Almost a Toddler!

I'll help vacuum!

As tempting as it is, I am not going to do one of those nostalgic retrospectives as we near this little wonder's first birthday. If you're wanting it, there are a year's worth of posts that you can read. I will say that she's a lot more of a little girl and a lot less a little baby nowadays. 

Elska spends most of her day scooting around the house and exploring her world. I've decided to give up on keeping the kitchen towels in the drawer that she has decided is hers and have moved them to a higher altitude, so I don't have to constantly rewash them to get the dog hair off of them. The drawer now holds "her" kitchen tools and supplies. Whenever she helps me cook, she takes her items out and then puts them back in her drawer, (and then takes them out and leaves them strewn all over the kitchen). We've also decided that since she will not be dissuaded from the game where she sticks things in the dog's kennel to get her yelled at for chewing on things that we need to put a screen around the outside of the crate. 

Last week, a certain someone decided that she needed to be able to reach further across the coffee table to get all the good stuff, so she stood up and started grabbing. Um, I guess that we will be adjusting her entire environment......

Big grin from a big girl!

In other exciting news for the little girl - today we finished out with her "100 books before 1" literacy program through the library. (Yes, we've done LOTS more than 100 books in this last year. We only found out about the program a few weeks ago.) She got a certificate and a free book. It was very exciting. The librarian also let her sign up for the "1000 B4K" program a few days early. Something tells me that we will finish it before Christmas.

Charlie is over halfway through his first term. He's already learned a lot about welding and is feeling confident that with what he has learned, he will be able to handle anything that he needs to do when we finally find our homestead. I've already started a list of projects for him to work on. 

Caulk strip replaced by yours truly

Today, he is taking care of orientation/registration for the wood tech program that he will be starting for the summer term. He's thinking that it will be less stressful for him than this term was since he's #1 more familiar with the medium and #2 hoping to have math and blueprints as pretty much a review of what he's been doing this term. It'll be nice if it actually works out that way and even better if he gets to start going to school days instead of nights. Elska misses "Daddy Bath Time" since he does way more playing and has a lot more bubbles in the tub than Mama does.

As for me, I've been working on establishing positive habits. Translation - I started doing more walking, I made a daily checklist of chores to do on a daily basis (so I can keep myself accountable to cleaning, mending, etc.), and I've really started focusing on regularly setting aside time for reading and study. Sure, most of the books that I've been reading are more children's and youth literature. I realized though that there are a lot of classics that I've never read and most of the others I haven't picked up in 25 years. I need to refresh my memory if I'm going to be able to pick books that match Elska's interest at the time. I've finished a little over 20 from this list of classic literature. Only 400 or so to go.......

Other upcoming projects: prepping the garden, updating the kitchen, and sorting through all of the stuff that's stored in Elska's bedroom. Really. I'm going to sort it this time. For real. Why are you laughing?