles! This is actually a  lot younger than Echo started making art, Clover is almost 9 months and Echo was just over 11 months when she started "coloring". I always assume that Clover will just put any art material I give her directly in her mouth but while at my parents house she drew with sidewalk chalk for a good long time before she tried tasting it. The above drawing is her first, the arching lines not the dinosaur ;-)

Maybe it's watching Echo constantly create things or maybe it's just that different kids start things at different ages but I'm really excited that we will all be doing art projects together soon! I know somebody that will be getting some art supplies for her 1st Birthday :-)

Kid Updates

I feel like with the coming of the new year the kids have had some kind of transformation. Both of them seem to have had a huge developmental jump just in the last few weeks.  With Clover it has been mostly fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. Just last week she started intentionally grabbing for things and she is getting pretty good at it! She also recently discovered her feet which she finds fascinating. Besides all that she has suddenly become much more aware of her surroundings. She interacts with us more, she plays and giggles with us. It's like some magical switch has been flipped.

Echo has also been maturing greatly over the past few weeks. She is stringing together some pretty complex sentences these days. For example, "I want to take a toy from Baba's house back to my own home" and " I went to Target and got a coke and popcorn, that was fun".

She has also been showing a huge interest in fantasy and imaginative play. She informed Eric and I that she was getting married the other day. We were, needless to say, a little taken aback. We asked her who she was marrying and she said "mommy" so it's all good though :-) Apparently getting married in her mind means putting on a dress and dancing. Unfortunately I think that's all a lot of people care about when they get married but at this age it's pretty darn cute. I've "gotten married with her multiple times a week and I help her make elaborate dresses out of blankets and then we dance around the kitchen, pretty sweet if you ask me :-)

She also spends a lot of time "hiding from giants" which consists of the whole family hiding under a blanket until she tells us the giant is gone. After we poke our heads out she inevitably says "another giant's coming!" and we have to hide a again.  This kind of thing is a bit of a shift from the way she used to play pretend where she would mimic doing real things like cooking and cleaning. She still does these things too but the more fantastical play is fascinating to me, not to mention fun!

I'm also happy to report that after months of Echo showing no interest in doing art with me she has begun to explore different artistic mediums again. She loved painting when she was younger but around the time she turned two her interest waned and she pretty much stopped wanting to do any kind of art at all. To my credit I didn't force the issue even though I had always pictured spending hours upon hours painting and coloring with my daughter. I left the art supplies in an area she could access them but I pretty much stopped suggesting it as an activity since she didn't seem interested.

Just the other day she came to me with watercolors and paint brushes in hand and told me she wanted to paint. She then spent the next hour and a half painting peacefully at her little art table. It was amazing! When she finished that she wanted to use her new rubber stamps that she got for Christmas so she spent a good 45 minutes on that as well. Pretty cool! I don't know if her renewed interest in art will continue but I am happy to see her exploring different things and I am really impressed with her attention span. I've included some pictures of her work below.

 I feel like I am really entering a golden era with the kids. The terrible twos are already starting to ease up a bit with Echo and she is getting to be so much fun to talk to and play with. Clover is reaching an age where she can really interact with us and is coming close to being able to sit up which will make her much more self sufficient. These two girls fill my life with so much love and purpose, I am so lucky to be their mommy.

Photos from Clover's First Days

Warning! Very picture heavy post! Here are some photos from our first days with Clover

Clover's first picture, just after birth

Echo meeting Clover for the first time

Mimaw and her baby girls

First day at home

And here are some of my favorites from the professional pics we had done at the hospital...