Kid Updates

I didn't get a chance to write last week, so while I am up with a raging sore throat, waiting for Ben to go to bed, I might as well blog.  Tomorrow is going to be another crazy Sunday.  Last week I made a big St. Patrick's Day meal.  Corned beef and cabbage, except I forgot to add the cabbage.  Oops.  I also made green bread which turned out PERFECT.  And homemade mint ice cream which was seriously the best homemade ice cream I have ever made.  Derek whipped it a bit with a whisk before I put it into the ice cream maker.  I wonder if that was the secret.  It was so light and fluffy and amazing.
Anyway, so that is my excuse for not blogging earlier.  Then we also put on a Youth Missionary activity for our combined activity.  It took quite a bit of time too....moving on...
I have 2 weeks to cover.  That is  A LOT where Ben is right now.  He went from saying a few words to saying almost everything.  I can't always understand what he wants, and he mostly still talks in one word phrases, but it is FANTASTIC to have him saying what he wants.
Probably every third word is CARS.  He LOVES Cars.  The movie.  Just now he brought me the remote and said, CARS, pointing to the TV.  He has given the Beast a rest and now carries around a Lightning McQueen or Mater all the time.  He wants his Cars pjs, his Cars sippy.  I don't remember the girls being fixated on one thing quite this much.
He also is getting very picky about what he wears.  He LOVES the Avengers t-shirt he has.  He wants to wear it every day and night.  He also had a tantrum today when I put on his shoes.  He was screaming for his boots, but I thought his other shoes would be more practical for what we had scheduled (that we didn't end up doing since I felt too sick).  When I came out from getting ready, he had taken off his shoes and put his boots on himself.  Alright then!  He is just really fun right now.  Except that he takes super long naps (if I forget to wake him) and then I am up late with him.  Urgh.

Ben in the Cars pjs, Avengers shirt, favorite boots, oh yeah, and fairy wings.  That boy!

   I have been having some conversations with Libby's teacher about Libby.  It turns out she is a day dreamer.  What a surprise!  Not.  But we had a conference this week and her teacher is sure that she will be ready for first grade.  We implemented a star sticker chart to reward her for staying on task.  We will see how it goes.  But I wanted to make sure she was ready in the reading department.  So, I created a chart (just like my wonderful mother!) that is the path to Disneyland (we are planning a trip in October).  For every 10 reading lessons she and Sarah (I decided to start with Sarah too) complete, they get to watch a Disney movie.  I wasn't sure how the lessons would go.  But Libby is SUPER excited about them.  In 2 weeks she has whizzed through 35 lessons.  She is going to be just fine.
My favorite Libby quote for the 2 week period:  (explanation) For a Young Women activity last week we had my hairdresser come and teach us some updos.  It was super fun.  I was inspired to try something fun with my hair for our little Bodystep launch.  It was two pigtails on top of my head barrel rolled and pinned into kind of messy curls.  I woke Libby and Sarah up to go.
Libby looks at my hair and says, "Mom, you look scary.  You look like a pig!"

Sarah is also doing the reading lessons and she is doing really well too.  She is already on lesson 30.  Things have started to slow down a bit for her.  She likes to leave out the middle sound when she is sounding things out.  She also LOVES to be silly during the lessons.  She likes to make a mistake and then look at me to see what I will do.  I started making her do 10 jumping jacks and say "uh" "uh" for every one every time she says "i" when she sees the indefinite article (aka the word) "a".  But she like this too much and started saying it wrong even more.  She is so funny.  She is also getting so big!  She ate 2 sloppy joes tonight (Grandma Louise's BBQ), and I think about 1/2 a cucumber.
Her favorite thing to do right now is play "Guess my  ______."  You could fill in that blank with "shape" or "Avenger" or "animal" or "friend" or "movie" pretty much anything.  She is pretty good at playing all of them.  She is a smart little cookie.  I enrolled her in a preschool for next year.  The director said that I could do Tuesday Thursday Pre-K or a class that was more active.  I decided to choose the more active class for Sarah.  I think she will already be reading by then.