Tonight our girls saw their first porcupine. They also, for the first time, saw their Grandpa use his gun to end the porcupine’s gambols on his lawn. Tasha was shaking and had tears in her eyes as she witnessed this. (Later she told us that she imagined the porcupine was “frolicking around, daydreaming about candies” [...]

I overheard this conversation between Hubby and our youngest, who were preparing a meal together: Hubby: You need to wash your hands before you touch the food. Charlotte: Yep. Hubby: So are your hands clean? Charlotte: (Proudly) My hands are clean as a whistle because Findley licked every bit of them!

Yesterday our eldest, Tasha, explained why she doesn’t go upstairs alone in the evening. “Well, Mom, there might be monsters up there, and I have to check everything to make sure they aren’t around. I peek behind the doors and in the corners and everything. It’s a lot of work, so I just stay downstairs.” [...]

Our youngest has shied away from using our computer, preferring to let Tasha “run” the computer games while she watches. Today was different. When I launched a math game featuring a dog, she begged to try it. For the first time she used a mouse for an extended period of time, and made good progress [...]

Our youngest, Charlotte, is turning four in less than a month, and her appetite for adventure increases daily. She often asks us to turn on “dangerous music” (by which she means Tchaicovsky’s 1812 Overture or the soundtrack from The Lord of the Rings) and then goes about having a make-believe adventure. She is usually the [...]

I find that every so often one of my girls does something that makes me realize that she’s growing up. Recently Charlotte recently gave me one of these unnerving moments. I have been trying to implement Quiet Time for Mommy. My goal is to secure five minutes of quiet each day, where I can hopefully [...]

I love this about Hubby: he tells stories to our girls to go along with classical music. As they listen to a piece, he makes up a story about what might be happening. Whenever Charlotte hears classical music now she immediately turns to him and urgently asks, “Daddy – what’s happening?!” As we’ve been working [...]

Tasha goes to Senior Kindergarten classes at our local public school. Although there have been many hurdles for her, we are grateful that she has a wonderful teacher, Mrs. S. A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. S. shared with me that Tasha is testing off the charts with her reading. This hard-working teacher then went [...]

Our youngest, Charlotte, will be 4 in a couple of months. (Gulp!) And while she is very different in many ways from her sister, she is showing the same tendency to want to read early. She knows the letters and their sounds. She’s sounding out and reading small words and, with a lot of effort, [...]

As of today, our fish tank is missing a castle. Hubby decided to clean it out with the girls help. They enjoy this chore and take it quite seriously. But today’s cleaning did not go as swimmingly as usual. The following was overheard … Hubby: Charlotte, look at the toilet. What is in it? Charlotte: [...]