Adelina

This little one is very social now. She likes to make eye contact and coo with us, and she likes to be in my arms. She's my little barnacle. Sometimes I put her in a carrier so I can get some things done. 

 

 

 

 She's smiley.

 

 And she's way more interested in toys now.

Elena put bunny ears on her. 

 

 

And that little face. I just want to love on her. 

She's a sweetie pie. And we adore her.

Beginning of Fall

I've been falling so behind on here, but here's a big catch-up. 

Elena got her first hair cut at a salon. She got a pretty braid so she could look like Rapunzel.

 

Elena got her first bike. She loves it, although we had a lot of hot days and didn't go out to ride it. Samuel got a scooter. We love the paseos in our neighborhood, they're perfect for riding.

We've had lots of park days lately, meeting up with other homeschooled kids. Elena can finally pump her legs on the swing, I just have to give her one push to start.

One day I got a flat tire. It was a little frustrating because the kids and I were on the way to meet Jorge at a park, but it was a good lesson on thankfulness. Samuel and Elena both had positive attitudes about the whole situation, and we were very thankful that the flat tired happened in a place right next to a duck pond. So we parked, waited for Jorge, then went for a walk to see the ducks and run around.

By the time the spare tire was on the van we were really hungry so we went to eat.

Samuel is so tall and slender. 

Jorge and Elena went to a daddy daughter country dance for homeschoolers.

Samuel loves playing with the choo-choo train. 

And he loves reading books. After having a book read to him a few times he'll have at least a few parts memorized. Then he starts "reading" it himself. He's pretty awesome. 

It's hard to keep up with everything right now. Elena's been ill, Samuel's a typical toddler, and I'm taking care of Adelina, all while trying to figure out how to homeschool and keep the house from looking like a disaster area at the same time. Some days are better than others, but we always manage to have some good times.

Homeschool

Homeschooling is going really well. I love that the lessons are super short, we can make things fun to learn, and most of the day is spent playing or doing artwork. Everything is really hands-on. 

Here Elena's doing her writing lesson. She's actually tracing the chalk with a little wet sponge.

And the way the math is taught makes more sense than the way I learned it. It really teaches them how everything works.

 

Samuel plays a lot while we do lessons. Here he's really focused on coloring.

 

 This is a grocery list Elena wrote. My favorite is "tumado."

Here we measuring pumpkins' height, weight, and circumference and compared them. 

We did a lot of activities for our science unit on penguins. The kids loved it, and both could tell you a lot of information about them. 

Samuel actually matched all of these plastic penguin figures with their pictures by himself.

And we measured the kids and then compared their heights to different types of penguins. Did you know that the emperor penguins are about Elena's height? I had no idea.

We've also been doing a lot of artwork, which the kids love.

 

 

And Elena colors on her own pretty much every day.  

 

We're figuring out together how to make homeschooling work well, and I think we're finally finding our groove.

Adelina is 4 Months

I'm getting this up late, but these pictures were taken the day Adelina turned 4 months, October 9th.

She's such a big girl now . . . at least to me. Other people tell me how small she is, but I look at her and see how much she's grown.

At her 4 month check up she weighed 12 lbs. 8 oz.

She's very smiley, even though she didn't want to smile for any pictures this day.

She's super lovable and likes to be in my arms.