the life & travels of the littleton family

November 23, 2012

Some new videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRs2b0CHmv0&feature=youtu.be This one is Sam getting the weekly Star Student award for his class. His teacher said he got it for two reasons- 1) always trying to do his best in writing fantastic sentences an

d coming up with creative vocabulary and 2) helping others without being asked. The example she gives that is missing from the video is that they were working on action verbs and he made up the sentence "The snake slithered into the pool" and slithered wasn't one of the verbs they'd talked about. In the part you can hear- she mentions the example of using "wintering" as an action verb- cute. He was so thrilled with himself. Also last week he came home with a special mini-award for student of the day for "trying his very best to stretch out words and write interesting sentences." He was so proud of that and of a little straw mat he made in school that he snuck both of them into our thanksgiving centerpiece :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrMLXwG3BQ0&feature=youtu.be This is one of my favorite ways to spend Nora's alert times which are more and more frequent now. I love her expressions and getting a reaction out of her

http://youtu.be/mNE_oo5e3ps When Biju was here, we had enough people for a "real" game of baseball. Much fun was had by all :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIMaTKdNJ3A&feature=youtu.be Jeff learned to ride a bike recently and now rides every chance he gets. I adore seeing him learn new skills

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLUTLJUIUCQ&feature=youtu.be Jeff is totally loving school too- I think both the boys are absolutely thriving there... it's so wonderful to know that they are so happy when they're not at home.

October 28, 2012

Nora Ann Rejoice

Nora Ann Rejoice was born Oct 26th at 7:50 am in Chiang Mai after 5 hours of labor. It was a great birth and she's doing very well. The boys love being with her and we're all enjoying the newness, innocence and simplicity of a newborn. I've got loads of pictures on Facebook and can email them too if you let me know, but here are four videos of the boys with her that I think are super fun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQuqVMLvDPA&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgCIuzjRqcM&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RypSZKz_zU&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFbf7id5A1c&feature=youtu.be

October 25, 2012

Pre-baby life

Today is my due date and though we may well still have weeks before she's born... we've been making the most of our time together before she joins us. This week is school holiday for the boys, and so far we've been mini-golfing, swimming at our pool and the pool with the waterslides, visited the botanical gardens with the hedge maze and animals to feed, visited some myna birds which 'speak' Thai and had a playdate with some new friends from school. It's been a lot of fun.

Here are some pics and videos from the past month:

We had a visit in September from Grandma for this first time in awhile as she has been away from Asia for months and months.

Jeff's first day of school ever (and Sam's 2nd day at the new school)

A super fun little project we tried this month- it's like Mr. Potato Head except with magnets and cans and other objects

Another fun little project- not sure where the sock-puppet wolf is pictured- but we made these finger puppets and that sock puppet and have been acting out the story pretty often. Jeff's just learning a bunch of classics now and likes hearing them repeated.

One night while John was at soccer practice, we turned on two aircons and three fans and made paper snowflakes and watched a show set in the snow.

Tonight we made gingerbread cookies at Jeff's request- he's concerned they'll run away while we're sleeping.

Here are a few videos:

Jeff's school projects

Sam's school project

Sam's school presentation

Jeff's version of eeny meenie miny moe

Sam's practice version of the presentation

September 24, 2012

Sam's recent accomplishments

It has been so fun to see Sam learning so many new things. Just in the past few weeks, he's been reading me books, swimming long distances without stopping (like laps in the pool back and forth), learning to add and subtract and about 100s place 10s place and 1s place, and he's been creating a slew of new art (something he didn't use to be interested in at all). I don't have pics and videos of most of that, but I do have some of his artwork from a couple weeks ago- recently he's been adding more and more details- some of his new stuff is just packed with detail, but it gives an idea of what he's been up to. Also, this weekend, he spent more time on lego creations than he ever has before- maybe 8 hours in one weekend? My favorite things he made this week were a metal recycling plant with transportation vehicles and a big machine for sorting and sifting the metal, and a pool with four heights of diving boards.