After quiet time today, I came into Joseph's room to help him clean up and found this arrangement of Lego numbers he made all by himself! Here he is telling us about them, and the "square numbers" on digital clocks and the like that were his inspiration.

Rosalie has had quite a bit of practice with potty training this week, but her enthusiasm for it also sagged a bit as time went on. When she found these little swim diapers in the back of the bathroom cupboard, she figured she had found the solution to her potty woes! We have tried to explain that swim diapers are not a suitable substitute either for using the potty or for wearing a diaper in the house, but she continues to appear like this multiple times a day saying "this is just for the pool!"

Joseph made his first story in book form! Here he is telling Daddy about it in his own words...















and here are all the pages up close. My favorite parts are the large tray of pancakes and the ending, "and they had fun times!"

Here's a close-up of Joseph's latest lesson book, with his writing in blue, and mine in yellow. His instructions were to fill in the blanks with appropriate numbers on the first page, and circle the inappropriate numbers on the second. It is a very well-thought-out lesson!



Now, here are some close-ups of two of my favorite faces in the whole, wide world!

Apparently, Rosalie knows most of the words to the song Rock-a-bye Baby, which is odd since I have seldom ever sung it to my babies. My best guess is that she learned it during nursery at church, which just goes to show how potent experiences outside of parental influence can be, even at such a young age! In any case, here she is just rocking and singing her heart out before lunch today!

What a couple of hams we have around here this morning! I love both outfits, but the cheetah-print dress, pink tutu, and Dracula cape combo will make particularly potent blackmail as a certain four-year-old gets a little older!

Recently, Joseph discovered that if completing workbook pages was fun, creating them is even more so! Here he is showing off his latest project, designed to test our knowledge of the 12-hour and 24-hour clocks. We go through a lot of paper around here lately, but the results are definitely worth it!

I think we're on our way! Let the potty adventures begin again!

I was still cleaning up breakfast this morning when Rosalie decided she wanted to work on her sticker and pasting book, so I asked Joseph if he had any interest in helping her pull out the pages and cut the pieces for gluing in my place. Boy did he ever! They make a fabulous team, and I love the thought that they are learning to help and rely on each other, not just mom and dad. I hope they will always be such great friends!

Rosalie found this baby in the back of her book and decided it looked ready for a diaper change! She ran to get a stack of wipes and is now going to town wiping, and wiping, and wiping!

Here's Joseph first family portrait! Daddy is blue, Mommy is red, Joseph is green, and Rosalie is pink. I love the happy expressions on everyone's faces!

I found these on my desk yesterday. I guess I know now why Joseph hasn't shown much interest in his Kumon Simple Addition workbook. Adding 1 and 2 to things over and over again must be pretty boring for someone that figured out 13+13 all by himself!

His Counting Coins book has been getting a fair amount of use, however, which is another thing that should have clued me in to his apparent need for more difficult arithmetic. Here is his diagram of all the coins covered in the book, plus the dollar coin, which he logically envisions as being twice the size of a fifty-cent piece. I wish we had a real one to show him!

He also drew a picture of his abacus, which I think is a pretty fair representation! It's always fun to see what he's going to come up with next!

Joseph announced this morning that he had a plan for our Family Home Evening activity tonight. He changed his mind several times through the day, but finally settled on building Duplo houses together. What a great idea!