Gabi pulling Bella in a box-sled at Lolo and Lola's house
Sisters playing together very well
Lola took Gabi shopping one day, and Gabi picked out these twin baby dolls. Initially, Gabi wanted to buy them for Annabelle, but Lola said that Bella wasn't yet old enough because they were marked for children over age 3. At that point, Gabi decided that she wanted the twin baby dolls for herself. (She does share them well, as evidenced in these pictures.)
Gabi named the twin dolls Peggy and Bossom. (We have no idea where she got those names.) Peggy, the doll in pink, is a girl. Gabi took awhile to decide whether Bossom was a boy or a girl but has finally settled on his being a boy. These twins live at Lolo and Lola's house for when the girls go there to play. Gabi and Lolo spend a great deal of time building elaborate play sets for the twins (swings, strollers, etc.) out of Tinker Toys.
Bella being silly with Tinker toys
In the box-sled with Peggy and Bossom
Gabriella constantly amazes us with how smart she is and what an incredible memory she has. I love to hear what she has to say about school each day. The kids have so many activities at school: gymnastics, roller skating, computers, library, music, art, Spanish, sign language, and general classroom time.
The teachers use music to teach the children new material, which works extremely well for Gabi girl because she loves to sing. Gabi also spontaneously recited the Pledge of Allegiance to me. Early in the year she told me "Ms. Joyce said, 'I pledge myself to the flag.'" which must have been their way of explaining to the kids what "allegiance" means.
Gabi at school during recess
One of my favorite stories is actually from the first week of school. Gabi told me, "The little dog should sleep upstairs, and the big dog should sleep downstairs. There was a thumping and a bumping because they were in the wrong rooms. That was a Spanish book." When I told her teacher what Gabi related to me, Ms. Laura was impressed that Gabi was able to get that much out of the Spanish story. Ms. Laura said she uses different voices and inflections and hand gestures to help convey the meaning, and she only translated the words "thumping" and "bumping." Wow!
Gabi's Spanish vocabulary is growing rapidly, although her pronunciation makes her sound like the gringo that she is. For instance, she told me her favorite color was "row-sah-dough." I repeated, "Oh, your favorite color is rosado?" but she insistented, "No, I said ROW-SAH-DOUGH." As much as I try to get her to roll her r and soften her d, it hasn't worked yet.
Gabi's class on Cap Day during C Week at school
Last week, Gabi came home and announced that there was a new girl in her class named Sabrina and that there are now two Samanthas. At the end of the week, Ms. Laura emailed pictures from the week which confirmed Gabi's story (not that I had any reason to doubt Gabi). Sabrina is in the light blue dress in these class pictures. Sabrina's identical twin (in Ms. Joyce's class) is named Samantha, and there was already one Samantha (in Ms. Mandy's class). All three classes are together for activities such as PE and recess, so Gabi does have time to interact with all the children.
back row: Sabrina, Gabi, and Grant
front row: Issac, Ava, and Grey
A few weeks ago, Gabi told me that Abby was scared of jobs. I didn't understand what she was talking about and asked who Abby was. "Abby is an aligator," Gabi replied. She then explained further, "Abby was scared of jobs and was scared she would fall." (She continued with something about being an artist and being awful.) "At the end Abby decided to be an author, and they all said, 'Look at Abby work!' An author is awesome. Then the last page is about the letter A."
Each week, the children are learning about a new letter. One letter-related activity is to read a letter-themed book, and the story Gabi just related was from the "A Week" book. The above pictures are from when they learned about the letter C and the kids each wore caps to school. You can see in the background where the children traced the letter C, both uppercase and lowercase, on the chalkboard. Ms. Laura also teaches the kids how to do each letter in sign language, and Gabi loves to show me what new signs she is learning (especially since we are teaching Annabelle to sign now, too). One of Gabi's favorite signs is smart, probably because we usually use it to describe her. (Similarly, her favorite German word is genau, which we use to praise her when she says something correct in German.)
Gabi also talks about the obstacle courses she does in gymnastics class and shows me new physical skills she has learned, such as walking on her toes. Once when she told us that she roller skated that day, Lola asked her if she skated around in circles. "No, we didn't skate in circles. We just skated up and down in the hall." The 3-year-olds skate on the carpeted hallway rather than in the gym since they are just learning, but their teacher makes skating a fun activity that the kids love. For instance, they might skate down the hall, pick up a puzzle piece, and skate back to put the puzzle piece in the puzzle. Today, Gabi has a note saying that she "skated to the barn 5 times to feed the horses." (The "barn" looks like a puppet show theater facade.)
"I skated to the barn 5 times!"
Gabi's classmates feeding the horse puppets in the skating barn
My final school story for tonight: Apparently Gabi and the "original" Samantha have become the "BFF girls" of the 3-year-olds. The teachers say they are very cute together, holding hands and such at recess. Gabi tells me that she needs to invite Samantha over to play and then she can go to Samantha's house to play. I guess I should get on that... I haven't invited any of Gabi's new classmates over yet. (We've mostly just socialized with our new church friends.) In fact, the only time outside school that Gabi has seen her classmates was at Ava's birthday party at the beginning of September. Here are some pictures, which I never got around to posting before:
Gabi dressed as Cinderella for Ava's birthday party
Bella on the spacewalk at Ava's party
1-year-old Bella already steady enough to stand on the moonwalk
As we were preparing to go to Ava's birthday party, Gabi asked me who would be at the party. I told her that her friends would be there, and she was very excited. On the way home, Gabi told me that those were not her friends, they were her new friends. Poor girl -- I guess she was expecting to see her Atlanta playgroup friends. Afterall, she did have a friend named Ava in Atlanta, too.
Gabi swinging on the play structure at Rock Creek
Annabelle enjoying lunch at the Rock Creek family center
Annabelle is growing and learning, too. She is now very steady moving on her feet and can walk easily. She also loves signing, as it is a much easier form of communication for her than talking at this point. She has signs for up, food, more, finished, rabbit, and bird. Actually, for "food" (or "eat"), instead of touching her fingers to her mouth, she touches her fingers to my mouth. That is an easy way to get my attention, for sure... and when I acknowledge that I know she wants to eat, her face just lights up and she laughs. Bella's trend this week has been to wake up at 5 or 5:30 and demand breakfast. I thought 6:30 was early to get up, but I find that I need the full hour to get Gabi up and out the door by 7:30 if I want a pleasant morning. However, 5:30 AM is too dang early!
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