Happy Spring!

It's been a fun few months since the last post. Natali passed Beginner I gymnastics and is in Beginner II, and is getting ready for the ice show next weekend (Pineapple Princess is her group's song). Kjirsten is writing her name fairly consistently, and loves to tell jokes (even if we don't quite get them most of the time). She's also become quite the theologian lately ("Jesus is a baby. Jesus is God. God is a baby!")

FW: My girly girl and my tomboy

Natali is quite the girly girl. She loves pink, lace, purple, princesses, mermaids. I have no idea where she got it from – I'm not so much into all the girly stuff (although I don't mind dressing up on occasion, and I'm not allergic to pink, but I don't do makeup/get into shoes/etc). She's doing skating and gymnastics right now, and told me when skating is done she wants dance. Yikes. When she turns 14, she's on her own with the makeup and beauty stuff! 

Kjirsten – quite the opposite. While she enjoys some of the same things as Natali, she plays differently. She's always been more physical. Natali likes gymnastics because she gets to dress up in a leotard and look like Dora. Kjirsten likes going (she's just a spectator) because she can pretend to run and jump on the side while we're watching. 

Thank goodness they both like Legos!

Happy New Year!

2012 has been an exciting year for us, and we hope for you as well.

The girls sing in choirs in church, and it's such a joy to watch little kids sing their hearts out. Nate and I are involved in church music in a variety of ways, and we also were chosen to be godparents for a friend's daughter this year.

Natali started rec sports; she did soccer and t-ball in the summer and started skating in the winter. Kjirsten started preschool this year, and is excited to go to both the German Kinderstube and King of Kings preschool. Both girls have very cheerful personalities and it's a joy to watch them grow.

Bekah's class load shifted slightly this year, with the addition of German 3 and AP Calc. She is also finishing up work on her MAT. Nate's new projects for this year at work were the launch of a one-to-one Chromebook program, and an overhaul of the computer lab.

Drop us a line anytime and let us know how things are going for you - rjjorgen@gmail.com is the best address to use.

School!

School has started – and it's a busy one! I'm on the board of ed at our church's school, and Natali started skating lessons. She's picking things up fairly quickly – she was promoted a group last week (from the "I can't move on my own" group to the "shuffles and sometimes glides" group). Kjirsten is very slowly adding new foods to her "acceptable food list" - the most recent entries include scrambled eggs and pizza.

Nate's been busy at school getting Chromebooks in the hands of the middle school students there – which finally happened today, and were promptly put to use. I get to teach Geometry and AP Calc this year, which is fun, along with AP Stats and the German classes.

And, just in the nick of time, I finished my "summer project" - getting photo albums up to date (Kjirsten didn't even have one). I made it to May, which I'm going to consider a success – 2.5 years of photos sorted, printed, and stuck in albums. 

In August we went to the State Fair and some family events around town, and we welcomed the arrival of our new niece (Nate's brother's second child).

Just a few things I love about being a mom...

- Picking the ends off of green beans while the girls run around the kitchen and living room, stopping every few laps to grab another green bean off the counter to eat
- The way the girls say "I love you"
- The dozens of different ways I look in the stick figure drawings my girls make
- Seeing my children's energy and enthusiasm for just about everything

Big news!

Kjirsten is going to bed in her big-girl panties now! If only we could trust her to poop on the potty, she'd be fully potty-trained, but we've still got a little work to do…

Summer news

The school year ended well for all of us. We're homeschooling Natali next year, and she informed me as we were sitting at one of her preschool's end-of-year picnic, "It's summer! So we can start homeschooling this afternoon!" Needless to say, since we do not want to finish kindergarten by Christmas, we aren't actually starting yet. Instead we're just doing a lot of fun activities that are nearby that open up her world. We've seen a Japanese kimono dancing group and a Hmong storytelling group. She's also in a soccer/t-ball parks & rec group, which she seems to enjoy so far.

Kjirsten is so close to being potty-trained. The Dora underwear we got her last week seem to be a good incentive. She should have been potty-trained a while ago, but she's been so stubborn she would stay dry for a few days, then not care for the next few days. She is becoming much more verbal as well, which is exciting to see and hear. Now if only she would become less picky when it came to food!

I've been watching our nephew the past few weeks. It's been great for our girls to get a chance to play with their cousin, and he's really seemed to have fun here! I also get to watch my god-daughter in the afternoons, which is fun for me, and fun for Kjirsten to get to play sort of the "big sister" role (the girls go to my god-daughter's mother's place in the mornings a few days a week, so they know each other well).

