March 2014

Hannah was looking at a book the other day and pointed to the word "the" and told me what it was.  She must have figured it out by herself, because I didn't teach her.  She is having so much fun finding "the" in all her books.  She hasn't yet made the connection between letter sounds and reading yet.  But she can spell phonetically like a queen.  Abigail loves letters too.  She is constantly learning new ones on her own, as well as the few I've taught her.  I thinks she knows half upper case letters now.

We've been the enjoying the few days of spring weather.  It gets so hot here in the summer we take full advantage of actual spring temperatures.  We have gone to school playgrounds and several new parks.  There are tons of parks in Plano, so we just looked at the map and picked some that weren't more than a 10 minute drive.  Hannah loves to climb (thankfully not at home on the furniture) and has enjoyed various ladders and rock walls.  Abigail has discovered the slide.  She can't climb ladders yet, but goes up the stairs and runs to the slide.  She is very brave and will do them all, even the really tall ones.  She is so tiny though that if it's a tall slide she flies down.  Someone has to stand at the bottom to stop her or she will fly off and land on the ground. We've enjoyed watching both girls become more confident and independent in their play.

We made yet another trip to the Dallas Zoo.  I think that makes 4 for the year and we decided to renew our membership for next year as well.  This time my sister got to join us since it was her last day of Spring Break.  It was chilly in the morning so there were very few people.  We got to spend lots of time looking at the giraffes and elephants up close without feeling like we needed to give someone else a turn.  Due to the cool weather the zoo moved their animal encounters indoors.  We were the only ones at the African penguin demonstration.  We learned lots of information and even got the touch the penguin.  It was really cool and we were all surprised how soft it was.