Twenty-Eight Pound Energizer Joli

The amount of energy Joli (and Brody) have had in the past few days is just blowing my mind. I feel like we're constantly doing something and yet they are NEVER tired. I've been trying to start new activities with Joli in an effort to keep her busy in the evenings as well. Kacie let me borrow her Montessori book and I was able to pull a few activities out that I thought Joli would love. One of the activities is sorting buttons by color. I haven't had a chance to go get more yet but the ones I have she was able to sort into light and dark piles. Once she's done with that then she counts how many are in each color and tries to count how many total (there are 20 total, but things start to get iffy around 14).
She really seems to enjoy the activity and I'm excited to add more colors for her to sort as well as introducing new activities.

Tonight Joli did two things that made me a very proud Mama. She has known her basic shapes for quite some time (took my breath away the day she pointed out an octagon), but she's still working on the coordination it takes to draw. So when she was at the kitchen table telling me she was drawing circles I just nodded, but then she brought me a page filled with different sized circles!! It may seem crazy but I feel like she's reached a very important milestone on the path to reading and writing! Yep, I'm that gushy mom!

The second thing that Joli did tonight that I thought was just amazing, was to set up a tea party. But not just set up the tea set. As she went in her room to she said that she was going to get the tea party ready with her friends and that she would come get me when she was. Usually she gets out the tea set and puts it on the table and is back in less than five minutes, but when she came and got me fifteen minutes later I was so surprised!

Notice how she laid out a "table clothe", set up all her "friends" at the table, went and got a plate of "cookies" from the kitchen, and even set out pillows for her and I to sit on! What a smarty pants!

Every once in awhile you have one of those moments as a parent in between the tantrums, the bathroom accidents, and the bedtime battles, when you think "Oh yes, it is sooo worth it!"