March news & notes

Well, February disappeared too quickly. We hosted the 50-hour trivia

marathon at our house again. We didn't do so hot, but we had the smallest

in-person team we've ever had, and even if you count remote people it was

pretty tiny. We'll have to get on the ball better next year. Otherwise it's

been pretty uneventful. Kjirsten is still a really picky eater, but she's

talking so much more now! Natali will be homeschooled next year, as the

schools we want to get her in won't take her (they'll fill up with people

who are 5 by September 1st and she can't stay in preschool for another

year). They really enjoyed the beautiful weather we had Sunday!

I competed at Concordia Moorhead's T&F meet in January. I actually managed

to pull off distances that I would have been happy with in college ­ so I

was very pleased, given that I don't exactly train for it (although I do

really miss coaching now, so I'll have to keep my ears open for

possibilities there). The girls had fun with the kids' events (they throw a

baby shot, do a dash, and do long jump).

Fun with languages

Kjirsten's been saying lots more words lately – she's also been saying "ga ga goo goo" a lot, which is something Natali never said. I think it's funny, since that's the big example of baby talk….

Natali's been making up words. It's not terribly unusual, but she's been assigning languages to them, like "konainai is Chinese" or "alicibierta is Spanish" or "seredyek is Szofia's language" (a girl in her preschool that speaks Hungarian).

Guten Rutsch ins Neujahr!

I'm really really going to try to be better about updating this blog this year! Can't let my baby brother and his wife show me up, although theirs will be much more interesting with the adventures all around New Zealand this year.

Nate and I had a very relaxing break. It was busy, but it was all our choice – we spent time with family, he went to the shooting range, we went to the Shoreview Community Center water park and indoor playground, we spent time playing outside in the snow when it finally came, and I was a good girl and didn't look at school at all! I did a lot of putzing around the house and really got quite a few closets organized, plus did some mild rearranging to make the kids' toys look less cluttered in the basement. I've got three weeks to go to the new semester, so that's of course a busy time for students who let themselves get behind.

Kjirsten's finally figured out how to talk – a lot – and so that's really cut down on some of the tantrums. Our biggest struggle right now is food. She's even pickier than Natali, and more stubborn about it. We're really hoping she figures out the "one bite" rule soon.

Natali continually amazes us with what she's learning and remembering. She loves both preschools and can't make up her mind what she wants to do for kindergarten.

Preschool logic...

Today the girls and I were playing downstairs, and I was pretending to eat Natali's shoulder. "Don't eat kids!" she said, so I "ate" Kjirsten. "Don't eat babies either!" Near me was a Lego block that had a picture of puppies on one side, so I pretended to eat that. "Don't eat pet food!" she said as she pulled it away. Then, "Mama, you ate the pet food!" "No I didn't." "Then where is it?" "In your hand." (the side that was facing away from her palm, that she could see, was blank) "Oh," she laughed, "you tricked me."

Today's lesson...

So, Natali's been full of great quotes lately, if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook. If not, you can see them on the  margin of the blog. But today, we also got a lesson in gratitude. She had VBS last week, and gratitude was actually the theme for Tuesday. This made it a very timely lesson. She also learned that it's ok to talk to people who are different (well, this I've been encouraging all along, but it was another chance to learn).

We got to see a free screening of Phineas and Ferb. We've never actually seen the TV show before, but I still thought it would be fun. She enjoyed herself (and loved the part where the "girl saved the world" - which isn't really what happened, but that's her perception) and as we walked out, she was chattering with the boy ahead of us. The boy had to turn around to talk to her, and he saw the boy behind us, a kid who was probably about five or six, in a motorized wheelchair (which actually looked pretty cool). He asked his mom why the boy had to ride it, and his mom shushed him and pulled him away. I'm sure she didn't want to pry or seem rude, but I had heard that for most people, they perceive it as less rude if someone asks them directly. So when Natali then asked me, I told her to go ahead and ask him. Then she decided to play shy, so I told her he was just a little boy even if his chair was big, so then she asked him. The little boy played shy then, so his dad encouraged him to answer, and when he didn't, told Natali, "His legs don't work the same as everyone else's, so he uses that to walk." Then the other two boys decided to jump in and explain that he can walk, but he has special things he uses, and it's faster if they let him use the chair, but their dad says they almost can't anymore, because he keeps growing out of it, and so on. 

Then we got stickers on the way out. Natali was really good about saying thank you – until she saw that people coming out of a different theater were getting drawstring bags, and she started crying because she wanted one. This was a perfect chance to remind her of gratitude. I asked her if she liked the stickers. Of course she did. So we talked a few minutes about the fact that if you get something nice and someone else gets something nice, it's ok even if they're different nice things. By the time we got home, she had forgotten all about the bag.

I was also really proud of her this morning, when we stopped at the bank and the teller and I were chatting about how kids will have a completely different perception of money than we did since I almost never use cash or checks, it's all direct deposit and transfers. Then I said that she does like putting money in the piggy banks, and she told the teller she had three. "Three?" "Yes. I get five and Kjirsten gets four and God gets one." So that was kind of fun that she's getting the idea of splitting the money and giving some to charity too!

