More pictures Laine took

Laine really likes taking pictures. Eve does too, but she always covers up the lens with her hand and gets lots of fuzzy reddish pictures. Laine is on a self-portrait kick lately. She likes setting the camera on something a foot or so away from her and posing for pictures of herself. Today, we were playing the word figuring out game again, and Laine wrote "James" only she had the "J" and the "S" written backwards, so we worked on writing our letters the right way. When she finally got the letters correct, she asked, "Okay, can you guess what it says?" When I immediately guessed James, she got furious and said, "RRRRGGGHH We're playing the game now. That one was supposed to be tricky for you!" Next time, I tried to act like I was sounding the word out and that made her happier. I guess she doesn't like being the only one that has to sound out her words. Eve gets better at the game every day. Today she was able to read the words "smash", "fish", and "trash" in less than 2 seconds.

"Pho"n DInner Outing

We finally found a food that James likes. He tried pho for the first time today and LOVED it. He kept opening his mouth begging for noodles and slurping them into his mouth. I guess he just doesn't like nasty Gerber food. Everyone at the restaurant thought this was so cute and they kept coming over to watch him eat.

Hangman Part II: Baby steps toward literacy

Hangman is still one of the girl's favorite games. They play it daily and are even starting to incorporate words that aren't names of family members. Today while they were playing, Laine asks me "Mom, how many dashes do I need to put for 'turkey'? Oh, ok thanks _ _ _ _ _ _. Eve, can you guess my word?" Eve: "Ummm what about R?" Laine: "Ummm Mom, does 'turkey' have an 'R' in it?" So, they still don't quite get how to play the game, but they're really trying hard. Chris taught them a great game today. He would write a word, and whoever could figure out what the word said first got a point. They were getting really good. Eve was guessing quite a few of the three letter words before Laine did. I think Laine might be on the brink of reading. She can really sound out a lot of words if you prompt her ("Remember, Laine, the p and the h make a ffff sound when they're next to each other"). Eve always amazes me with her memorization skills. If you read a simple book to her a few times, she can read it back to you verbatim. I think learning sight words as opposed to sounding out letters might be the best method for getting her to read. With English, it makes more sense anyway since most English words aren't really phonetic. You really forget what an absurd language this is until you try teaching it to someone else. The other day Chris and I were talking about how ridiculous it is that in school, kids are taught that each vowel has 2 sounds, the long sound and the short sound. But what about the upside-down "e" sound? The uuhhh sound. Every vowel makes that sound. How come nobody teaches it? Does anyone have any suggestions for teaching preschoolers to read and teaching them English rules that really make sense? Laine has a video that teaches "When there are two vowels in a word, the first one makes the long sound and the other one goes to sleep." This is true for words like: cove, gave, and raid. But today, Chris wrote monkey, and Laine said "So we say "o" and the e goes to sleep, right?" and I wondered why anyone made a rule like that that so often does not apply.

Three cheers for portable DVD players!!!

We just got back from an exciting Thanksgiving weekend in Rochester, New York with Mel, Michael, Sam and Simon. What a party we had! It was about a 7 hour drive each way, and we had a surprisingly great time! John and Nikki let us borrow their DVD player (Thank you SO much!) so the girls watched shows for the majority of the trip, while James slept and cooed happily, while Chris and I got to talk and read to each other. When we got there, the cousins played. Michael built the most amazing carboard box castle that you have ever seen in your whole life in their basement, so they had lots of fun in that. We have a fabulous meal with turkey, salad, asparagus, rolls, sweet potato souffle, stuffing, and mashed potatoes. For dessert, we feasted on pumkpin pie and blueberry pie. Yum! The next day, we helped Mel and Michael pick out their Christmas tree. Santa even parachuted down during the tree cutting event. Other highlights from the trip included sleeping in a bed (thanks Mel and Michael for letting us swipe your bed!), an accordion dance party, movie night, and grown up board games after the kids finally went to sleep. You guys should visit M&M. They are superbs hosts. Happy Thanksgiving!

Making Cookies

After a simple meal of chicken quesadillas - that's pronounced "kay-sa-DILL-ee-ohs" for those who don't have toddlers mangling Spanish - we decided to make some cookies. Since all our cooking gear is still in our house in Sandy we opted for the pre-made dough variety augmented by our own M&M toppers. The girls were in charge of adding those. Eve was really confused for a bit trying to find where we kept the chocolate chips (she's the official chipper when she makes cookies with her Haboji - that's Grandpa for those who don't have toddlers mangling Korean), but she perked right up when she realized that there was candy involved.

We're planning to take a little road trip to upstate New York this week to share Thanksgiving with Uncle Michael, Aunt Mel, Sam, and Simon. The girls are pretty excited to see their cousins and I'm looking forward to the turkey and mashed potatoes.

In other news, James is growing his vocabulary, he's gone from just "mamamamama" to "babababa", "dadadadada", and "oooeaaeeoooeeaa". We'll have complete sentences any day now.

Chris

Monumental Fussing

We had fun on our outing today. Really, we did. But Laine and Eve are 4 and 3 so between the Natural History Museum and the Art museum, there was a big session of "We're so tired. We never want to do anything fun again. This is too hard. We just want to go home to Virginia. I'm bored. I want to yell!" They cheered up when they saw the ice skaters. They could have stood on the edge of the rink watching people ice skate forever. They also appreciated the Smithsonian castle. We're gonna have to do many Saturday trips down here before we come even close to seeing everything there is to see. A lot of the museum stuff isn't any fun unless you're literate, so the museum of Natural History is really the best attraction for kids. Dinosaurs, gems, prehistoric mammals, what more could a kid want?

