www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io6O4ZaQYg8

She was getting to where she could ride for pretty long distances without putting her feet on the ground so I thought we’d give the no training wheels thing another try.

Yesterday, I took her to a big, empty parking lot since it was a gorgeous day out. She practiced for a bit on the “no pedal” bike and then we got her bike out. I got a really good workout running along beside her the first few times. Initially I gave her a big push and put my hands on her just enough to keep her balanced. Once she realized that she could stay balanced as long as she kept her speed up, I just ran along side her, just in case, and then helped her stop at the end of the long straightaway that we were going down.  After maybe 5 or 6 long straight rides, she finally figured out how to brake using her hand brake.  I ran with her a couple more times (See?  A GREAT workout!) until I was confident that she could stop on her own.  I still had to help her get started as neither of us could really figure out how to get her going by herself, but once started she could ride around for a long time.  By the end of our hour or so in the parking lot she was able to ride all around everywhere, in circles, around curves and she was stopping really well too.  Here’s a video in the parking lot.  It’s a little “bumpy” because I apparently can’t walk and video at the same time…..

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Gg4RprCks

Later, after we got back home from her gymnastics class she wanted to go back out on her bike.  She kept telling me how much she loves riding her bike, that it’s so much fun!  We went up to an almost empty street with a cul-de-sac and she rode around there for a good 45 minutes or so.  She didn’t like riding on the sidewalks to get to that street because they’re too narrow, but she’ll get used to them eventually.  By the end of our trip to the cul-de-sac she was even able to get going all by herself too!  Here’s another video.  There’s a shot of her getting started by herself towards the end of the video.  And this one is MUCH better than the last one since I was able to stand still to video..

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQl6pRuCvD4

Pretty awesome, huh?  I certainly think so.  Today we went out again this morning and she rode around that cul-de-sac again and we went down a couple of other empty streets as well (so that she could stay riding on the street since she isn’t as crazy about sidewalks).  She’s pretty confident on the bike already and has gotten pretty consistent at getting started by herself.

The one thing I’m sad about is that Dan wasn’t here to watch her ride the bike without training wheels for the first time.  I took her out not really expecting that she was going to get it so quickly.  Dan was out camping with a friend, but he got back tonight and Anna was SO excited for him to watch her ride her big girl bike.  He was so proud of her and I can tell he’s excited to turn her into his little mountain biking buddy.  Towards the end of the evening when she was riding outside she was even starting to stand up and pedal a little.  I think she’ll be riding the trails with Daddy in no time.

Here are a few more photos from yesterday.  Click on all of the photos in this post for larger versions.

And you know, sometimes you just gotta stop and make a phone call…

Riding off into the sunset…sorta..

I really believe that the key to her learning balance on her bike was riding that “no pedal” bike for a few days.  Granted, she’s always had really good balance, but I do believe that helped her body understand how to lean on the bike to keep it upright.  I think that we will forgo training wheels altogether with our next kid (whenever we make the decision about having one..) and start them off with one of these “no pedal” bikes and then go straight to a two-wheeler when they’re ready.

What a great milestone though.  I’m so proud of Anna and she LOVES riding without her training wheels.

Here’s a photo of the whole area.  The plants from left to right are: 2 strawberry plants, 2 different tomato plants, a raspberry plant…in front of the raspberry plant are 2 squash plants.  In front of the strawberry plants is a little pumpkin plant that I don’t think will survive.  I think something has been eating the leaves.  There was a cucumber plant to the left of the squash plants but it got trampled by little feet…

The strawberry plants:

..and we even have little strawberries sprouting up already!

The tomato plants.  One produces normal size tomatoes and the other produces cherry tomatoes…but I can’t remember which is which.

Raspberry plant:

Squash plants…looks like something may be eating these leaves:

Then we also have a little area against the back of our house that has a bunch of flowers, thanks to the previous owners.  There are two rose bushes and they’re just starting to bloom.  There are also some other flowers that I’m not sure of.

