Riley and Avery

These hugging picutres are courtesy of Avery's special request. She said "Take pictures Riley Avery hugging each other on couch!"

I've totally forgotten about blogging. Not even just couldn't find the time, but like I totally forgot that blogging is something that I do sometimes. Oh, well...

School is going really well. I have A's in all of my classes so far. And I aim to keep it that way. I'm still working on by breastfeeding paper for my anthropology class. I got another amazing book, Mother's Milk. Absolutely love it! The paper's not due for another three weeks, so I have plenty of time. I think I need to focus my topic a little more. Perhaps instead of talking about breastfeeding taboos since the beginning of time, I might just focus on breastfeeding culture as it is today and the factors that lead to formula-feeding. Or I could just examine 1950-1970 as the era I think contributed most to the decline of breastfeeding, the move towards a disembodied motherhood through increased hospital funding, increase in hospital births and high-intervention labor practices, blah blah blah...

I'm still struggling with whether to send Riley to preschool next year. I'm starting to lean towards sending her and homeschooling Avery. If Avery went to preschool next year, she'd be in the same boat that Riley is in, with three years of preschool. Three years is a lot of preschool. So Avery shouldn't really be going to preschool until the year after next. If we pay the monthly tuition for Riley over the summer to go towards next years tuition, we could have lower payments during the year and free up some money for activities. She really really really wants to take a dance class. And Rudi wants her to take an art class, which I think she would enjoy too. I'm not sure about buying a curriculum for Riley. I wouldn't know which one to get. She's been in preschool for two years already, so the preschool curriculum may not challenge her enough. The kindergarten curriculum is most definitely over her head. I'd probably have to buy both and that's not cool. I've found some great websites on Montessori curriculum and will try a little with her now and over the summer to see if teaching her myself is even something that I can stomach. We have a knack for rubbing each other the wrong way, and homeschooling might be the death of us. We'll see...Either way, I definitely need to focus more on Avery. She's getting gypped for sure.

So, yeah, I got a tattoo. Finally. It took two full hours. I'm really really happy with it. It's in the nasty peeling stage right now. I can't wait to see what it'll look like when it's finally all healed. Avery freaked out when I came home with it. She pulled up her pants leg and screamed "Own tattoo! Avery own tattoo!!" Poor thing wanted her own. Temporary tattoos are the only things that she will tolerate on her body. No stamps or band-aids or stickers, please. She keeps looking at my tattoo out of the corner of her eye, and if she sits next to me, she looks at it and scoots over. She doesn't want to hurt me.

Avery still is having her love affair with baths. She takes at least one bath a day. Of course, with the sensitive skin my girls have, I can't possibly wash her that often. She gets pretty dried out with just the water.

Avery's language skills are really blossoming. Now there is officially never a moment of silence in our house. Never. She asks "What is this?" a lot. She's using adjectives and complete sentences, although she still talks like Yoda sometimes. "Avery like band-aids NO!" or "Where big black rolling pin where?" I was talking to another mother here who is concerned that her daughter doesn't draw yet (at 3 1/2) and I told her about how Riley's art started practically over-night. That got me thinking about Avery, who is still in the scribbling phase. I can't wait to see what Avery's art work will look like when she starts drawing recognizable objects. Exciting!