First stripe on double blue belt

See his test here.

Double blue belt

See his test here.  Unfortunately the video cut off before the end of the test, but you can get te idea.

First tooth fairy visit to Shawn

Shawn lost his first tooth today! I was convinced that it still had a few days (or even weeks!) before it would come out - boy, was I wrong!

We were eating dinner and Shawn started playing with his wiggly tooth. All of a sudden it popped out! I think it scared him a little. He put it on the table and just stared at it for a minute while I was cheering & clapping! When it finally sunk in what had happened, he got excited and yelled for Raj, who had gone to the kitchen for something. He came rushing back to the dining room to find a slightly bloody gap in Shawn's nervous smile. He shoved a bit of paper towel into the hole and told Shawn to bite down on it. He cleaned off the tooth and put it in a ziploc bag so it wouldn't get lost before the transaction with the Tooth Fairy. Shawn carried around the ziplock bag for the rest of the night.

Shawn was very concerned that tonight's tornado watch was going to interfere with Tooth Fairy's arrival or that a tornado might blow away his tooth! (I can't imagine where he gets his worrying from!) In an effort to distract him from the severe weather outside, Raj told him a story of his first lost tooth:

At school recess, Raj wasn't getting along with a girl in his class. In fact, she smacked him across the face with her gloves! His tooth came out and he was so terrified that he ran home! His mom was surprised when he walked in the door and then school called to see if he had shown up there. It turns out that no one had told Raj that permanent teeth would replace the baby teeth and he thought his teeth were all just going to all fall out. Luckily, someone at school found his tooth and saved it for him in a mini-manilla envelope.  

Shawn thought that was pretty funny.

We also thanked him for his timing: yesterday Raj would have missed it, tomorrow I'd miss it. During the school day, we'd both miss it. Tonight at dinner worked out well! (Plus it was a good excuse for mint chocolate chip ice cream.)

Raj helped him set up a trap to try to catch Tooth Fairy in action. (They tied floss all over the foyer.) After that, Shawn and I read a story called, You Think It's Easy Being the Tooth Fairy? by Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt. It's a very cute story from her point of view. (Maybe next time he won't try to make her job more difficult!) He carefully put his tooth in a special tooth container, put it under his pillow, and reluctantly went to sleep.

Raj said the tooth is officially identified as tooth O. (Baby teeth are lettered & adult teeth are numbered.) Tooth Fairy marked it on a certificate and wrote a tiny letter (1/16 of a sheet of paper!). Both were stamped with an official tooth-shaped hole punch, rolled up into a scroll, and tied with floss. She also left money covered in gold glitter glue rolled & tied with floss - and a business card to her favorite dentist. Shawn woke up 30 minutes before his alarm went off to see if she had gotten the message to come!

Hard to believe my baby is growing up, but things like this won't let me deny it

Almost bilingual

Lilly can count in 2 languages. 

Leprechauns abound

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A leprechaun turned our toilet water green. She drew shamrocks and faces all over our windows & mirrors this morning. She switched Lilly & Shawn's toiletries. She turned our coats inside out & hid our shoes. What a prankster!

Then, when Lilly and I were leaving for a make-up Spanish class at our old Language Stars center, my car wouldn't start! The battery was dead. AAA was able to jumpstart the it and ran a test. Turned out that I needed a new battery. Luckily, the guy was able to change it on the spot. Though we missed our morning plans, today was an okay day to have it happen! (How often does that ever happen?!) Yesterday, I presented to Shawn's class for the AVIC art program - missing that would've been a much bigger inconvenience for more people. So, this could have been worse! (Bonus: I got to Skype with Jennifer since I wasn't going anywhere!) Now I just need to schedule a make-up for Lilly's make-up class! Oh, well.

Since our morning plans had changed, I took advantage of our unexpected time at home and practiced a little piano. The books for beginners that I got from Freecycle are great because I can skip over the lessons about reading music and I feel like I'm progressing quickly! Ha! It was fun to play Ode to Joy (an abbreviated version), in which my hands played in unison, Rockets, in which my left hand played harmony, and Sea Divers, in which my right hand played harmony - this was the first for me playing the piano with hands independent from each other!
YouTube (I play the last 2 songs right after each other, so it may seem like there's only 3 songs.)

I wanted to keep going, but Lilly needed a nap. She won.

