The best $4.00 I ever spent!

If there's one thing these girls can't get enough of, it's puzzles! Sometimes we have four going all at once at different spots around the house, and as they walk by they stop and work on them. Other times they just get into the puzzle zone and will sit and work on puzzles for an hour straight without talking. Our coffee table ALWAYS seems to have a puzzle going on at all times!

Larkin started out doing the 24 piece puzzles, and I knew it was time to get her harder puzzles when I found her spilling out two puzzles at the same time and then solving them both simultaneously. We gradually worked our way up the puzzle difficulty charts and last week bought a 150 piece puzzle. I helped Larkin with it the first time, and then swore I would never help her with this puzzle again! I don't have the patience to sit and find all the right pieces and got frustrated after about an hour. She can do it by herself now though and is so proud of herself for doing a "big girl" puzzle.

Larkin in her favorite puzzle spot.

Willa loves to do Richard Scarry puzzles. They are bright colored and have a lot of different things going on in them, which makes them easy to put together. The first few times she did puzzles solo she would squeal and grin every time she snapped a piece into place-it was so cute!

It's been interesting to see how the two of them attack puzzles so differently. Willa is very picture oriented and will look at the picture on the box when searching for the right piece. She'll say things like, "See here, Mama? I need the rabbit's ears. They're missing." She almost always works the puzzle as a whole unit and does not break it up into smaller sections. Larkin has never been one to refer to the picture regularly, and likes to piece together smaller portions and then combine them later.

Gymnastics

The highlight of the girls' week is always their Little Gym classes! Almost everyday they wake up and ask, "Is it my Little Gym day today?!" Willa takes a parent-child class (I go in with her) and Larkin goes in to a class by herself while we watch behind the glass. Our friend Daphne had her birthday party at Little Gym this weekend, so it was the perfect opportunity to snap a bunch of pics of what the girls do there each week!

Here's Willa on the balance beam. She is a little too confident on here and sometimes tries to break out into an almost-run! In Larkin's class they do forward rolls on the beam--which made all the moms (me included) panic a little the first time we saw them do it!

Larkin on the uneven bars--she knows how to flip over the bar by herself, and she even did it once on the high bar!


Parachute! The girls love when they get to take out the parachute and toss balls around in it, sing songs while rotating it around, or hide underneath it with their teacher!
Air Track--This is a big inflatable that the kids love to bounce on! They get to sit on it too when it's inflating/deflating.


We read a book about a circus this week and Larkin's been going around telling everyone that she wants to be an acrobat when she grows up. She spends at least an hour or two each day working on her "homework"--which she assigns herself. She'll do about 50 handstands or cartwheels until she gets it just right, and if you try to give her some kind of help or tip, she'll say, "Mommy, just watch me. I'm doing my homework and I'm learning and learning. I have to keep practicing to get strong for my Little Gym. "


About a week or two ago Willa figured out how to do a handstand. She let out the biggest squeal once she realized that she was really doing it! A couple of times at night we've heard really weird noises coming from her room and when we went to check on her, we found her doing handstands in the dark!! It takes her three kicks (and a few grunts) to get her legs up above her, but she can do it!