All Things New

2012.  A brand new year.  A fresh, clean slate.  A chance to start over..to do better...to be better.  Did you make any resolutions?  Are you keeping them?
We said goodbye to 2011 at a Stingrays game.  It was Jacob's and Annabelle's first time at a hockey game and neither Heath nor I had been in a very long time.  Aunt JoBeth and Uncle David came along too.  We all had a great time and went home with chocolate dippin-dots stains on our chothes...especially Annabelle.  Because that's what hockey games are all about...the dippin-dots. 

Annabelle was VERY proud that she took a picture with the stingray and she wasn't scared!

I can hardly believe we're already near the end of January.  We jumped right back into the swing of things just after the holidays and haven't looked back since.  I was concerned about getting Jacob to focus on schoolwork after several days of non-stop playtime, but he was ready.  He actually likes school, so I didn't have to do anything too crazy to get him back on track.  We're just over halfway through the school year and he's already learned so much.  Again, he has amazed me with the amount of information he retains.  He is a genius.

Annabelle is learning too...just in a totally different way.  Getting her to focus on anything is a bit of a challenge.  She's always on the move...physically and mentally.  For example, we've reviewed the colors many, many, many times...to the point of exhaustion; however, if I hold up a blue crayon and ask her to tell me the color, she will almost always tell me, "pink" or "red" or "yellow".  She'll give me every color, except blue.  Then, hours later, as she's coloring, I'll hear her say all the colors of the crayons she's using.  She knows her colors.  She just likes to be the jokester. And she's soaking up more CC information than I ever realized.  While Jacob and I review CC material, Annabelle is usually busy doing something else -- playing with dolls, coloring, painting, climbing up the pantry shelves to find snacks, etc...  One time I asked Jacob a science question about the parts of the axial skeleton.  Jacob hesitated.  From her bedroom, I heard Annabelle yell, "cranium, vertebrae, ribs, sternum!!!!"  Jacob's jaw dropped (as did mine).  "Wow," he said.  "Annabelle knows it!"  I've also heard her skip count the 7's and give various other history and science facts.  She also amazed me this week by memorizing an entire book after I read it to her one time.  What is truly amazing is the fact that we were in the library when we read the book and she was running around in circles telling me she wanted to read another book the whole time I read.  I wondered why I was reading to myself.  This is pointless, I thought.  But she was soaking it all in...every single word.

We're off to a great start in this new year.  I can't wait to see what more exciting things 2012 will bring!