Pictures from the last weeks of February, first week of March.

President's Day!  We worked on a President's Day book...she colored the pictures and wrote out their names like:  George Washington, White House, Abraham Lincoln....and unfortunately I cannot remember the rest because I've misplaced the book (I'm sooooo disappointed...she worked really hard on it)!

Feast of the Chair of Peter suncatcher craft that we made.  Idea found here.

 

Learning her vowels:

Spring bird nesting activities:  *thought up all the bird nesting materials a bird might use
*colored a spring bird in a nest and wrote out a sentence
*collected materials both indoors and outside that a bird might use and hung them in a netting bag in a tree.
*examined a real bird's nest up close :)

Started our tomato and sweet pepper seeds in indoor planters:

Night cough prompts doc visit.

So Isabel has been having a night-time only cough which started a few days after we noticed the weird finger rash (so within the first few days of February the cough started).  Recently the cough has led to her throwing up...as in she's coughed so much that it turns into gagging and throwing up, usually alot of mucus.  However, she hasn't had a cold or sinus infection and it's certainly not a flu or stomach virus. 

Monday, 2/21 I took her to the pediatrician who said that it "looks like" an allergy, although we just had her tested for 56 different allergies last week and they all came back negative except for black and brown mold.  She said that asthma does not seem likely, since she does not cough or wheeze after running around playing.  We were given some Singu.lair samples to try and the first night she tried it, absolutely NO coughing!  Doc was completely puzzled. 

However today, Tuesday, 2/22, she wound up coughing during the day, which led to throwing up during the daytime!  Then another bout of coughing led to tears, a sore throat, and more throwing up in the night.  So much for the Singu.lair!!  After it failed to work tonight, it was thrown up....I guess that's what it deserves. 

Circus, valentines and Greensboro

The second week of February we had alot going on!

We were busy finishing up valentines to put in the mail to relatives and for our Valentine's Day party.  For valentines this year, we cut out hearts on white cardstock, and Isabel did the marble art (rolling a paint covered marble over the top of the hearts) as the decoration.  We let them dry, then glued them to construction paper (note:  use cardstock, not construction paper in the future!), then I wrote out "Happy Valentine's Day" and Isabel wrote her name.

We made edible heart bracelets that turned out pretty cute!  I got the idea from this blog!  So clever!

On Tuesday, 2/8 we babysat for a neighbor (which was really more of a playdate for Isabel!) :)  then headed off to Greensboro to visit her friends who had moved from the neighborhood.  Isabel had a really good time and talked the entire drive home about how much she missed Hailee and Hannah and wondered when they could come visit her.

Wednesday 2/9 we had tickets to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus at the RBC Center.  I really didn't know what to expect since I had not been to a circus myself since I was a little girl!  My memories of it were very vague, and I hoped that we would not be bored by a bunch of clown acts.  Boy, I had no idea it would be so amazing!  I mean, Rob and I both were very impressed!  And when the show started, Isabel's face was just in awe.  She could not look away from the show, but took my hand and pointed with her other hand at everything that was going on. Our only (slight) disappointment was that this circus did not have lions performing.  They did have tigers, and Iz loved them, but she was really hoping for lions.  

So Wednesday's school day revolved all around the circus!  We thought of all the circus-related words we could come up with and listed them on the chalkboard.  She wrote out lion, tiger, elephant and clown... and not by tracing the words!  This time I decided to give her lined paper and wrote out the word, and she copied it below, and I was really amazed at how well she did it!   I thought the words would be all over the place on the page, but she did a good job of keeping them within the lines!  So I think letter tracing may be a thing of the past for her!  Time to move on to bigger and better things ;)

I taped down a piece of string, gave her a swiffer duster sans the duster part (as a balancing stick) and let her "walk a tightrope"...she thought this was just fantastic and did it over and over again, even including some of her animals.  I was so glad we did this activity, because when we went to the circus that night, she watched the tightrope walkers in amazement!

We decorated paper plates with REAL makeup as clown faces.  I think Isabel was a little shocked that we used real makeup, but she did not complain!  We added yarn for hair and a pointed hat, and they turned out pretty good!

That morning we made lion muffins using blueberry muffins, peanut butter frosting, corn pops for the mane and black icing for the eyes, nose and mouth.  They turned out very cute! I almost didn't want to eat them!

The Rash and other issues.

