Preschool

Paige seemed to do very well yesterday at preschool. Here's their daily routine:

6:30 - 8:30 Kids arrive and breakfast is provided - they can just help themselves to food
8:30- 10am Activities. The kids can go around to the stations to do activities on their own and they'll also have group circle activities which include music, stories, spanish lesson, etc.
10am Snack
10:30 - 11:15 Outside play (weather permitting)
11:15 - 12 Activity time again
12 Lunch
1 - 3 Nap time
3-6 Daycare

Paige is in full day preschool which really is half day preschool and half day daycare as you can see by the schedule. Most of the other classrooms are just morning preschool, but they have her classroom for full-time working parents like us. We'll be dropping her off around 7:30 and picking her up about 5:30 every day.

Some of the things we really like about this school is there are no tv's! Also there are 3 bathrooms right inside the room so they can just go when they need to and not have to get the teacher to take them. We're responsible for packing her lunch every day, but the teachers do make sure they eat the main course of what we packed before the snack. The breakfast and morning snack are provided by the school and seem to be fairly healthy options. I think she's going to do really well in this environment!

First day of preschool

Today is Paige's first day of preschool at her new Montessori school! She was really excited to go. We went on Friday to meet her new teachers and after just a few minutes she really warmed up to them and even played with some of the activities. This morning we both took her in and she immediately went with the teacher to meet the one other little girl that was already there. Then the teacher asked her if she wanted to have some breakfast food or start an activity, and she chose the activity over food! She never turns down food at breakfast time! She came over and gave us both a quick hug and a goodbye then went back to playing. We were hoping it would be an easy transition for her, but wasn't expecting it to be this easy!

Here's a picture of Paige's and Brooke's matching dresses today!


This marks the 200th post! Yay!

Brooke's Baptism

Sunday was Brooke's Baptism. We had about 25 people come out from Cincinnati and Pittsburgh to celebrate.

Paige said to me in church: "I like Brooke's dress. Is she married? She's wearing a wedding dress."


The godparents. Paige refers to her Aunt Sara as her "fairy godmother".Here's our failed attempt at getting a nice picture of the cousins:
There's a lot more pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/paigeisone/BrookeSBaptism#

Family Room Project - Completed!

Last month, I posted about Phase 1 of the family room project. Since then, we have completed the drywall, painted, replaced the carpet and baseboards. Here is the finished product:




We also took the grids off the windows and it makes it feel a lot more open.

Phipps Conservatory

On August 3rd, Phipps Conservatory had a free admission day, so we took the girls, my parents and John & Liz to check it out. The girls thought it looked like a princess castle.

This was Dr. Merry's favorite part (after the butterfly garden):

New Windows

This week we're having new windows installed in the living room, kitchen, 3 of the bedrooms and one of the bathrooms. It's a total of 6 windows (counting the massive living room window as 1). None of the living room windows opened. The bedrooms and bathroom windows had all at one time been able to open, but were since painted shut. The kitchen windows opened, but they swung out and had no screens. We think most of these were all the original windows from 1960.

Here are the old living room windows:

Here are the new living room windows:

New kitchen window:
I'm looking forward to seeing if there is any savings on our gas bill this winter. We'll also qualify for the tax credit of 30% of the window cost!

11 week dr appt

Brooke had her 2 month doctor appointment (a few weeks late) today. She is:
12 lbs 14 oz (75th percentile)
23 1/2 inches long (75th percentile)
Head circumference is 15 3/4 (75th percentile)

She also had to get 3 shots and one oral dose. She did really well! She screamed for about half a minute when the shot went in, but as soon as I was able to pick her up again she calmed down. And during the exam she was just watching the doctor and smiling. Such a good baby!

Here are some pictures from 08/04/09:

Tummy Time