My Little Helpers

One day last week I took the kids outside and put them to work. I needed to clean the stroller and all of a sudden a light bulb went on in my head. The kids would love this job that I dreaded. They did such a great job that I let them clean their play table and chairs too. I'm loving this new found activity for the kids.




They were so eager to help so I also let them water my flowers.


Next time I think I'll just make a to do list, give it to Lenny, and then sit back and read a magazine while they go to work.

After all the hard work of cleaning the stroller and their table, they decided to play in the sandbox for a while. Oh yes and Brooke decided to play in the mud and get it all over her. It was time to go inside for a bath, lunch, and a nap. After the nap Brooke and Nate enjoyed reading a few books at their nice clean table.


Speaking of reading, Lenny is doing a great job at reading now. He's been very interested in how to spell words for a very long time. He was always asking how to spell things. I didn't take the cue at that time to start teaching him to read. And to be quite frank, I didn't know how to start teaching him. Someone told me about Bob Books. About a month ago Lenny and I headed to Borders and bought him the first set of Bob Books. Lenny absolutely loves them! He wants to read all the time. He is moving along much faster than I had imagined and doesn't need much help from me. He sounds out the letters for the new words. We now have labels all over the house so that he can learn more words. We are ready to move on to the next set of Bob Books.

Colors

Brooke and Nate are learning their colors now and they are finally starting to talk more. Yesterday I bought some new posters to put in their play room that shows the different colors and how to spell them. I figured all three of the kids would benefit from them. As soon as we put them up, Lenny was going around the room spelling all the colors and Brooke and Nate were checking out all the colors. A little later Lenny asked me to read Green Eggs and Ham to them. I sat down to read it and got as far as the title. Brooke got all excited then jumped up, ran over to the green sign and pointed to it. Here she is all proud next to the sign.


Gotta Love Tomatoes

Each year when we plant our vegetable garden, we have to plant a cherry tomato plant just for Lenny. He always gets his own Sweet 100 plant. He has loved them since he was old enough to walk. We have another one in the family (besides myself) that also loves tomatoes--Nate. He gets very upset when there aren't anymore ripe ones for him to eat. He would stand there and eat them for an hour if we would let him. I guess he will be getting his own plant next year too. Brooke doesn't care for them. She wants one just because Nate has one but she just bites down on it and then spits it out.


Summer Camp

Lenny is going to summer camp all this week from 8:30 a.m. to noon. He really likes it a lot. Here he is leaving for camp this morning. It's so cute to pack his backpack. He always needs to look through everything that I put in it.


I just have to tell this story because it is so cute how Lenny will go to camp and have a great time but as soon as we pick him up, he is right back to being a big brother. I decided to put Brooke's hair in piggy tails this morning which is always an iffy thing because she constantly pulls them out. Anyway, we were in the van and on the way to take Lenny to camp. Lenny said, "I like Brooke's..." and before he said piggy tails, I made a silly noise so that he would stop because if Brooke heard those last words she would have pulled out the piggy tails. Well, Lenny just laughed hysterically about my noises. So he kept saying it as a joke and I would hush him up with another silly noise. Brooke and Nate were even laughing and they had no idea why. We dropped Lenny off and when we came back to pick him up he gave me a huge hug and then ran over to Brooke and said, "Brookey still has her piggy tails" and then laughed. Well, she didn't have them long after that.

From the Mouth of a Four Year Old

I guess the story above could have been included here but here's another one anyway. Lenny is a proud big brother. He really does love his brother and sister a lot. He tells everyone that he loves Brooke because she is soft and Nate because he is silly.

Okay, one more. I've been asking Lenny the night before what he would like to take as a snack to camp the next day. The first day was Doritos, today was bug crackers. Tonight I asked him the same question and he said, "I think I would like to take fruit tomorrow." I said, "Really? That's great. Why do you want to take fruit?" He said, "So that I can have energy and grow big."