On Sunday, January 30th, we were sitting in church when I happened to look down and notice Isabel's left pointer finger.  I was completely horrified.  Out of nowhere there had developed a bumpy, red, irritated looking area which on first impression reminded me of poison ivy.  I was so upset by it, I could hardly focus on the rest of Mass.

After inspecting it, it doesn't itch or hurt, and it is only on this one finger, from the fingertip to almost halfway down the finger.  That's it.  So I decided to just watch it since it wasn't bothering her.  We put AandD ointment on it, but that seemed to make it worse instead of better.
13 days later, it seems to be "healing", but it is very slow to try to clear up...we have switched to Aquaphor at night, and that is helping MUCH more than the A&D.

So, based on the weird rash (which after googling it, dyshidrotic eczema is the closest thing I can come up with), and after realizing that she was starting to go stagnant on her growth chart as far as weight, not to mention the itchy face, and newly developed "night cough", I decided we should take her to have food allergy testing done.

Bless her heart, this was her back on Wednesday:

And while I was praying that we would find some sort of answer to any of the strange symptoms she's been having, it turns out she has zero food allergies, but does have a mild allergy to both black and brown mold.  Well, it's doubtful mold is causing her issues....so we've reached another dead end.

She was a champ through the pokes of the testing and her reward was princess lip gloss!   So now we will be adding her high calorie supplements back into her daily milkshakes (which we had simply reduced to pediasure)...which means it will be a combo of pediasure, scandishake and duocal.  (Ahhh...Mommy sees lots of dollar signs again)!

First week of February 2011

Here are some of the things Iz did this week:

Last ballet class (for awhile) *sniff sniff*
Visit with Ms. Yuwie and her 4 week old daughter, Samantha!  This was soooo wonderful, especially for me since we are getting close to having our own newborn in the house soon.  Isabel was quite a bit less interested than I thought she would be.
For school work we reviewed her sound book, practiced tracing and writing some "trouble letters": s, u, v, w, x, y; she traced and colored hearts in preparation for Valentine's Day, heart cutting practice (I loved seeing the improvement in her cutting skills over the last year!).
She helped make a heart garland for our Valentine's Day party:

We tried to grow grass in the shape of a heart, but it did not work!  Very disappointing (we watched it for 2 weeks and it did nothing!)  But here is a picture of her sprinkling grass seeds on the heart shaped sponge:

 For an art project, we made homemade puffy paint using glue, paint and shaving cream....the result was a soft foam texture which worked nicely for painting and dried soft and fluffy!  However, if you touched it too much after it dried, it would begin to flake off.

We made Valentine snowflake decorations for our upcoming V-day party.
She colored and named letters A-F flashcards....this is really more like a review since she knows the names and sounds of all the letters, but it is the first step in the reading program we are beginning, so extra review can't hurt!
I printed out a blank calendar with 31 numbers and she placed them all on the calendar in order...it was a fun and different way to practice ordering numbers.

She and I both did this project from Catholic Icing.  "This little light of mine" craft tied into last week's lesson on being a clear and bright image of God by making right choices....she loved having her own little tea light (battery operated) candle.  And of course we just had to sing "This little light of mine" a few dozen times too :)

Finally to end the week, we attended the Children's Holy Hour at St. Joseph church on Friday morning, since it was the First Friday of February, and it was WONDERFUL!  I have never been to a children's holy hour so I wasn't sure what to expect, but really thought that it would be mostly children and noisy, and they'd probably turn on a kid's cd of worship songs in the background.  Wrong.  The church's monsignor led the kids through an entire hour of worship, directing everything to their level...he brought them up around the altar and they all knelt in front of the Blessed Sacrament and said a decade of the rosary....he talked about why they use incense and how it reminds us of our prayers lifting up to God.  He pointed out an angel statue with it's arms stretched out towards Jesus and just explained all sorts of different imagery that many Catholic churches use (statues, paintings, crosses) to direct our attention towards God!  I loved him!  And Isabel was delighted to be so included.  Oh and did I mention it was almost all homeschooling families?? Yeah!  I got to meet several new faces :)

That night we celebrated Grandpa H's birthday by taking him out to Olive Garden for dinner :)  The following morning, Isabel got to attend a friend's birthday party at the science museum downtown with Daddy.  She got to dig for fossils, break a toy dinosaur out of some "rock" and other dino related activities.  Rob said she had a blast!