May Blessings

What a month May was! Brad celebrated the end of the first year of Seminary with an overnight canoe/kayak trip with 3 other guys from seminary. I think the following picture is supposed to have the caption "This is the life"

It was a well planned and executed adventure, but an adventure none the less. They covered 50 miles on the Thornapple River with a fully-loaded canoe and two kayaks.

 Cora also finished a year of school! Here she is with her preschool teachers Ms. Illiana and Ms. Joyce. 

 With some of her friends: ?, Sharon, Tayse, Cora and Daisy. Her teachers said this was a wonderful class and you can see the sense of camaraderie here!

 Cora herded all her classmates together for me to take a picture of the whole class!

 Peter is growing up so much. When I think of a new baby coming I realize how big he really is! Not the baby anymore. He loves to help me vacuum the dining room floor!

 We enjoyed a day of Tulip Time festivities in Holland. Despite the fact that most of the tulips had bloomed early and lost their petals by the time the festival came around, it was fun to have a blast from the past and share some of the traditions with Cora, Peter and Brad. 

Below: we sampled some Dutch food: croquetten, "pigs in a blanket", oliebollen, currant bun with edam cheese.  

 We watched the Musiekparade (Parade of Bands) despite the rain. The kids loved it!

 My Alma Mater: Holland Christian High School. Always a nice band, but I have to admit that the Holland High School marching band in their wooden shoes is pretty cool!

A time to sow: Cora has been saving seeds from any fruit we ate all winter until they turned moldy. So we asked Grandpa S. if she could help him with his garden and she was very excited about this. She thought she would get to grow apples, oranges, grapefruit...until we explained that they grow on trees and take many many years to produce fruit. She agreed that planting green beans that she could help pick and eat later this summer was a better option! 

New Digs in June

We've been living in a seminary-provided 2 bedroom apartment this year but found out last week that we get to move to a 3 bedroom apartment on or around June 1st! Here are the many reasons we are excited:

• a bedroom for baby
• a little bit more space in general 
• it's on a main floor so no more stairs for groceries, car seats, etc...
• and that also means we will have a walkout sliding door to a grassy lawn and hill behind our apartment - close to having a back yard!
• our apartment is in the back of the building so we won't hear all the parking lot noise that has become so much a part of daily life now
• we will have a laundry room in our own building so no more lugging laundry across a parking lot in rain and snow 
• there is a big community room in the basement of the apartment building for the kids to run and play on yucky days
• there is a playground right next to our building (probably close enough that we'll get tired of hearing the playground noise but the convenience will be nice)
• we will have a storage unit in the basement of the building (we currently have NO storage!)
• we will live across the street from the seminary instead of 3 miles away
• we will have easy, walkable access to Calvin College's nature trails and cross country trails

I know there will be some things that we will miss about our current living situation, but it's hard to know what that will be until we move and it's gone. I do know we will miss our neighbors and the great friends that Cora and Peter have to play with here. There has been a great sense of community here, even though most of those we socialize with are from different countries than us and there can be some stress that comes from cultural differences. But it really has been such a beautiful blessing this year. However, many other families are also moving, either graduating or moving on campus or to private homes, so the dynamics here are changing anyway. So, we pray for good community with our new neighbors, that we can find our way into each others' hearts as we have done so here. We pray especially for Cora and Peter as it will be a big change for them to make new friends again and adjust to having a new baby sister all around the same time.

These are a few pics of our current apartment. We really have felt at home here this year and have been so happy to have a nice apartment to live in. I've also come to appreciate the simplicity of having a small living space: I always know where my kids are and what they are up to, and it's very quick to clean a small space. We've made some adjustments over the year to ease the space issue, like storing our love seat and larger dining room table in my parent's basement. We replaced the table with a smaller older one from craigslist and it's been so worth it! Especially as I've gotten more pregnant the extra space in the dining room is necessary for me to move around. :)

 This is what we will miss the most when we move: our friends! At least we are only moving 3 miles this time and will still be able to come visit these friends and see them at seminary events. We still miss our Colorado friends and family and wish we could pop over to visit whenever we wanted!

 And we've enjoyed the spaciousness around these apartments. The large parking lot has been fun for bikes and scooters, and the grassy hills between buildings have been wonderful playgrounds for the kids. It really is a pretty peaceful atmosphere with the giant trees bordering the property. I will also miss being able to walk to Aldi (a super-discount grocery store).

