Busy, Busy

I long for summer, but will take Thanksgiving. We are so busy with work and school, I feel that we have little time with the kids. Since I don't have a lot of time to narrate, I will bullet:

• Rees went pee in the potty. Whoo-hoo. I just brought out the mini-M&Ms to entice her, worked for Izzy. So hoppefully we see some good progress. She is also able to tell us if she has a poop. 
• Izzy was so stinking proud of herself, after we battled last night to form the letter s. Today she wrote Izzy Claussen all by herself with only a written model to copy from. She was just so happy to make the two s's in her name. 
• Rees fell for the first time hard enough to send Mommy screaming for Dad. Blood everywhere, but we are thankful that the worst off was the little part that connects between the gum and the lip and then her lip. She is so brave, barely cried. I probably scared her more. I thought for use we had lost teeth and had a broken jaw and nose. Ahh, I hate this part of parenting.
• Rees starts at Merryhill in January. We are so excited for her to start in the program, thereby being raised in the challenging curriculum. Izzy is really doing well on her homework. We are using a lot of supplementary materials from my class including our math program. I set her up and so I am able to give her the kindergarten curriculum which will help her now at school.
• We are continuing to toy with the idea of where to put Izzy for kindergarten. Right now it seems to be Westlake Charter, Merryhill kindergarten, and then Marcum-Illinois Elementary School in East Nicolaus. Marcum would actually be our first choice, but they do not have before school care that starts before 7am and I have to be at work at 730. 
• Rees has some new words beyond: Maah, Dah, Zizzy, da (for dogs), thank you, please, bye-bye, and ish (for fish). She signs us more, please, thank you, milk, water, eat, up, down, and the best one all done. Baby sign is amazing. I mean for her to be able to communicate that she is done, avoids any types of escalation we may have. Just clean her off and let her get going.
• Rees loves touchy/feelly books. She will rub them across her face.
• Rees can tell you where her nose, toes, be-bo, hair, and just recently cheeks, ears, and our favorite eyes. If you do an exaggerated blink with her, she will imitate that by blinking back at you.
• Rees has the best please face. I need to catch it on camera. She uses it to communicate her wanting to see people as well. Our favorite is to ask her "Do you want to see Ava?" She will say "No!!" Do you want to see Evan? And then that face immediately comes out. I love it. We get a kick out of it.