Keepin' Busy

My, but things are busy around here! My neighbor has a pear tree that's heavy with pears, which she told me I should take a whole bunch of, as she can't eat anywhere near that many herself. So far we've picked an estimated 80 pounds. I've given quite a bit of that away, but I've also canned more than half of it. Whew!

Monkey's birthday is coming up next week, and he wants a Guido cake, as in a cake shaped like the little forklift of Cars. This is tricky. And the cake that I made last night stuck to the pan and tore in a most terrible way. I may have to just buy him one with Guido on top, rather than making one that's shaped like a forklift. Though that would be sadness. Additionally, I'm working on a puppet theater for his gift. The lion puppet turned out really cute. Now I just need to make the curtain, so Monkey's got somewhere to hide while he does his puppety thing.

Monkey's making good progress on the whole learning to read thing. He's at the learning to hear the sounds at the beginning of the word stage, which in our phonics program is step 3 of 8. He's getting pretty good at it too & spontaneously asks me, "What letter starts with?" and even occasionally, "Does 'umbrella start with U?" Happy Phonics is games-based, so we're playing quite a few different letter games these days, and it's lots of fun. We've got some letter books in the works: A is done, we're still looking for D-words and N-words, so I'd take suggestions on good nouns to include! I think next time I make the little books I'm including fewer pages.