"The best teachers are those who show you where to look but don't tell you what to see."
-Alexandra K. Trenfor
I remarked in a recent post that Ashlyn is making some strange concoctions at dinner time. This tendency has migrated to snack time as well. This is Ashlyn putting the “pea” in “peanut butter”. Get it? She put peas on peanut butter, does that help? Not so funny? Oh well, moving on. She enjoyed it so much that she shared her new recipe with James.
In outside news, it was time to water the garden this week and Ashlyn was kind enough to show James how it’s done. James, remembering past experiences where he was sprayed during this instruction, got some payback. The end result was two very soaked children who felt after all their work they deserved a break by the back door with some juice boxes. It’s a hard life.
Grandpa came over to see the children this week while Grandma was out of town. James showed off his new ability to ask for things by bringing his favorite book over to Grandpa for reading. After the book they shared some watermelon and bread in the kitchen.
Brother and sister are becoming close, which isn’t a simple thing at their age. Ashlyn enjoys teaching and sharing, and for his part James enjoys learning and eating. I even think they are starting to look a little alike, but that may just be my imagination talking.
James is starting to show more interest in every thing around him and is understanding more of how things work. I mentioned already that he is now bringing books over to read, although he’ll usually only make it through a couple of pages before he takes over and starts turning the pages randomly and making excited noises as if he’s just discovered something new. Which to him I suppose he has.
We haven’t shown any pictures of gymnastics in awhile so we took the whole family up to Sunbelt to watch Ashlyn do her thing. She’s doing much better now and will even participate in warm-up. The trick is getting there 10 minutes early so that Ms. Diane, the teacher, can take Ashlyn out. For some reason that works magic and she’ll participate much more than she otherwise would.
This wouldn’t be a proper blog post of course if I didn’t include some pictures from The Fightin’ Texas Aggie’s season opener against the mighty Owls of Rice. James was excited to wear the A&M Jersey that his big sister has outgrown, and Ashlyn got to run around in her new dress courtesy of Auntie Sisa. We tried to have some friends take a family picture of us, but Ashlyn would have none of it. So we took one with smiles to match James, and another with grumpy Ashlyn picture faces.
James has discovered something that we are very excited about. He has learned that he is able to pull himself up on to the couch by himself. Within 30 seconds of this discovery, he learned that he can pull himself over the top part of the couch and fall off the back. This was great fun for James. Ashlyn discovered the chemical reaction that occurs when you mix vinegar and baking soda. Fun!
Grandma and Grandpa Wolfe have been out of town visiting Alaska and Doodle down in Freeport, so we took the kids over on Sunday evening to visit now that they are back. Cousin Heidi was in attendance and the kids had a fun time playing together. Mom and Ashlyn tried to play dress up with James, which he didn’t appreciate very much. In response, James destroyed the town the girls put together and ran off with some helpless villagers and their fences (see middle left picture).
