The Cahill's

    The kids are growing up fast! It’s fun to watch them learn and develop new skills right before my eyes. They have such determination and work hard for mastery, flashing joyful smiles when they accomplish their goal.

Flora has learned how to pull to a stand which adds a new dimension of fun to playtime!

Shortly after learning to pull up, she started cruising and life became even more fun. She also loves to crawl up steps, over pillows and follow mom and siblings around the house.

Flora has just begun to sprout her first tooth! She loves to eat and has tried many new foods, including peanut butter and m&m’s, lovingly shared by Ivy.

One evening I took a bunch of water guns to the pool. In his desire to “shoot people” Lance decided to branch out into the big pool. He discovered it wasn’t as scary as he thought and now I can hardly get the kids to play in the baby pool.

Lance loves his floatie and the freedom it brings is quite exhilarating!

Ivy’s idea of fun is quite different. She has never feared the water and her propensity to jump right in has kept us ever watchful. Brian has been teaching her to swim and it’s finally taking hold.

She’s getting better each day! This was taken yesterday and shows the first time she gets her face above water (briefly) without help. This new skill is very exciting to her and she loves to practice.

I am so blessed to watch the minute, ever changing progress of my children. You may see the highlights but behind each video is days and days of practice and failure. Their determination is awesome and their joy is contagious. Thank you God for living, breathing pictures of change.

Our last unit study was actually about three weeks ago. Many things happened between then and now, but thank the Lord (and my parents who gave me my camera) I have captured memories and can relive the fun with my reading audience.

We read about snakes and engaged our whole bodies in an imaginative effort to be one. We crawled on our bellies – Ivy using hands and feet, while Lance expressed the difficulty of a cursed life (See Genesis 3:14). We curled in a ball, opened our mouths wide to swallow prey and “squeezed” each other in constrictor hugs. These hugs have now become a repeated bedtime request.

We learned to roll playdough snakes! They liked it when I made little “rabbits” or “mice” for their snakes to eat.

Ivy shows off the snake she rolled – looks like it already had a big meal.

Flora participated by watching from under the table. Must have been an interesting show.

Ivy has a constrictor snake!

We also made a snake sock puppet and spiral paper snakes that hang above their beds .

Snake holes built out of blocks! We actually got the stuffed snakes as a library reading prize the week before we studied snakes – God has such good timing!

I built this snake house and then Ivy “decorated” it. You can see Lance’s snake emerging in the background.

Our big project was making paper mache eggs with little toy snakes inside that we later hatched out. We did this with some friends and determined that paper mache is not a toddler activity. I think it will be a while before we attempt that again! We also watched snakes hatching on youtube. On a side note, the kid standing next to Lance is just a little younger than him.

Along with our snake books we read the story of Adam and Eve being tempted in the garden and acted the story out with Daddy. It was funny because when we had the kids play the part of Adam and Eve Ivy wouldn’t touch the “no-no” apples. She’s one smart kid!

Later we had trouble with Lance telling Ivy to get out of bed and throw things in Flora’s crib (which she would do). He knew this would get her in trouble and even said something to the effect of “mommy is going to get you” when I came in the room. So I spent a while talking to him about tempting his sister to do wrong and used the Adam and Eve story to hopefully bring some understanding. He hasn’t been doing it lately so maybe it helped.

Ivy loves ladybugs so I used that as the theme for the party. We celebrated over the weekend at Brian’s parents.

I made t-shirt dresses for the girls – they were really easy and turned out super cute!

The cake! (Compliments to Benj. for the superb photography!)

Ivy was very excited about the cake and Lance was excited about blowing out the candles.

The kids got umbrellas and water guns, along with some cute dresses for Ivy.

We took the umbrellas outside to see how they worked while Papa Doc provided some rain.

The kids made sure we were safe from the rain too. I love the interaction between Brian and Ivy.

Here’s another shot of Ivy’s dress – it says “Little Ladybug”

Lance got the hang of water guns really fast and had the greatest laugh as he shot people. Then Nana brought out enough guns for everyone and a war broke out. Lance quickly figured out that the bigger the gun, the better.

Ivy played a while but also took time out for a little art work. We ended the evening with swimming, then the kids played in their bed for at least half an hour before falling asleep – too much cake I guess.

Today I threw a little party for Ivy and her friends.

We had ladybug cupcakes and red kool-aid – a momentary lapse of judgment on my part. However, there were enough sippy cups to go around and all was well.

We painted rocks to look like lady bugs….sort of.

Then we played pin the spot on the lady bug along with lots of ring around the rosie (Ivy’s favorite game).  She given a lot of coloring supplies and has already tried out all of them.

Then tonight Brian’s grandparents are taking us out to dinner for her birthday. What a bunch of fun celebrations for our full-of-fun girl!