I hope life is treating you all well!

School's out!

Well, it's actually been out for a while. Natali had fun at all of her end-of-school programs (a potluck for Kinderstube, a school musical for King of Kings, then a lunch potluck for just the preschool). We loved our camping trip. It was nice weather, very relaxing, good hikes (except for getting chased around by a very angry female wild turkey). 

Last weekend we headed to Wisconsin to celebrate the wedding of a very good friend of the family. The wedding was beautiful, the reception went very nicely, and the bride and groom were very thoughtful towards kids. At the beginning of the ceremony, the chaplain said that kids were welcome in the service since they were a beautiful part of the extended family coming to support the bride and groom, and that unless they were actively screaming, were welcome to stay. At the reception, the couple had cute little age-appropriate toys by each child's place setting to help keep them entertained during the meal. 

Looking forward to another camping trip and a trip to Michigan and Mackinac Island later this summer!

Just for fun...

Natali wanted to try it on too.

Spring is here!

Poor Natali. The first warm day, we let her go without a jacket and barefoot in the backyard. Then with all the cold icky days since then, she assumed winter was done and she didn't need a jacket anymore! She also regularly comes out with such toddler logic as, "I don't need a blanket, because I have a bandaid there!" (pointing to her toe)

They're going to be planting a garden at one of her preschools, and she's excited about that. She also has her own garden tools to "help" in the garden. I got to chaperone a walking field trip to a local bookstore, so Kjirsten had a blast as well. Kjirsten keeps thinking she's older than she is; every time I drop Natali off, Kjirsten wants to stay and play.

Nate and I are wrapping up the school year. It's been a fairly good year for both of us. Now we're just at the end-of-the-year grind that brings the atmosphere that so many teachers and students know – half of the students are just fine, and then the rest are split between those who don't care and have shut down, and those who are suddenly trying to get it in gear and squeak out passing grades.

I've been in a really good mood overall lately. I'm not sure why, whether it's just getting into my groove more with work and parenthood, or whether it has to do with the Moms' Bible Study I've been a part of since Natali was born. We've just done a series of books that have really been a good combination: Discerning God's Voice, The Beauty of Contentment, and are finishing up Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. The second one wasn't as good as the other two, but all three of them together are just helping me be more aware of the good in life, and more accepting of stress. I highly recommend the last book, even if you don't do it as a Bible study.

Hope all is going well with you!

Toddler Attitude

I love Natali's attitude! She is really into racing right now. It makes it easy to make everything a game and get her to do things - we just say something like "Can you clean up faster than me?" or "Are you faster than Kjirsten at getting your shoes on?" and she quickly gets to work. The best part? When she loses, she says, "I'm a loser!" just as happily as she says "I'm a winner" when she wins.

Kjirsten is branching out into such adventurous foods as green beans and raisins! At least she eats something from each food group (if you count yogurt as protein and dairy). But it looks like she's finally gaining wait again, after a 9-month stall there.

January and February news...

There hasn't actually been all that much news to report. The girls have been pretty healthy, other than a few minor colds here and there. Natali loves preschool. When she misses it, either because of a long weekend or a sick day, she gets her dolls and animals in a circle and sits down. "Now, children, what are we going to talk about today?" She's becoming a really big helper, and it's amazing the connections she makes! Her class sang "Go Ye, Go Ye, Into the World" and she'd walk around the house while they were learning it singing "Stop ye, stop ye" - another song has the line "I don't want to be a Sadducee" after which she sings "I don't want to be a happy-you-see."

Kjirsten is very mobile. She understands a lot – she just isn't talking much yet. She says "mama" or "papa" when she wants to, but not if we tell her too! But if we ask her to find her shoes or a ball or book, she can definitely do that. And she knows how to bug her older sister!

And, yes, she has figured out how to drive the car in the picture… 

Happy New Year!

Silent Night, Holy Night

Son of God, Love's pure Light radiant streams from Your holy face, with the dawn of redeeming grace. Jesus, Lord, at Your birth, Jesus, Lord, at Your birth.

A blessed Christmas everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We've had quite the last few weeks! Kjirsten is getting very mobile. She knows how to walk pretty well, although she prefers crawling since she's faster at it. She's quite the climber, though - yesterday she was trying to climb up the bathroom cupboard by hooking her toes on the top of the door! She's saying "mama" regularly, and sometimes "dada" or "papa" and has four signs in her vocabulary.

Natali was sick before Thanksgiving, so that put a damper on her week - she missed a few days of preschool, which she was disappointed about. She kept making me do circle time and art projects all day. She had fun seeing her baby cousin at Thanksgiving, along with a lot of other family members. The picture is from the St. Martinstag celebration at her preschool.