Preschool!

We decided to start Saoirse on a preschool curriculum and, oh my, has it been fun so far! Here's a small taste of our first week of "school".

Her number, shape and color of the week.

Our scripture for the week was Genesis 1, which we'll be working through for a few weeks, learning about creation. This week we learned that God made the light and the dark, and the sky with the clouds and the water.

Our song was  "This Little Light of Mine" which she LOVED! It's now one of her favorites. And our number was 1, our color was red, and our shape was circle.

Lastly, our book for the week was "Llama, Llama Red Pajama". If you've never read this before, I highly recommend it! She loved finding his red pajama's, saying words like "baby" and "momma/ mommy". While that might be a bit easy for some two year olds, it was quite the accomplishment for Saoirse with her speech delays. It was a great way to get her to say those words without asking her to repeat them... amazing.

Some of our favorite projects from the week!

Not only did we have a lot of fun at home, but I think it helped her a lot at speech therapy as well. We've seen dramatic improvements in her speech in the past week. She's also learned what it means to wait and sit quietly, which has been a tremendous help in speech.

One of her new songs in speech class is the "Peanut Butter" song. It helps her make the "m" sound and say "la la la". Repeating those noises will help her with forming new words, as we have seen already and hopefully she will just keep getting better! I even put a video of her singing it here for you to watch. Spoiler alert: It's crazy cute.

Then, of course, this week we were preparing for Easter. We not only dyed our eggs, but also painted them with watercolors! She thought it was so cool to paint something other than paper! And she was really gentle with the eggs as well. I was so proud of her working so gently and diligently on her project.

By far, though, the best part of the week was when I was able to tell her about Jesus. We read the story about him in her Bible. We learned that he was God's son and that he died to save us. At this point in the story, Saoirse hugged me and started crying and hugging her Bible on the page that showed Jesus on the cross. It took me awhile to calm her down and finish the story about him rising again! She was very happy that he came back!

Her reaction was just so humbling, so pure, so real. It made me think, do I still react that way to Christ's sacrifice? I would like to hope that I do, but I know that I become bogged down with theology, politics, heck... ministry itself. Things that should be a reaction to the knowledge that Christ died for me, instead get in the way. It made me think, I need to rearrange things. So, once again, my children minister to me in ways they cannot even understand. Words cannot express how they bless me. Thank you God for these amazing kids!

As for Reuben, he recently said his first word, "Mama"! Yay! Point mommy :) I was pretty stoked since Saoirse's first word was "Dada". It felt good to win one.

He also pulled himself to a standing position for the first time and has been pulling himself up more and more ever since. He's going to be walking in no time. It's hard to believe that he's already 8 1/2 months old. Why do kids have to grow up so fast?

So that's our first week of school. Lots of developments for both kids, a huge spiritual challenge for mom, and another hard week at work for Daddy. Seriously, he works so hard... he's amazing. I'm so proud of the minister he has become. I can see God working in the lives of those he touches. God is doing great things though our Chaplain.

Here's some of the pictures from our week!

Reuben crawling in the background as S works one of her art projects.

Making circles!

We went around the house collecting things that are red!

We traced her hands and cut the yarn the length of her arm span and taped the hands to the yarn to mail to friends and family for Easter... a long distance hug!

Learning how to use tape was fun!

Painting on a vertical surface for the first time.

Yep, that's red paint in her hair. Oi...