Saturday, April 9, 2011

Being Unplugged

I do believe Papa had a harder time with no Internet. He would come home asking about the baseball scores or the scoop on some news that he had heard a brief summary on, and would get frustrated when I could not come to the computer to get the answers to his questions. This is not to say I didn’t miss being online. I missed all of you, reading your blogs, commenting, reading my email, and just surfing for fun entertaining things to do with Selena. Selena didn’t seem to miss it at all.

So what happened? Well, simply put one of the draw backs to being on Satellite Internet, is the dish and all are exposed to the weather. My receiver cable needed to be changed, as I could transmit a signal but could not receive one. I doubt that was weather related, more of a cable gone bad. Another issue we had was the cap that covers a small part on the dish, got brittle and cracked from the weather, since it is just plastic, so that had to be replaced as well. Will this make me consider giving up my Satellite Internet and going back to cable? No, I love my Internet service and seldom ever have problems with it. This is the first time in the entire year of having it that I have had any issues, other then a couple of times I lost my Internet due to weather related problems, but those were brief.

What did we do all week? First, Selena and I both came down with sinus infections. We got in to see our doctors before they got too bad, so we truly did not suffer that bad with them. We both are getting over them rather fast probably because we were able to get in so quickly. We are having some beautiful Spring weather and plan on spending the afternoon outside again today after a quick nap.

Monday, I pushed a little harder on the math and number line idea. It met with a lot of resistance, and Selena begging for another graph. She is hilarious, she does the same math work using a graph but will not even attempt it on a number line. Oh well, she has lots of time to warm up to a number line and if she likes graphs better that is what we will stick to.

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We first tried the number line by just using our fingers to count the numbers starting with simple equations like 1 + 3, Selena could do this and come up with the answer but quickly got bored, so I brought out the beads. As you can see from the pictures, the beads did not bring any more excitement into the theory.

Tuesday, Selena had so much fun playing dress up and getting ready to go to the doctor. She is now picking out her own clothes, everything from underclothes to what shoes she will wear. I was curling my hair so she had to have her hair curled too. She just loves to stand there and have me put curls in her hair, unlike her mom who use to scream at the sight of the curling iron. Of course you know being a little girl also meant make-up. Thankfully I only use powders, so it was very easy to just brisk her face with the brush and oh she delighted to think she had make-up on like Mama.

We then decided to do some story time. Selena just loves her pediatrician, so I thought it would be fun to write about that. Selena decided to draw the picture herself, which was glued in her journal and the story began. By the way she took a copy of this and gave it to her pediatrician.

DrJiang

Dr. Jiang By Selena

Dr. Jiang is talented and she is a doctor.

She uses a stethoscope to check people’s hearts.

The End.

I had hoped for a little bit more on the story, but I think between not feeling super great, and drawing the picture, Selena was spent when it came time to think of the story. I will say though that Dr. Jiang loved the story and the picture.

Wednesday we laid low, and didn’t do much waiting for the antibiotics to kick in so we would feel better. We didn’t even do anything in the line of geography or history. Selena did pull her doll houses out and played a lot with them but it was still a fairly quiet day.

Thursday, we had a visit from a good friend of ours. We visited for a while then jumped in and went out for lunch. When we came home Selena went down for a nap, then since it was SUNNY out side and fairly warm, we ventured outside for some fun. Selena had fun writing “Hi” up the sidewalk clear up to the neighbor’s door, with smiley faces and all sorts of pictures. She then made a hopscotch in our driveway and told me how to number the squares. She found a rock and played hopscotch for quite a while. We were having so much fun until Selena slipped in a 3 inch deep goopy, slimy mud hole. She had so much mud on herself, that I was very thankful for the mud room. She didn’t want to go back outside after that for fear she would fall in the mud again.

100_4641 Our grand mud pit.

Come evening Selena pulled out her blocks she decided to make a tower. After completing her tower she counted how many blocks she used in her tower and when she discovered there were only 19 blocks, she informed me she needed one more block to make it 20. She added the extra block, then proceeded to build a second tower using the rest of her blocks. She was pretty surprised when she discovered that because the size of the left over blocks were not the same size as the ones used in her previous tower that it took more to make the second tower the same size.

We had another beautiful day with the temps in the 50’s, so we pulled out Selena’s bike. I raised the seat and the training wheels. I don’t know if we will actually get one more year out of this bike or not, we might have to buy a new one for the summer, she has just grown so much.

71d22c66c821__1302302106000 She did really well with the training wheels up as high as they would go, basically they only stopped her from tipping as she toned in on that balance. She even figured out the brakes today and can now stop her bike using the petals.

100_4659 What would the great out doors be without the ultimate hopscotch? Selena wrote the numbers by herself, I was very proud of her. No that is suppose to be 9 not 19 but she forgot herself and started to write 10.

100_4647 I am not sure what she wanted Pal to be doing here. Poor little guy didn’t have much lead left before I could get there to rescue him.

100_4650 100_4654 We just couldn’t resist picking some flowers, and then of course Selena just had to try to replant them. They didn’t stay in the flower bed for very long as Pal was determined that for all of Selena’s efforts he was going to pluck them out of the ground.

This is what we have been up to while we were unplugged. I hope this nice weather stays with us, and just continues to get nicer, we will see, as they do say we are still in for some rain over the weekend. I know one thing no matter what we sure enjoyed two wonderful days playing in the sun. Now Selena just needs to learn that when Mama says it is time to come in we do so without a fit. I expected there to be some reluctance though considering we haven’t been able to get outside much at all throughout the entire winter. I told her however, this is something she does need to work on, she has to come in when told to do so without questioning our authority.

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6 comments:

  1. It looks like a great week, aside from the sinus infection and falling in the mud.
    I remember taking a math class in college that said if the student learned best without number lines than use how the student learns best.

    They taught us all sorts of interesting ways to teach the kids.

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  2. Selena is illustrating her stories now - how fun!

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  3. Sounds like a great week for you guys despite being a bit under the weather.

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  4. It sounds like you had a great week overall. Isn't it nice to have a better weather. We attempted to take the training wheels off, but Anna is nowhere near ready to ride without them. Now there is a problem to convince her to put them back on.

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  5. I'm glad you had a good week, for the most part. We're having warmer temperatures right now, finally!, and it's great!!

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  6. We just took off the training wheels!

    Sinus infections can be so horrible - glad you caught them early!

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