Well, change is in store. It's inevitable. It's easy to second-guess the decision to make a change. Sticking with what you currently know is like staying in a room that is well-lit. Deciding to make a change is like deciding to open a door to a room that is pitch black, or at best dimly lit from one corner and you can't make out what's lurking in all the dark shadows. And it's not until you've stepped into that dark room and been there for awhile, gradually feeling your way around, turning on little lamps here and there that you start to get used to the new room. But that groping around in the darkness, when your eyes haven't adjusted yet to the lack of light, can be really clumsy and uncomfortable. 

The first week of June, as I mentioned before, holds 3 large changes: school is out for both Brad and Cora; we move to a new apartment and community; baby girl is likely to be born. 

Whoa. 

And yet, I'm not anxious. I think I just know it's going to be crazy; and I'm OK with that.We have lots of people offering help and I've gotten better at accepting and even asking for help. I know I'm going to need it so if you've offered, I hope you meant it! :) 

Escuelita

Well, it's finally decided: Cora is going to attend Grand Rapids Christian Elementary School for kindergarten this fall. She was chosen via lottery to have the opportunity to be in the Spanish Immersion program, which was one of our choices. We weighed the pros and cons back and forth and decided to go for it. So she will attend school every day, but only in the afternoons. Her teacher will be speaking entirely in Spanish to the class and she will be learning to read and write in Spanish! In the SI program they start incorporating English phonics in second grade, so for the next two years it will be entirely Spanish.

One of the things that worried us is that she will be joining a class of students who have all (except for Cora and one other student) been in Spanish Immersion preschool for a whole year together and with the same teacher they will have for kindergarten. That means two things: she will be "behind" and she will be the "new girl". I was able to connect with the teacher and explained that I speak Spanish well enough (ha!) to help Cora learn some over the summer, even though I know we could never get her "caught up" to what the rest of the class has learned and acquired over the course of a school year. She advised me to focus on helping her learn the alphabet sounds in Spanish, numbers 1-20, shapes and colors. You can see the teacher's webpage here for what the preschoolers are doing and have learned.

I devised a plan to start working on this already, since I figure that with the lack of schedule that summer-time and a newborn baby will bring we better get some work done now. My challenge is that Cora has not been interested in learning explicitly from me and I am geared toward teaching in a high school setting. Not that I never tried to make things fun when I was a teacher but the fact is that high schoolers don't always appreciate goofy or silly and they (well, many of them) understand that their job at school is to learn the necessary material and many are motivated internally either to get good grades for one reason or another or to actually learn the language. Cora loves to play. Vocab lists and flashcards are not going to work. This is probably normal for a 5 year old! But my task is to help her acquire as much as I can, while not forcing or frustrating her and keeping our relationship as mother-daughter healthy.

My plan is called "Escuelita" which means "Little School". We've been spending 30 minutes each day doing Escuelita while Peter is napping . We've been doing it for about 2 weeks now and I think she mostly enjoys it. Today I was planning on skipping it since it is Sunday but she asked for it! We've been starting out with a little welcome song and then filling in "El Calendario" and practicing saying in Spanish, for example, "Today is Sunday, May 6" which would be "Hoy es el domingo, el seis de mayo." Then we do some different activities to practice numbers 0-10, the colors red, blue, yellow and orange, and letters a, b, and c. I mostly try to incorporate games like I spy for colors, or collecting items in each color and then counting how many red things, blue things, etc. She made a sticker book of the numbers 0-10 and has been very proud to read it to Daddy a few times. We'll incorporate more numbers, colors and letter, and then also eventually shapes as we go on.

At the end of the 30 minutes she gets a "moneda", a coin from Chuck E Cheese, and she gets to choose 30 minutes of either tv, a computer game or playing a game on my ipod. After she collects 20 coins she will get to go spend them at Chuck E Cheese. Maybe we didn't need the double reward system (the instant and the delayed/long-term), but I wasn't sure how she was going to respond initially and I feel like this will be a big accomplishment for both of us to just keep at it day after day.

So, I'm excited for her to have this opportunity but please pray for her for the challenges I mentioned earlier. All of her preschool class from this year is dispersing to different schools for kindergarten so she would be having to join a new school anyway, but I pray that she will be able to slide into the class, socially, without trouble and will find a really good friend. Also that the challenges of being in an immersion class won't overwhelm and discourage her but will instead invigorate and inspire her! I dream of someday being able to do a week long service project somewhere in Latin America together when she is old enough to come along and both of us being able to communicate fluently with the people!

I'm a Big Boy now!

