Quick Takes Volume 27

~1~

It's been a few weeks since I've done a quick takes post.  I had things I wanted to write but simply never found the time.

~2~

I'm making time for myself to read.  I have a large stack of review books that I'm fairly certain I'll never have time to read.  I'm in the middle of reading The Saints in My Lifeat the moment.  I'm really enjoying this book and hope to review it soon.  

~3~

Katie will be four months old in less than a week.  I'm amazed at how quickly the past third of a year has  zipped along.  Sometime in the next week or two Katie will get to step into the world of food.  I picked up a box of rice cereal the other day and decided to start stocking up on baby food when I was at Target this morning.  I've noticed over the past couple weeks that Katie moves her hands to her mouth when she sits in the high chair and watches us eat.  She'll also try to pull herself towards your fork it you eating while she's in your lap.  I think she's interested in finding out what the food thing is all about.

~4~

I have my suspicions that Katie is going to be a blonde.  Her hair has been falling out like crazy the past week, and very fine, fair hair is growing in.  This happened with Ellie around about the same age and her brown hair faded [fell out] as the blonde hair grew in.  Madeline, on the other hand, never lost her hair as a baby, with the exception of the hair on her ears which I have always called bat hair [no idea why I call it that].

~5~

My sewing machine has been sitting out in the dining room for almost a full week and I haven't gone crazy.  Usually I can't stand to have it out longer than the amount of time it takes for me to complete a project, but I have other things I'd like to make.  Maybe sometime this weekend I'll find the time to make a few of the things I have on my list.

~6~

I realized last night that Ellie is a really good reader.  I took an approach of having her read the same stories several times in a week vs. reading a particular book only once every few weeks and it's made a big difference in her fluency not to mention comprehension.  Basically, I learned from my mistakes with Madeline, applied a new approach and am amazed at the difference.  Ellie breezes through the highest level of Clifford phonics readerslike nobody's business.  She also tears through the CHC Little Stories for Little Folks books.   In fact, I was surprised when she came home from school with a Junie B. Jones book and was sitting on the couch reading it.  I don't like Junie B. at all, but I was amazed that Ellie was already reading a chapter book.  She was even able to tell me a little about the story.

~7~

It's been well over a month now and eating at home is working out quite nicely for us.  I still haven't gotten over how much cheaper it is to eat at home vs. take out and dining out.  I went to the grocery store yesterday to buy a single tomato and decided to grab a few other items.  I ended up leaving the store with many of the key ingredients for several meals for next week's dinners for far less than the cost of one dinner at a restaurant.  I'm absolutely struck by how much money we could have saved over the past eleven years if we had been smarter about eating at home instead of going out to eat.