When Shawn got home, Ms. Johnsen emailed us about their day:

From: "Johnsen, Karen S" <Karen.Johnsen@d303.org>
Date: March 17, 2015 at 4:25:15 PM CDT
To: "Shannon Puri" <shannonpuri@hotmail.com>
Subject: We didn't catch the Leprechaun!
I want to thank you for all the supplies you sent in for our traps!  I will be sending home  pictures of the traps! The kids did an awesome job!  They worked in small groups of 3 to create a trap. Then each group had a chance to present their trap to the class. They had some very interesting ideas of how to trap the Leprechaun.
He was very sneaky and fast. When we got to school the classroom was a mess chairs everywhere, the calendar all messed up and our daily schedule upside down and backwards.
In each marker box was a green bracelet, a piece of gum, some stickers and a gold coin, then in the pencil cups there was a new pencil and a gold coin with a shamrock on it.  The Leprechaun left a note for each student and he talked about playing in their traps and all the fun he had.  He left shamrock and leprechaun glitter on all the traps!
When we returned from art there were chocolate coins, erasers and a smencil at everyone's place!
But we never caught him!
Maybe next year!
We had a busy day! In the morning we wrote about Leprechauns, pots of gold or what we would do if we caught a Leprechaun. Then we had a chance to share the stories. We read all our Leprechaun poems and books. In the afternoon we had an hour of math, Lucky charm sorting , graphing, adding, comparing, most, least and the fun part eating them! It was a good day!
Happy St. Patrick's Day
Enjoy your evening!
Karen 

After karate, we dropped off 2 oversized garbage bags full of donations to Goodwill. Phew! That felt good to get out of our space (and my car)!

Back at home, we listened to Celtic music and ate corned beef brisket with carrots and onions all cooked in Scottish (not Irish - oops!) ale, twice baked potatoes, and bread. Raj was excited to make sandwiches from the leftovers, but also put in a request for Bangers and Mash (sausages and potatoes) next year. I didn't make my traditional Copy-Cat Shamrock Shakes this year, since we still have ice cream cake leftover from Raj's birthday. I'm sure we'll come up with a reason to make them another time.

After dinner, Lilly wanted to play hide-and-seek.

Oma found the perfect poem for her at http://allpoetry.com/poem/8605367-Hiding-by-Dorothy-Keeley-Aldis :

Hiding

by  Dorothy Keeley Aldis

I'm hiding, I'm hiding
And no one knows where;
For all they can see is my
Toes and my hair

And I just heard my father
Say to my mother -
"But, darling, he she must be
Somewhere or other;

Have you looked in the inkwell?"
And Mother said, "Where?"
"In the INKWELL?"said Father. But
I was not there.

Then "Wait!" cried my mother —
"I think that I see
Him Her under the carpet." But
It was not me.

"Inside the mirror's
A pretty good place."
Said Father and looked, but saw
Only his face.

"We've hunted," sighed Mother,
"As hard as we could
And I am so afraid that we've
Lost him her for good."

Then I laughed out aloud
And I wiggled my toes
And Father said —"Look, dear,
I wonder if those

Toes could be Benny Lilly's?
There are ten of them, see?"
And they WERE so surprised to find
Out it was me!

Author Notes

From a book entitled "A Child's Anthology of Poetry"

© by owner. Added by volunteers for educational purposes and provided at no charge.  Dmca

It fits Lilly perfectly. Shawn giggled when I read it to him, though I had to explain what an ink well was.

2nd stripe on single blue belt

See his test here.

Three videos from Lilly

Lilly loves counting (except she thinks you always start with 2). She's also working on jumping. She's such a character.

We have no idea how this started, but Lilly's standard farewell lately is, "Bye-bye! See you soon! No poop!" followed by asilly smile and/or giggle. She cracks me up! 

We're playing in the hallway while Shawn's in Spanish class. One of Lilly's favorite things to do these days is to talk about colors. About a month ago, everything was "blue." She's expanded her palette since then! She now knows red, orange, yellow, green, blue, & purple. (She can say some in Spanish, but needs help remembering them.) Sometimes she'll even get pink, white, and black. When she sees a color that doesn't fit the ones she knows (brown, silver, gray...) she asks and tries to repeat them, but those names haven't stuck yet.

My big girl is growing fast!