I finally decided to buy an inflatable swimming pool for the boys to play in. My parents had purchased one last summer, and the boys love playing in theirs every time we would go to their house. I had a water table, so I figured that was "enough" as far as playing with water. But the deciding factor came the day that I filled up their water table for them and took a bucket of water to the front yard to water my new lemon tree. I returned 2 minutes later to find both boys standing 3 feet off the concrete ground inside the 3' diameter water table (with 2 different levels) jostling each other for the tiny space! I immediately yanked them both off, stuck them in my car, and drove straight to Walmart. I haven't regreted the purchase since! When it's all hot and sweaty in the Houston summer heat, we all jump in and splash around for a while.
3 days ago, we found this baby black bellied whistling duck in our backyard. At the time, I was unaware that he was only 1 day old or just born! Since it was 7pm at night, I called the Nature Discovery Center near our house and left them a message. We then put him in this newspaper lined box, named him Jumpy (because he could literally jump a foot or more high), and put little containers of water, torn greens, and crushed cereal in with him. We put him under a warm light and duck-sat him overnight. The next day, Michael and I took him to the Nature Discovery Center, but because he is a protected species, they sent us to the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (near I-10 & 610). The TWRC took little Jumpy, where they will take care of him and raise him until he is old enough to survive on his own, when they will then release him back into the wild. Thanks TWRC! Of course, I haven't heard the end of "I want to see Jumpy." "Where's Jumpy?" for the last 2 days!
For the past 2 months now, Michael has been learning to put letters together to spell words. While I knew the concept was getting through, I didn't know how much of it was really him reading, or just recognizing the letter pattern and saying the word that he already knew. But today, playing with his foam letters, I started to form different words for him, even words that I knew he didn't know, or at least didn't know well (like "bog" or "sag" or "cog"), and he would sound the letters out and put the sounds together to make the words! I think he read about 25-30 different 3-letter words. He even read five 4-letter words: "clap", "slap", "flap", "camp", and "gnat" (of course I did told him the "g" was silent).
God is so good to us and our life is so full of blessings. Thank-you, Lord Jesus!