The rose bushes:

A rose and a couple of buds:

Some of the other flowers:

Anna was a big help helping me water:

More garden updates when the fruits/veggies start growing!

(Click to see a larger version.)

I explained about using capital letters as the first letter of the sentence and for names, reminded her to put a space between words and told her that we put a period at the end of the sentence….other than that she did the rest.  I obviously did not help her with spelling.  ;)  We need to work on her lowercase “e” and her “S/s” but she does pretty good with the other letters.  In case you need a translation, her sentence says “Ariel and Cinderella went to see Aurora.”  (Aurora is Sleeping Beauty for those not all caught up on their Disney Princesses.

Here’s another picture Anna did today of a Bird.  I was very impressed and thought she did a good job!  She’s just starting to branch out from drawing simple people.

(Click to see a larger version)

She tried to write “Bird and Anna” but for some reason put the “d” in “and” on the left instead of the right.  Not bad though!  I was pretty impressed that she actually put the “e” in “Berd” (Bird) instead of just spelling it “Brd”.  She’s learnin’!

Well, in our backyard we have a raised portion that the previous owners used for a garden.  It’s a really big area and would be great for a vegetable garden.  However, it being Spring and all, it is full of weeds.  A lot of weeds.  While Dan was mowing the lawn today I decided it was time to weed that area so that maybe next weekend we can plant some stuff.  I know I’m probably a little late in the season, but we’ll see if we can get some tomatoes and other fruits and veggies going.

Here’s a “before” shot of the garden area (along with a before shot of our un-mowed backyard).  Click for a bigger version.  I had actually weeded a little on the right side of the photo before thinking about grabbing my camera, but you get the idea.

This is the “after” for today (click for bigger version).  I got about a third of it done, and then I was DONE.  Hopefully the weather will continue to be nice and I can finish it up this week.

Anna, of course, was loving digging around in the dirt.  She helped me pull weeds and found lots of worms (and slugs, eww) for her critter cage.  Here are a few pics..

Hopefully I’ll continue to fix up the garden area and actually plant some things.  It would be great to grow some of our own veggies to eat.

Anyway, here’s her story.  The 2nd picture says “Car,” in case you can’t tell by the picture..  ;)  (Click on the picture to see a larger version.)

Anna’s reading has improved so much in the last couple of months.  It really amazes me how quickly she’s picking it up.  I have no idea what her “sight” word count is up to, but she knows a ton of sight words now (those are the words that she doesn’t have to sound out anymore…she knows them by “sight”).  She’s really good with words that have short vowel sounds (cat, hat, fish, hog, wash, etc..) and is doing really well with words that have the long vowel sound and a silent “e” at the end (rose, hike, kite, etc..).  She’s also remembering sounds that are a little more difficult like ea, ow, aw, ar, er, ir, etc.  It really amazes me.  She can figure out most words now, though there are a lot of those weird words that I have to help her with.  “Yes, ‘ow’ says ow like in ‘gown’ but it also says oh like in the word ‘show’.”  So confusing for young kids.  She’s getting it though.

She’s almost done with the first half of her online reading program, Headsprout.  I think she has 2 lessons left of the first 40 lessons.  We’re still unsure if we’re going to purchase the second half because I feel like she’s way ahead of the program at this point because she reads to us on a daily basis and also goes to other learning websites (Starfall.com is another good one).  We’ll see though.  She still really enjoys doing the lessons and asks to do her “alien game” (because the first few lessons involved aliens) on a daily basis.

I’ve also been having her do some activities out of a 1st grade reading/writing activity book that I picked up at Walmart or somewhere.  She can already do most of the first half of the book.  I’m enjoying sitting down with her and going through the activities.  She can pretty much write all the letters now, though there are some that still give her trouble (Z, e, g, q, z).  I have also started introducing her to basic addition concepts.  I took some macaroni noodles and dyed them a bunch of fun colors and we’ve practiced adding groups of noodles together: “2 red noodles and 3 blue noodles makes how many noodles?”  It’s fun for her and she’s learning at the same time.  And then when we’re done we put all the noodles back in the big tupperware container and she lets her little princess dolls swim in the noodle pool..  :-D