Peter has recently gone on a baby strike. A few weeks ago we moved him out of the crib and into his "big boy bed", the bottom bed of the bunk bed. He transitioned like a champ! He was definitely ready. He had been asking for a couple weeks if he could sleep in the big boy bed so I think when the time came he knew it was a big deal and he's done such a good job. We are so proud of him!

Since then he has started boycotting other things that are baby-like: sippy cups, his booster seat at the table and most recently, diapers. Yes, diapers.

I was waiting till he was staying dry through naps or at least for an hour or so during the day before I was going to attempt potty training. And since we were getting closer and closer to Baby's due date I figured we would just be waiting until the end of the summer. However last week he told us he wanted to be all done with diapers and tried to persuade us a few times to let him wear underwear to bed at night! We didn't give in but told him that he had to keep his underwear dry all day before he could wear them to bed at night. (We would occasionally let him wear underwear for 20 or 30 minutes at home in the mornings and it was pretty exciting for him, but he'd often have accidents and then we'd change him back to a diaper.)

Since Peter seemed convinced he really wanted to be done wearing diapers I thought we'd try it at home for a few days. The first day in underwear he had a few accidents but always ran to the toilet to try to finish. Then we had a busy weekend and didn't do any practice times. This week I had a pretty open schedule during the mornings so we tried some more just for the portion of the day that we were at home. He totally surprised me! He has been yelling "Potty" with his standard level of great enthusiasm and runs to the toilet before getting wet. He has only had a couple accidents and those were while we were outside playing and he first told me "Potty", then changed his mind and said he didn't want to go inside. He's not the easiest one to persuade to do what he doesn't want to do and since we were outside anyway having an accident maybe is a good way for him to learn that lesson (I hate cleaning potty off floors more than off of clothes!) He even has been staying dry during nap times and for periods of time as long as 4 hours! And he's even figured out how to do most of it on his own, only needing help pulling his pants back up when he's done. I'm completely surprised. I feel like I've totally underestimated him! I think the only hang up right now is that he doesn't seem to want to go to the bathroom while in public (and just holds it till we get home!), or when with someone other than me or Brad. He's not staying dry all night but he is at least willing to wear a diaper to bed at night.

I'm trying to not get my hopes up too much about this, even though it's exciting to see him doing so well since this was really his idea. But knowing how many changes are coming up soon makes me suspect we may have a regression or just some more 2 year old defiance on our hands in the next few months. But for now it's impressive to see him putting his mind to this and succeeding!

Chicago a la Familia

Brad and Cora were on Spring Break last week and since the kids spend much of their time pretending to take a train to Chicago ("Uncago" in Peter's words) we thought it would be fun to take a day trip. We drove to Michigan City, IN where we picked up the South Shore Commuter train. Not as nice a ride as the Amtrak, but the tickets are super cheap and it's still a train by any child's definition. It rides on tracks, moves quickly and blows a horn. We chug-a-chug-a-choo-chooed the rest of the way to Chicago.

We got off the train at Millennium Park and had a snacky lunch there. The highlight of the park was enjoying green grass and trees on a sunny day with a brisk chill, and possibly the very friendly and hungry squirrels and birds we shared our snacks with. We didn't explore the park much so we'll have to do that another time! We trekked along the Riverfront path to Navy Pier, enjoying views of Lake Michigan and sounds of roaring traffic

It was a perfect day for a Ferris Wheel ride. That's not my favorite way to spend 7 minutes so we saved a few bucks and I enjoyed watching them from a sunny, out of the breeze location.

Off they go! 

And there, at the very top of the Ferris Wheel, I see a little blondie stick his head out to wave "Hi, Mom!" I was much more comfortable with that from the ground looking up than I would have been from up there looking down! I would have ruined all their fun had I been the parent riding with them! Give me a roller coaster over a Ferris Wheel any day!

After our fun at Navy Pier we gave our feet a treat and took a Water Taxi back to Michigan Ave where we only had to walk a few blocks back to the train station.

Cora preferred riding under the draw bridges more than walking across them - they were bouncy! 

We had a great day together as a family. It was fun to watch both the kids be so excited about riding trains, big city buildings and traffic, Police boats, Fire boats, riding a boat, etc. We rode the train back to Michigan City, at a pre-packed dinner in the car and got home in time for bedtime! In a sense it was a whirlwind day and we only saw a fraction of Chicago, but our intent was to have the thrill of riding a train and spending the day together doing a few fun things in the Windy City. Goal: achieved!