Waaaaaaa, Kawaiiiiiiii, Ne?

Today, we went downtown to see all the monuments and museums and stuff together as a family. James was probably the biggest tourist attraction of all. Everywhere we went, people oohed and ahhed over him as much as anything else. There's something so cute about a sweet little boy's face peering out of a sling. As is usually the case on such outings, James was a perfect saint the whole time, never making a peep. He just smiled contentedly and enjoyed the sights from his perch against my chest. He's so cozy to snuggle with.

Two really cute pictures

I know, Awwwwww right? Like you think, how could such angelic children ever cause any trouble? Haha, right. The sleeping faces of children are so deceiving.

This is a more accurate portrayal. Un-potty-trained child in underpants trying to open a bottle of who-knows-what to spill who-knows-where, costing her parents who-knows-how-much.

Laine Took These Pictures

Today, Laine was playing with my camera for a really long time and I didn't realize how many pictures she took. She took almost 100 shots! Most of them were of James. She was really cute with him, trying to get his attention and telling him funny things so he would laugh and smile for her pictures. I'm just barely looking through them and I deleted most of them because after all, I don't need 14 pictures of Buntle's-little-brother (Eve's stuffed rabbit) in various poses. She also took about 9 self-portraits of her feet in the air while wearing footed pajamas. However, some of the pictures were quite good.

Funniest Game of Hangman Ever! Also in this edition: a movie review.

One of the greatest things about our apartment is the fact that it is 5 minutes away from Chris's office. Pretty much every day since the girls and I moved here, Chris has been coming home for lunch which has been fun. Today during lunch, Chris taught the girls how to play hangman, and later they wanted me to play it with them. It was hilarious! Okay, so first of all the girls know how to spell like 5 words: Laine, Eve, James, Mom and Dad. And in order to write out the correct number of dashes, they need to spell the word aloud, so while they're writing out _ _ _ _ _, they say outloud: "L-A-I-N-E... OK Mom, I'm ready for you to guess my word!" Laine is a merciful executioner, who will keep adding features to her man to keep it from hanging, adding eyelashes, belly buttons, and fingernails until you've exhausted all the letters of the alphabet. Eve kills her guy off after like 3 guesses, adding 2 arms and a leg if you guess a letter wrong. She'll also change her mind on what the word is halfway through the game, which is kind of ridiculous when you're recycling the same 5 words over and over again.

I just got back from seeing a movie tonight. I decided to see Love in the Time of Cholera. It's one of my favorite books, so I went with the full expectation that the movie would do nothing to capture the literary genius of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. As long as you go in with that expectation, it's an okay movie. It has beautiful cinematography and stays pretty true to the plot. I had expected teenage Florentino to look a little less goobery and a little more like a younger version of Marquz himself, and I was a little surprised at Benjamin Bratt being cast as Juvenal Urbino, but he rose to the challenge very well. The actress that played Fermina was lovely, but her acting left much to be desired. You kind of wonder, OK Florentino, remind me why you spent half a century pining over this girl. Most of what I loved about the book was lost, but I mean really, that was to be expected. There's no way to capture it on film. Read the book and you'll see what I mean. At least it wasn't as a butchered nightmare like the film version of House of the Spirits. Ugh! Quite possibly the WORST Latin American novel-to-film adaptation ever!!! If you want to see a great Latin American novel-to-film, see Like Water for Chocolate. Overall, Love in the Time of Cholera was pretty good. Maybe even quite good to someone that hasn't read the book.

Here's what we're reading

Chris: Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan

Me: The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stuart

Laine: Hansel and Gretel by Rika Lesser and Paul O. Zelinsky

Eve: Ballet Kitty by Bernette Ford and Sam Williams

James: Listens attentively to anything

Family read-aloud: The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

Parents read-aloud: Leven Thumps and the Whispered Secret by Obert Skye

Nikki recommended The Mysterious Benedict Society to me. It's sooooo good. Gifted and talented orphans go on secret missions and save the world. Need I say more? Tell us what you're reading and loving.

Potty training woes

The main thing we've been working on since we moved here is getting Eve potty trained. She promised us: "I will be a potty train after we move to Furginia" but she still shows only mininal interest even after we bought her a "royal potty" that plays a majestical tune when deposits are made into the throne and when tempted with M&Ms and adorable underpants. Laine has been really helpful in showing Eve the ropes. Earlier today there was a conversation that went like this:

"Eve, do you want me to show you how to be a potty train?"

"Umm Okay!"

"Alright, when you get a feeling in your body like you're gonna make a pee-pee or a poo-poo, you run to the potty. Then you sit for a while until it comes out. Afterwards, you use toilet paper like this. See how I'm using the toilet paper?"

"Ummm yup!"

"Okay, then you flush the toilet, and you can't forget to wash your hands, okay?"

But despite the attempts, Eve just doesn't care. The prizes aren't tempting enough. The threats aren't scary enough. She just wants to wear diapers for the rest of her life. She told me she will be a potty train when she turns 9. What's wrong with her?! Laine didn't do this. She was so excited. Remember that time during Sunday dinner when she was so excited to show off her new skills that she brought her potty out into the living room, pulled her pants down, peed in front of the whole family, and grinned ear-to-ear during the applause? Any thoughts for what to do?

Our adventures in Virginia

Hello!

In order to make it easier to keep friends and family informed on what we've been doing since we've moved, I decided to start a blog. I'm pretty busy, so I probably won't be adding new posts very often, but at least this will give you a general idea of what we're up to. We look forward to keeping in touch with all of you. We miss you and love you.

The Bradleys