I’m really liking teaching her, which I guess makes it good that I’m still going for my teaching degree.  We’ve been tossing around the idea of homeschooling for awhile now and I’ve been researching more on that to see if that’s something I think we could (and should) do.  Anna can’t start Kindergarten here until Fall 2011 so I think we might try a trial run with homeschooling next year.  She’ll still do Pre-K preschool, but we’ll do some learning at home on a regular basis as well…….though that’s probably going to cause her to be ahead of a lot of the kids when she would actually start Kindergarten.  We’ll see though.

Here is Anna’s latest reading video.  This was a couple of days ago:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vy-RIIiXcs

On to gymnastics…  Since my last update we decided to pull Anna from the really nice gym that she’s been taking classes from and put her in classes at the YMCA that we’re members of.  They have a decent gymnastics program and Anna has been in the free preschool classes for a couple of months now.  I talked to the gymnastics director about what is involved in the recreational and team programs to see whether they could get Anna in, because she definitely wasn’t being challenged in the preschool program.  The director had me bring Anna in and she had her do a few things and said that she’d like her to start on their Level 1 pre-team.  She decided that she would start up a new group of girls and has about 6-8 new girls starting with the Level 1 group and they’re all 4.5-5 years old, so I am very excited about that.

She’ll start that next Monday and it will be twice a week for 90 minutes each day, so 3 hours a week.  She’s going to love it.  The director told me that she is going to coach the group herself (her daughter will be in the group too and is only a month older than Anna…they’ve played together a couple of times) and wants to keep coaching them throughout their “career”, or whatever, at the Y.  She told me she’s going to try to have them ready to COMPETE Level 3 in the fall!  I don’t know if that’s possible, but it will be fun to see how she progresses now that she will be in the gym for so much longer.

I got an email from the director which made it seem so official.  She said each of the girls, now that they’re part of the team, get a cubby.  We’ll be contacted by that level rep who will let us know about the booster club and all that goes along with that.  It’s pretty exciting!  Anna doesn’t really get it at this point, just knows that she’s starting a new class next week at the Y.

Here are a couple of videos of Anna’s gymnastics.  The first was at home (obviously).  She got her pullover on the bar recently, and also her backwards roll.  The second video was today at Open Gym.  She didn’t have gymnastics or preschool this week (Spring Break) so we found a gym that looked like they had a fun open gym and tried it out today.  She had a blast.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSm6vW-WnEA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wIMzOqbVFE

The last Anna thing, which I almost forgot about but just saw the video that reminded me.  About a month ago, Dan’s brother, Steve, and his wife, Kathy, came for a visit and we went down to Mt. Hood, OR to ski for a couple of days.  Anna skied both days and did SO GOOD!  Before Anna was even born I was awaiting the day that I would be able to ski with her, so this was very exciting for me.  The first day we used the harness with Anna (like we did last year) and she did really good with it.  The next day I took her to the magic carpet beginner area and had her try it by herself.  She had the little thing on her ski tips so they would stay together but other than that she did it by herself!  She did so well there that I took her to the beginner chairlift and she did awesome coming down that slope.  We probably did that slope about 15 times.  We took a couple of runs down harder “green” runs and she did so good.  I probably had a smile plastered to my face the whole time.  It made my year watching her ski.  I’m not sure that we’ll be able to get out anymore this year which is a shame since she did so well.

Here’s a video of her skiing all by herself:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOEh_moeuk0

That’s all the Anna updates I have.  I have more non-Anna updates too but I’ll save those for another post.  I promise it won’t be 2 months from now the next time I post.  I PROMISE!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVzhZiaQ0Xg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrAbbS1Quo

Anna turned 4!  Can you believe it?  I sure can’t.  Where has time gone?  I think I say this every year, but this is such a fun age.  She’s very independent and loves to play on her own but she’s so smart too.  She picks things up like crazy.  She can consistently count to 40 and has counted as high as 70 with no help.  She can write a bunch of her letters, and has been able to write her own name for a long time now.  She knows the sounds that most of the letters make and constantly asks us what words start with certain letters.  I’ve recently started to try to teach her how to sound out simple words and she’s starting to catch on a little!  There’s no doubt in my mind that she’ll be reading before she starts Kindergarten…especially since she won’t start until the Fall of 2011 when she’ll be turning 6.

