- Tuesday, we did indeed make the granola bars. The girls, as usual, enjoyed donning their aprons and measuring, pouring, and mixing ingredients. They usually fight over who gets to take a turn with dumping in the ingredients, so this time, I put Rachel in charge of the dry ingredients and Megan in charge of the wet ingredients. That seemed to work well, despite several choruses of "No fair!" from Rachel. The girls were good sports...they tried a granola bar, and ate almost the whole thing. But alas, Rachel declared (after finishing one, mind you), that "I don't really like this," while Megan, ever agreeable, said she liked it but later declined each time one was offered as a snack option. Well, I will call it a success, because I like them, and Bill liked them. Next time I will make them thinner and cook them longer to make them a little crunchier, but they are filling, wholesome, and yummy, in my opinion!
- Wednesday we did Shrinky Dinks together. I had never done these as a child, as far as I can remember, and I enjoyed watching them shrink in the toaster oven as much if not more than the girls did! After their charms came out (two each), they each made a yarn and bead necklace with them. Big hit, needless to say.
- Thursday was a math day. I printed out play money from sesamestreet.org/parents/save, and we played "store" with the play money. They really had fun with this. I was lazy and didn't put price tags on items, but I wrote out prices on index cards and had them bring me a toy or play food that they wanted to buy, and I would then show them the index card with the price, and they had to find the correct amount of money. They liked this so much that they continued playing store, and restaurant, by themselves.
- Friday we briefly did some letter tracing on my iPad (mostly for Rachel), and Megan's assignment was to write a story. She wrote a story about a robin, complete with illustrations. Rachel is getting better at recognizing some letters, and had fun tracing them. We'll have to spend more time doing this activity again later.
- Friday was the conclusion of Megan's swim classes. She jumped off the diving board two times Friday (and once Thursday!). Although she improved greatly, her teachers said she needs to gain more confidence and independence before moving on to Level III. We'll have to work on this in the pool this summer.
- Saturday Megan went to Gymco while Rachel went to a preschool classmate's birthday party at Gymboree. She was very excited about the activities at Gymboree and asked if we can go back there. We'll have to check it out...they sent us home with a free pass to one class. Then that afternoon, we all went to the movies to see "Cars 2". It wasn't as good as the first "Cars" movie, but everyone still enjoyed it (except maybe Daniel. We decided that he is probably too old to sit still at a movie anymore. When I turned him to face the screen, he twisted around to look back at me, and when I turned him to face me, he twisted around to get a good look at the screen. Too fidgety to sit on anyone's lap for any length of time anymore :(
- Sunday I took the girls to church, we had some fun outside time on a beautiful day, and then Grammy and Gaga came over so that Bill and I could drive to East Lansing for the U2 concert at Spartan Stadium. Awesome! Lots of fun for us, and a perfect evening to sit outside at a concert...gorgeous! It was even worth getting home at 1 am.
- Today was crazy, and not a ton of fun....this morning we took Daniel to get his helmet checked and head measured at Wright and Filipis. (More on that in a minute.) This afternoon we took Megan to the hospital to get her follow up ultrasound and VCUG. She hasn't had these procedures since she was three. Even with the sedation (versed), she was pretty upset when they put the catheter in, and it took awhile for us to coax her to pee on the table, as they want her to at the end of the procedure. Poor girl. This test was a lot easier when she was 18 months old and 3 years old. The one funny part of the afternoon was when we were carrying her back down the hall after the procedure to her anguished cries of, "My vagina hurts!" I hope she didn't scare any other kids. She continued to cry and complain of pinching/burning every time she went to the bathroom this afternoon, but by bedtime was doing better. Sadly we ended up bailing on the Tatkos and our every-other-week dinner, because we didn't want to subject their girls to Megan's screaming every time she had to go potty. Which was every 10 minutes for awhile there.
- One nice thing: when we got home from Megan's procedures, there was a letter waiting in the mail for her from Mrs. Freyling, her kindergarten teacher. She had written back to Megan's letter! It was a really sweet letter, and it couldn't have come on a more perfect day to boost my girl's spirits. Megan was able to read almost the entire thing all by herself. She is already planning to write back again.
- Daniel update: this week, Daniel enjoyed his first tastes of pears and squash. He seems to really like squash a lot! He also had his first tooth poke through on Friday! (Bottom front left tooth.) Grammy was letting him bite her finger while we were all watching Megan's swim lesson Friday, and she said his bite was unusually sharp. Sure enough, the faintest line of the top of the tooth can be seen! It makes me a little sad...one more step away from babyhood. And I do really love those toothless grins.
- Another great Daniel update: at his appointment to measure his head today, his diagonal differential measurement is now 4 millimeters! When he started wearing the helmet (back on May 18), his differential measurement was 14 millimeters. So the differential has decreased by 10 millimeters in 5 1/2 weeks. Brian, our orthotist, said that this huge positive change ties for the second largest change in one month's time that he can remember! So what that means is, even if we stopped the helmet right now, his facial asymmetry would be almost unnoticeable to the untrained eye. We're going to keep going and see where he is in early August. Growth could be slow or nil in the next month. Still, even if he stops here, this is fabulous! Brian had initially told me that while we always aim for getting the difference in diagonal head measurements to be zero, reducing the differential by half is a good outcome. We've had reduction of over 70% this time, so that's great!
Looking forward to the week ahead and the freedom allotted to us now that swimming is done. (Even though we had a last minute rescheduling and now the girls have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning.) We ARE going to get to a park, or Meijer Gardens, or the beach this week. Mark my words! This summer is going WAY too fast!
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