Is there a Doctor in the house?

What a great week!

Flamingo pose!

Wednesday we headed to the Zoo!  We have been working on beginning sounds so we took our cameras and went on a Photo Safari!  We wandered around the Zoo making letters sounds and taking lots of pictures! I think I need to invest in a slightly better camera for Bella. Her little camera just isn't clear even when she holds it very still.  But she had so much fun trying to get just the "right" shot!   We are going to make a photo book with our pictures.

Thursday was Clinic.  Bella did great. Her weight is now 39.7 lbs..40 inches tall and her BMI is 92%!!! Her doctor and the entire staff was so pleased.  Her outfit was a huge hit as well! Everyone had to come and check out all her "doctor stuff".   We are waiting on some tests to see about possibly changing enzymes. Gathering the "material" for that test was certainly a challenge but we made a game out of it and she and I had a good laugh!!

Pre-K is going well.  She took her first spelling test over her "Sam" books. I was very proud of her. She wrote and spelled all her words correctly!  She is trying very hard!

Danny is coming to town next week and we are all excited...but I think Bella tops the scale on excitement! She didn't think she was going to get to see him until Christmas so finding out he was coming to town for his birthday made her very happy!  "I love Uncle DanDan!"

Post It

Bella has done very well with her homeschool PreK!  We have tried to keep it fun as she learns new things.  We do have a Post-It game...I take the letter sound we are working on and she has to find something in the house that starts with that sound...today she decided I was going to be all her beginning sounds! I ended up with post-it notes on me from head to toe! The pictures are fuzzy and blurry but we were laughing too hard to hold still for pictures!

Bella has spent the last two nights with us..Daddy has a virus.

Tonight she is the Phantom once again and I have returned to my role as Christine!

Pre-K...and so it begins.

Thursday, as kids everywhere headed back to school, Bella began Pre-K.  We are doing home-school for her this year.  She was so excited..she picked out her first day of school clothes, loaded up her backpack with things she thought she might need...a sweater (jaguar print to match her backpack), tissues (just in case her nose started running), bracelets (because you just never know!).  We arrived at the house and she helped bring in all her treatment equipment, settled in at the table and we began. She did great. It is going to be interesting teaching handwriting as she is truly ambidextrous!  She will start a letter with one hand and finish it with the other, or she will pick up two crayons and color with both hands at the same time!  I just let her go. I figure she'll settle on one hand eventually! If not..we'll work it out!

We only spend an hour to an hour and a half doing school work...with breaks and fun things mixed in.
I'm open to suggestions on how to do this whole home-school thing! I don't want to overwhelm her, but I also don't want to neglect doing something!

The "Doctor" has arrived!

One of subjects we talked about was health. We talked about lungs, hearts, hand washing, etc.  She donned her doctor outfit and had to check my temperature, check my ears, listen to my heart, and lungs.  We looked at pictures of where her lungs are and how her treatments help her lungs.  She saw a picture of the intestinal tract and decided she didn't like the looks of them and she didn't want those in her body! But it did help to explain why, when her tummy hurts and her belly is swollen, where all that "stuff" is that gets backed up! 

All in all I think her first two days went very well. Her Meme has her Monday-Wednesday next week and it will be her turn to work with her. Hopefully switching between the two of us will give her enough of a variety so that she doesn't get bored.

"Chuck"

"Grammy...you get two thumbs up for that squeezable yogurt!" (Well thank you!  I'm glad you like it!!) "It is really good!! I love you for finding it for me Grammy!" (Well..I love you, too!) Love my conversations with her!!

"I love my jaguar packpack (backpack). I will do good with school work!" (We are going to seriously start a reading/math/writing homeschool program with her next week...we may need some extra positive thoughts!!) She is excited about taking her backpack to Grammy and Meme's and bringing it home each night to do homework. She is looking forward to getting a sticker for each day she brings her homework back to us. We will have to see how this works!! She wants to have school...so she says!

After reading her "I See Sam" (a book with only those three words)..I asked her.."What is the lion's name?"...her answer..."Chuck"!!  (How did you come up with Chuck?)  "Oh..I couldn't figure out his name and it sounded like a good one for him!"  By this evening, though, she was spelling and recognizing her three new words and decided 'Sam' was actually a good name for the lion.  She is very excited about being able to read and recognize and spell her words. She wrote them on her dinner menu as practice..and couldn't wait to get home and show her Mommy and Daddy!   Let's hope her enthusiasm continues! (There are 51 more books in her series!!  LOL!!)

These two are so cute!

We played and swam today...it was also Noah's birthday. Can't believe he is 13!!  

Bubble time with Miss B