Pictures

Back to Football

So, we are a little football crazy around here. We're getting our fantasy football teams ready, and gearing up for Sunday afternoon and Monday night football parties. To go with our enthusiasm for the first game of the NFL regular season tonight (featuring my favorite Packers!), I just put up our new welcome sign on our door.

Everyone's team had to be represented, so it features Beavers for all of us, Broncos for Erik, Patriots for Erik and Jaime, Jaguars for Kirk, and Packers for me.

Happy football season!

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Last week, I looked over to find Trip watching Sesame Street like this:

His pajamas were off after a very messy breakfast, and apparently his hat seemed like a good accessory to his diaper. Priceless! 

Football Practice

Kirk and Erik are coaching middle school football again this year. Our school district is no longer offering football for the middle schoolers like they did last year and in the past, so some people got together and brought Pop Warner football to town. Erik volunteered to be the head coach and Kirk is his assistant/defensive coordinator.

Trip has figured out that they go to practice nearly every day, so if they're gone, he says that they're at football practice. We were out walking one day, and headed over to see the kids in action. Trip had a blast watching them and would have loved to get in the middle of it all. He found a football and tried out his skills on the sidelines.

You can't hear it well if at all in this clip, but he's saying, "Down, set, hike!" before he throws the ball.

If his enthusiasm is a sign of things to come, there will be many more football practices in his future.

All Monkeys!

Recently, Trip and I were playing a game with his stuffed monkeys (read more about it here) and they all ended up in his crib with him. I said, "Wow! Look at all of these monkeys!" so now, Trip loves to say "all monkeys!" and throw all of his monkeys into his crib. He does not like it when I take them out when it's time to sleep, either, so we've had to leave a few extra monkeys in the crib.

He enjoyed being a monkey that day as well!

A New Endeavor

As Trip approached his second birthday, we were noticing him growing by leaps and bounds in his vocabulary and understanding of the world. He is curious and soaks everything in. I felt like I needed to step up the learning activities that I was doing with him in order to foster that curiosity and challenge him a bit. After some reading online, I started making him some learning placemats and little games that work on motor skills, introducing a few new books (especially alphabet books), and so forth.

At the beginning of August, I had the idea to start doing a letter of the week. After a couple of weeks of planning and preparation, we started T week. For young children, I think it's best to start with the letters in their name, so we're working our way through T-R-I-P and then we'll do other letters. It's been a great creative outlet for me and fun for Trip since we do lots of special activities each week. Most things only take/last 5-10 minutes or less, so they're easy to fit in, even on busy days.

When I showed my sister-in-law, Tammi what we were doing, she decided to do the same with our nephew Cooper. It's been so much fun to share ideas and hear how much they have enjoyed it too. A week from now, the boys will working on P at the same time, so we're eager to share some experiences over Skype.

As a way to chronicle what we're doing and to share ideas with other families, I have started a blog called Teach Love Grow. My blogging here will suffer a little, but if you'd like to see what we've been up to, just click on the link and see our adventures.

Popsicles!

Popsicles, or "pakiss" as Trip calls them, have become a daily treat this summer. I found a great popsicle mold during our trip to my parents' house in July (oh, WinCo, how I love you!) and it has served us well. I had purchased other such molds in the past, but always found that they were too big and thus too hard to eat so we didn't use them. These are perfect for Trip and he gets very excited when he can have one. What I like about the whole thing is that I can freeze juice so it's a healthy snack for him.