In other news...

• In the last few weeks, Eliza has gotten into the habit of "reading" before she goes to sleep.  Her bedtime routine now typically follows this pattern: complete scriptures & prayers with the family, brush teeth, listen to a bedtime story, lie down in bed with bedtime story book and look at it with the lights on, two minutes later call up to Mom or Dad to come turn the lights off so she can go to sleep.  Also, she still suckles when she is about to sleep and when she's sleeping.  It's just a little bit of baby-ness left over that makes me smile.

• Last Fall, Cat began doing a job to earn money.  We had her emptying the dishwasher by herself, but after a little while figured out that Jack was old enough to do a job too. So toward the end of last year, Jack began putting the silverware away, with Cat putting away everything else.  Cat earns 75 cents, unless she does the job without being asked to in the morning, in which case she earns $1.  Jack earns 25 cents.  We have paydays on Saturdays, and divide the money up between spending, savings, and tithing.  Eliza is eager to have her own money, but I haven't been able to think of a good job for her to do on a daily basis.  (Part of the problem being that I still want them to do things to help out, just because.  I don't want to pay them to set the table or clear the table at dinner time, for example.)  Cat is also probably ready to begin doing a different job, but I'm not sure what to add for her, either.  Any suggestions?

• Last year, we took Jack to the Dollar Store a couple of times to use his job money. There, he bought some cheap toys that didn't last very long.  This year, he saw this toy car at Target that he really wanted, so he saved his money and was finally able to buy it recently.  While we were buying his car, he noticed a monster truck that cost a couple more dollars than what he had saved for the green car, and he's talked about the monster truck ever since.  It's a "pink minivan monster truck" (I'm not joking) and Jack is currently saving up for it.

• We began working with the kids to try to establish a habit of regular journal writing at the beginning of the year.  Our goal is to have journal time every Sunday, and so far we've done pretty well with that.  I think it helped just a bit that I made them each a personalized journal cover at the beginning of the year, though the novelty seems to be wearing off.  Cat usually chooses a journal prompt from the Story and Art Inspiration Kit I made for her instead of just writing about her week, but as long as she's writing, I don't complain.  We keep a bunch of colored pencils with the journals so Cat usually writes a page, then draws something to go along with it.  Jack and Eliza mostly scribble, then I talk to them about what they drew and write down what they tell me.  One day Eliza told me that a scribble was a slide.  "Put some people on and they'll go 'Whee!' and they'll slide and slide on their bum bum."  :-)

Other Developments

• I've started trying to teach Jack how to read.  He received a set of the first two levels of BOB books for Christmas, and since he already knows his letters and sounds, I thought, why not?  We are still on the first of the BOB books, but he's getting the hang of it.
• At Cat's previous school, she was a part of the choir and loved it.  And judging by the quality of the mid-year and end-of-year performances, it was a good choir program.  Though we like the academics of Cat's current school, I'm not in love with many of the peripheral components of the school, including the choir she joined in the fall.  As soon as we saw the Christmas concert, I began to think Cat had chosen the wrong extra-curricular activity.  I'd had a feeling she'd enjoy the Drama Club but didn't want to commit to more than one after-school club.  So when school started after the Christmas break, I asked her if she'd like to switch?  She said yes, and the teachers agreed, so that's what she did.  She is now really enjoying staying after school one day a week to be part of Drama, and is eagerly awaiting the auditions for their end-of-year play.
• Eliza is beginning to pronounce things better.  Just today I noticed that she pronounced her name "Liza" instead of "Wiza."  She still has an interesting habit of taking words that end in "r" and  giving them an "ee" sound.  For example, she pronounces "more" as "moh-ee."  I kind of love that she has that little quirk.
• In the LDS Church, we believe that children are mature enough to make sacred covenants with God through baptism at the age of 8.  Cat will be 8 this summer, and it dawned on me late last year that it would be good for her to prepare more seriously to take this step.  After lots of thought and consideration about how to help her best use the next 6 months, Ben and I decided that she should begin reading the Book of Mormon and discussing it with us.  It took us a few days into the New Year to work this into our bedtime routine, since I wanted one of us to read with her each night, but she didn't wait for us to get started.  She'd already read a few chapters by the time Ben and I began taking turns reading with her.  I found a set of scripture marking crayons nobody was using and gave them to her, and now she loves marking up her scriptures.  I also plan on asking her to teach an FHE from something she's read in the Book of Mormon 1-2 times per month.  She did it once in January - did you see the FHE picture and video in my last blog post?  We haven't been as consistent with the Book of Mormon reading as I'd like, largely because bedtime is just such a tricky time for everybody and going to bed late isn't a good option for dealing with extenuating circumstances, but I feel like we're on the right track.
• One of the goals we had for Jack and Eliza was to learn to dress themselves independently this year.  They aren't completely there yet, but they are both doing noticeably better than they were at the beginning of the year.  Yeah for progress!

PS> I finally added some more kid quotes in the sidebar, so you might want to click over from email or reader and check them out.  I've been bad about writing their quotes down lately, but I'm trying to do better!