Something I enjoy & Update on Life with Three

So of course this is not a review blog, but I'd like to share with you a product that I thoroughly enjoy and feel makes a significant educational difference in our lives. And for those of you who read review blogs, you'll appreciate my disclosure: I didn't receive a darn thing from Melissa & Doug for saying this. :)

I saw the Melissa & Doug magnetic calendar originally at Bob Evans, if you can believe it. Then for Katy's third birthday, her Grammy asked for suggestions for a gift and I suggested it (we have such generous grandparents). Now it hangs on our wall and is actually the calendar that we all refer to as a family to see what is going on for the week.



Every last day of the month, Katy and I (and soon David) sit down and pull all the magnets off the calendar and wipe it clean and make a fresh month. Katy finds the correct month, and she is learning the concepts of years, months, weeks, days of the week, etc. She also places the magnetic numbers in the correct spots once I get her started on the correct day of the week. When we first started, she could only do one through ten, but she's making progress learning the teens and twenties.

The other thing that the calendar really helps with is knowing what is coming. Katy used to ask a lot of questions about WHEN stuff was going to happen, and it's hard to explain how long "two weeks" is to a 3 or 4 year old. But now, she helps me put events on the calendar, and then she will ask me what number today is, and then she goes and looks to see what we're doing today and how many days until something else happens. Also, if something is in the distant future, like Christmas, I can say to her, "we have to change the calendar 4 more times before we put Christmas on it," and she understands, at least somewhat, that it's a long way away.

The calendar comes with a lot of appropriate and really useful magnets, such as "Visit the Dentist," "Birthday Party," and "First Day of School." But the magnets can't possibly cover everything, so I use a wipe off marker to keep track of other activities.

So my point is, I would highly recommend this calendar to any family with a preschooler, and I think it's worth the $20 price tag.

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The reality of having three kids under five is setting in. It's not any one thing, but the combination of everything is a bit overwhleming at the moment. The past two weeks have been really crazy as I've been rushing to squeeze in haircuts, dentists appointments, well visits, etc before our fall schedule begins. We've also had lots of orientations, meet and greets, and organizational meetings for said activities. Tuesday is the first official day of preschool, but we've already been over there three times.

I feel like I can't possibly complain about sleep, because Luke is doing really great for his age, but I'm still really tired. We finished our freezer full of meals, so I'm trying to figure out real cooking again. Luke has really woken up and been more alert lately, which is really fun, but comes with more fussiness and difficulty going to sleep. He starting to want to nap in his crib, and usually gets one long nap per day there, but I don't know when that will occur. I'm trying really hard to keep him taking a few short naps in the swing or the car seat, because we're going to be on the move in the mornings and I just can't stay home for long crib naps in the morning.

Oh, and the yardwork. I'll do a separate post when it's complete, but we are growing grass. Lots of grass, and it's a lot of work in this heat.

And Brian and I would really like to get back into shape, but I'm having a hard time getting the time and energy together that it takes to get things moving in that direction.

So enough of the Whinefest - things are good and I think we'll be into a groove in a few weeks.