Hummus, Puzzles, and Buttons

It’s just a quiet Monday here at the LaMartina abode. A little snow falling quietly outside, and much relaxing happening within. Not the most exciting day, but it’s been really nice thus far.

Bianca has discovered hummus. And she looooooooves it. Almost as much as Violet loves noodles. Which is a lot.

Meanwhile, in the other room-

Fiona worked really, really hard on this puzzle. I taught her how to start with the edge pieces, and helped coach those ones into place, but she did the middle entirely on her own. Which is pretty impressive if you consider that we don’t even have the picture of what it’s supposed to look like. So, well done. I tried to get her to look up for a quick picture, but she just said “Mum. I’m tryin’ to focus.”

So I let it go. Focus is something we’ve been, well, focusing on lately. There is some concern that she is too much “off in Fiona world” when asked to do/answer things at school. To the point that her teacher is hesitant to recommend kindergarten for next year. Not that she’s behind or anything, just that she’s four! And with an October birthday, she can swing either way, and start kindergarten “early” at almost 5, or wait and start it “later” at nearly 6. Back in the States she would have just waited to be fully five, but here the cutoff isn’t until March. So potentially there would be several months’ worth of kids younger than her in her class. Right now I’m leaning toward enrolling her in both kindergarten AND preschool and then just making a decision closer to the start of the actual school year. Six months is a long time.

While Fiona was puzzling it up, Violet was sitting over on the stairs. So what? Sew buttons.

This was one of their Christmas gifts that I put together and was really excited to give them, until today Violet hadn’t shown all that much interest in it. (Aside from fighting over whose scissors were whose, and playing yoyo with the retractable measuring tapes.) But today she spent a good long while picking out buttons and stitching them to her “fabric”. The thread she currently has is pretty thick, it’s the kind that’s made to use with that plastic canvas. I decided to melt the end of the thread, just to keep the needle from slipping off the end. However, this made it too big to fit through some of the smaller buttons. She asked for help, and as I tugged on the thread, I may have said something to the effect of, “Come on, little guy.” (Which is like a thousand times better and tamer than any coaxing my sewing projects typically receive. You can ask anyone, my sewing machine and I have a love/hate thing going on. Currently hate, but that’s mainly because I snapped the needle in half trying to sew hooded towels on Christmas Eve. They’re still not finished, though I did manage to pick up another packet of needles. I’m thinking maybe Easter gifts?)

Buuuut anyways, then she sat there sewing, and any time her needle/thread got stuck, she’d just patiently say “Come on, little guy! Go through! Come on! You can do it!” in the most adorable little voice.

 

And that’s our Monday.