Anna also started preschool right after we moved back here in October.  She goes twice a week for two hours each day and LOVES it.  She loves her teacher Ms. Cathy, and has a lot of fun with all of the other kids.  The preschool she goes to is a co-op preschool, which means that each day, three parents stay to help out.  So I’m there about twice a month working in the classroom which Anna just loves.  Every school day she asks if I’m going to be a “teacher” in her class that day.  We’ve gotten to go on two field trips with her school, one to the pumpkin patch in October and then to a Christmas tree farm a couple of weeks ago.  We were supposed to go to a fish hatchery in November but it rained the day we were supposed to go.  (Rain in Seattle?  Shocking, I know.)

We’re in our new house!  Hooray!  We moved in the second week of November and are so happy to finally be settled.  We’re still working on getting furniture…but we’re getting there.  While it was nice knowing that we have GREAT friends here who shared their homes with us when Dan moved back in June, and then all three of us (plus the dogs!) once Anna and I moved out at the beginning of October, it’s great to finally be in our own place.  We have a ton of space to fill and Anna loves all the room to run around…especially our 3rd floor bonus room that she has decided to call her “gymnastics room.”  It’s a great house, and seems like a great neighborhood.  Hopefully when the weather warms up a bit we’ll meet some of our neighbors.

School.  I’m still going for that teaching degree that I’ll hopefully get someday.  This last semester was pretty rough with all the moving around, but I finished up at the end of November and started a new semester December 1st.  I get a lot of teaching courses this semester (Classroom Management, Testing, Diversity & Inclusion..) so those should at least be a bit more interesting than the boring old Econ and World Civilizations I had last term.  If I continue as planned, I should do my student teaching in January 2011 and graduate in June 2011.  I just need to keep on keeping on..

We had a small little Thanksgiving feast with just the three of us, which was nice.  We cooked a full Thanksgiving meal complete with turkey, ham, stuffing and all of the other fixin’s.  Anna actually ate pretty much all the food you see on her plate.  She loved it!  We had a second Thanksgiving with some of our friends on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so needless to say, it was not a very healthy long weekend….but everything sure was yummy!

Anna’s gymnastics is going very well.  We tried three different gymnastics schools before we found one we really like.  She’s in a preschool 3-4 year old class right now and since she started there has only been one other little girl in her class so she’s gotten some great individual attention.  Her instructor told me that they’ll be moving her up to the 5-6 year old class before too long (even though she just turned 4).  She still loves doing her cartwheels and handstands and has gotten really good at them.

Probably the biggest piece of news is that my best friend, Mary, and I decided to start our own photography business.  We’re calling it Giggle & Click Photography and we’ll cater to children and families.  We’ve been working hard getting the business license and all the stuff on the business side of things (Mary’s taking care of all that) and also getting the website going.  We plan to “launch” on January 1st and will start advertising soon.  If you want photos taken of your family or children, let us know!!  We’re very excited about it and I’m super excited to turn my hobby into a business.  I think it’s been a long time coming but it feels great knowing that we’re getting everything going and will be in a business we’ll both enjoy.  Oh, and become a fan on my Facebook Giggle & Click page!  You know you wanna.

So that’s about it with us.  Christmas is coming up fast and though we’re spending it without family and there may not be as many gifts under the tree as in years past, I know we’ll still have a joyful time.  This is my absolute most favorite time of year and I love seeing it all through Anna’s eyes.  She’s so excited for Christmas and keeps eyeing the gifts under the tree.

I’m going to try to be better with the blog (I know I’ve said that before..) but if I don’t post before the holidays, I hope that everyone has a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

(Ok, does this win the award for my longest blog post ever?)