1, 2, 3, Throw the Ball!

We started the morning by running laps around living room, hallway, and dining room.  (By ‘we’ of course, I mean they – Abby and Shawn!)  I don’t know where all the energy comes from, but I think they finally wore themselves out! 

(It's my first attempt at video editing with a new program.  Now, I know how to do captions.  My next task will be to figure out cutting and trimming!  ...Sorry, this one is so long - it was too late at night for more experimenting.)

I love the “1, 2, 3, 5!” counting (around 3:12 and 3:54)!  I’m not sure what happened to 4, but it’s been missing for a while.  It’s a challenge to get Shawn to say it at all these days!  Hopefully, 4 finds its way home before too long.

Throwing the balls and running circles around me must not have worn them out too much.  They had plenty of energy to get them through a Family Play and Learn class at Gymboree.  The equipment was still set up to pretend it was a farm from last week.  Shawn and Abby love how Miss Elizabeth gets involved in the pretend play with them.  She got all the kids to squeeze under a structure so they could be animals sleeping in a barn.  It was pretty funny to watch them all try to squish under the shelter of a small parachute draped over a monkey bar set up.  Then, she sang a song that went something like this:

The (little pigs) are sleeping.  The (little pigs) are sleeping.
Please be very quiet.  Oh, be very, very quiet
If you wake them, If you shake them,
Then they’re going to (oink, oink, oink, oink, oink)!

When the “animals” woke up, all the kids would jump to their feet and shout out their proper sounds.  Miss Elizabeth must have run through this routine at least a half a dozen times with different animals that the kids suggested (most were farm related, but not all).  They had a blast. 

This evening, I had a victory on Freecycle!  I got a stack of chunky, wooden puzzles!  Most were perfect to give Shawn and Abby new challenges, but there were even a few that could wait a few years (like the states of the US)!  I think I have enough now that I can have a rotation of a couple of puzzles at a time so they don’t get burnt out from doing the same ones over and over.  (That’s what was happening with my limited selection before.)  Gotta love Freecycle!