crafts, kids coming over, Johari going out, tongue work

Jordan at the playground!

Windy beach fun

Homemade popsicles

A piece of artwork by Johari that she called "SHY"

A plate that had special markers to decorate it...mostly done by Johari except the dogs are done by request

The other side of the plate....cat by request only

Playdough fun with Joey and Emma

Hanging at the mall with her friend, Julia, sharing snacks

Johari has been busy doing more arts and crafts. She has been drawing a whole lot. On her easel. On body parts. On paper. Sometimes when she is drawing she gets this super intense look on her face with FULL concentration. I love watching that. We also are trying to do a little beading. Mainly she likes to pour the beads from bowl to bowl to floor. But I did notice one time that she was actually putting a few beads on the plastic beading string. I thought that was pretty cool. A woman that came to visit at the house brought her some glitter glue. That was super enjoyable. She would pour a big puddle of it into the palm of her hand and them smear it on her easel or on paper. Then she would get back to squeezing the tube out into the palm of her hand. We went to Ishmael's birthday party and Ishmael's aunt gave Johari the plate to decorate. She worked on that over time and was very intense about her drawings on it. We are getting into the world of playdough. She had played with homemade salt dough a few times. But I decided to go ahead and get some manufactured playdough and some tools to work with it...cookie cutters, a rolling pin, garlic crusher and so on.
About a week or so ago, Johari started communicating when she feels shy. If a stranger smiles at her or someone she doesn't know well interacts with her, she comes to me and says she feels "shy". It is so nice for her to have another emotion that she can convey. So she made a glitter/chalk/marker piece of artwork on her easel and told me that it was "Shy".
Johari loves to talk on the phone now. When she wants to call someone she tells me that she wants to say "hi" and hands me the phone. Often she knows exactly who she wants to call as well. And if they do not answer she leaves her "hi" message.
Ishmael stayed with us for a night last week while Stacy went to her cousin's birth. It went well until he needed to sleep then he was worried and not sure what to do. We had a whole bunch of fun...eating popsicles and playing in the park and feeding the fish and taking a bath and more. Emma and Joey from across the street came over the other day after school. We had fun together. Everyone got into the playdough fun.
Then Johari had 2 outings without her mama this week too. She went out with Hyon for a few hours the other day. They went to play at someone's house and then to the beach. I think they had fun together. Then Wednesday evening Johari went to Jordan's house for a few hours without mama and had a great time. She was exhausted by the time we were taking her home.
I got a tongue scraper yesterday. I have never had one. But I have noticed that Johari's tongue is very white. And I know that one time when I went to a Chinese medicine clinic in Chicago, they told me that my tongue is white. So I have been trying to figure out if this white tongue stuff is some sort of internal imbalance or if it is just typical mouth "stuff". Although I haven't figured this out, we are going to start trying some regular tongue scraping and see if our tongues can get uncovered and free.
Johari likes to help me bake things now. She likes to pour the ingredients in and put the muffin papers in the tin and mix the batter around. I love baking together.
We have some new items from storage. Yesterday, she found the dress that Liz brought back from China for her and wanted to wear it. It looks nice on her. She didn't want to take it off for bedtime so she is sleeping in it.

There is more but that is enough for now.