Tag: counting

Thea’s Counting

Thea’s Counting

March 9, 2024

“Listen mom!”  Yells Thea, “listen Christina!”  She excitedly counts down from 20.  She’s been doing that for a while, but today had both of us in the living room when she was showing off.  She had just read a picture book to Laud and spelled four or five words from memory. 

“Wow, Thea! High five!” Christina smiles, “how many sisters do you have?”

“Wait!”

*excited little giggles and a hopping Thea bounds toward the barracks*

“Wait?” Christina laughs and looks at me, “there’s no one down there.” 

True.  Becky is at Pensacola.  Kimberly, Jaquline, Jillian, and Lucas are at gym.  I smile and laugh.  “She’s counting.”

Christina laughs harder, “she’s counting the beds!”

*Thea races in, jumps over Christina on the couch, and ends up standing in the corner of the couch* “Five!  I have five sisters because we have six beds!”

Christina is still laughing.  She pauses enough to give Thea a high five and comments to me, “she even subtracted herself from the total.”

“How many brothers do you have?” Christina challenges.  Thea smirks, “two but if you don’t count Laud, only one.”

“Why wouldn’t you count Laud?”

I’m hiding my face because Thea is conniving.  Little cheeky child looks pauses her bouncing to look straight at Christina and reply, “because he doesn’t have a bed yet, just a bassinet.”  Leaving us smiling and chuckling, my just-turned-five year old skips back to the playroom. 

I am so thankful for the joy God gives us through the smiles and laughter children bring to our home!

What cute funny antic made you smile today?

Thank you for reading,

Type at you later!

~Nancy Tart

Spring Blessings

March 24, 2019

Spring Blessings

March 20th was the official first day of spring.

I live in Florida, so “Spring” as we see it means beach weather – at least for those of us who don’t consider 70 degrees too cold for sand, surf, and sun.

The flower bulbs are coming back.  The songbirds are singing and making nests.  The woodpeckers in the Maple tree are arguing about who gets the best insect hole.  My baby Thea is a month old (on the first day of spring & two of her aunts’ birthdays).  I’m shifting from part time to full time at my office job.

This job is a God-sent blessing anyway (read that story here); increase of hours = increase of income and that is super sweet!

Anyone seen White Christmas?  Bing Crosby sings “Counting My Blessings” and that became a theme song in my head.  Songs will pop into my head when I think certain things… I’m just musically wired… auto-correct tried to put in “weird;” maybe weird is the right word!

So, I’m “counting my blessings” this spring:

Job with a growing company where I get to take my Baby Thea to work with me! (Thank you, Jesus!)

Dream job where I get to teach and encourage young athletes while working out and having fun.  (Thank you, Jesus!)

Health, (finally!) as I’ve found a technique that works to keep my black mold allergy from turning to throat-constricting asthma. (I can keep it at just a post-nasal drip, which is irritating, but not debilitating.)

Family.  I live for family.  (Why I haven’t been writing for a bit… busy with jobs, helping sisters, and spending time investing in family.)

Finding a church we hope to be able to call “home” as our church closed.  (Louis’ cousin and several friends attend there.)  We’ve been three times and most of the kids like it so far.

Spiritual growth in my girls.  Watching that bloom is the best!

Provision.  We have a house to rent, food to eat, and gas to get us to and from work.  Paying back debt and then shifting focus to our long-term goal of saving for our own house.

Thank you, Jesus, for the blessings in my life!  Thank you for healing, love, family, and life!

I’m enjoying a jolt of energy from counting my blessings, what about you?

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Playtime Patterns

February 15, 2018

Playtime Patterns

Normally, Lucas’ idea of “playing trains” is to build a train track with the little tykes track and run every vehicle with wheels on the tracks in a line saying encouraging bits as they crest the one hill.  Lately, he has been making patterns. (This is great practice for colors, counting, and future math skills!)

This time, we had just left a duplo building where he’d made single color stacks of blocks and laid them out in blue, green, red, blue, green, red, blue.  He quickly built something and said, “take a picture of my rainbow man!”

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This came with a huge Lucas grin.  (I had to go get my phone with this builder trailing behind until I snapped the picture – then he raced back to the playroom.)  When I returned to the playroom, he had the train track laid out in a color pattern.

“Mom look!” he called and pointed out each color with a shout as he walked along, “red!  Yellow! Blue! Green!  Red! Yellow!”  This continued along the length of the track with all thirty or so pieces.

I told him, “good job with your pattern!”

Jaquline ran in while he was shouting to notice the pattern and hurried back to her snack.

“Mom!”  Jaquline smiled and showed me her orange slices, “look, a rose pattern!”

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Lucas clapped his hands, “I can have one-two-three-four-five!”  And he wiggled his fingers as he streamed the numbers together.  Jaquline laughed and shared her snack, saying, “it is for everyone, Lucas.”

Jillian built a puzzle we’d found to “check the pieces” (puzzle pieces get lost like socks in the washer) and discovered two missing pieces.  She checked the odds box without luck but left the puzzle on the table.  Lucas found it and gasped, “Oh NO!  MOM, we HAVE to find the lost ones!” (He really doesn’t like broken or missing items.  He is the only one who won’t do two mix-matched socks.  He knows if he doesn’t get his own, I will just grab two from the sock box that look similar: he takes pains to bring me the matched pair.)

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Kimberly was using the shape blocks for geometry and left a bright pile on the table.  She came back after gathering the rest of her papers to find Lucas had sorted them by color.

He was helping Christina and Rebeccah with the candy machine (someone – aka Lucas – stuck two pennies in at the same time so they had to do some repair) and while they took turns sorting and counting the coins for their savings goal, they guided Lucas in sorting the favorite blues into the center of the bowl!

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“Mom!  I love blues!” Lucas claps.  Rebeccah rearranges the bowl by moving a few pieces and says, “perfectly balanced.”

(Maybe we all like perfect patterns.)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Counting by Twos

My preschoolers turn our birthday tradition into color and counting practice for the toddler! 🙂

January 31, 2018

Counting by Twos

“Mom, you have to change my doll so we are all twos!” Jillian bounced this morning.  Jillian turned six on the 29th.  We’ve been very busy with school, work, and two events (Jillian’s cake and ice cream birthday on Monday & Christina’s CAP movie night on Tuesday), and  we’d forgotten to change her age doll.  (My Aunt gave me the first three of these collectible figures as a toddler, I began filling in my collection when I was twelve, and although most are half super glue from the effects of pets’ tails, sisters and children “playing” them, and moving accidents, I now have one of each age and am collecting the “Growing Up Boys” figures to keep up with Lucas.)  What started with Christina, we have continued.  (I display the figures that match the girls’ ages.)

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When Lucas was born, we discovered they used to make a boy version and we started collecting those too.

Now, since we have Anastasia’s age doll in the lineup too, with this birthday, the dolls change to 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, and 2.  They will stay that way until Lucas levels up in May.  Jillian and Anastasia call it “the twos.”

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Lucas likes to find patterns in things right now.  Each of the dolls has one of four dress colors.  The clothes colors are blue, lavender, blue, lavender, blue, lavender, blue.  Lucas calls them “blue, not blue,” and giggles when the girls say “lavender.”  He’ll repeat, “la-ven-der!” giggle, and say “blue, not blue!”

This makes Jaquline, Jillian, and Anastasia say, “no, Lucas!  Blue and lavender!”

He laughs because that is exactly the reaction he wants!

But when they point out the numbers, Lucas says, “two-four-six-eight-ten-twelve!”  (He yells them all together like one long number and misses the fourteen.)

Anastasia and Jillian clap, “yeah!  He can count by twos!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

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