From new words to interesting conversations

Stella, you are expanding your vocabulary and sounds daily.  Tonight you just got down a sound for an elephant -- a "wooo" complete with arm motion.  Unfortunately, you do that for about 5 different animals.  We'll have to get it attached to the correct animal.  You've added applesauce, nose, snow, Emma, Daddy, nana, papa, and doggy.  You're working on Kaya, boot, coat, neck, and book.  It's just the end sound you have to finish up.  You identify your ears, head, neck, leg, arm, hand, foot, toes, mouth, butt, and back.  You tend to still reach for your ears when we ask you to find your eyes.  You are a climbing machine: chairs, couches, tables, stairs.  You're going to break your neck.

We're on our 2 week holiday break.  Emma, you and I have spent all but about 40 hours together.  I'm convinced you've only ever stopped talking during the hours your asleep.  A couple days ago we were having a family day.  Stella was napping.  I was ironing upstairs and then decided to read a bit while you and Daddy were downstairs.  You two had gone to see the movie Frozen earlier that week and were listening to the soundtrack in the family room.  You had complained about a tummy ache.  Dad and I were trying to convince you to try going to the bathroom even though you insisted you didn't have to.  To convince you a bit, I told you I was going to go to the bathroom too.  I went upstairs to use the bathroom and then read again.  Apparently Daddy thought I was still in the bathroom even though I was reading.  Here's the conversation that wafted upstairs:

Daddy: how long is your mother going to be in the bathroom? (I wasn't at the time, by the way.)
Emma: maybe she's going poop. 
Daddy: it's still a long time. 
Emma: daddy, she's a woman and women take FORRRRREEEVVVVER to go to the bathroom.

Another conversation happened with you and Daddy when you guys when Christmas shopping for my gifts.  You were driving in the car and asked him how old he was.  He told you 32.  Then you proceeded to go on about "and next year you'll be 33, then the next year 34, then the next year 35…" all the way up to 70.  Then you said, "And then I'll have to get a new daddy because you'll be too old."  He had to explain to you about how he'll always be your daddy.

Today over breakfast we were having a pretty heavy conversation about the people in the family who have died.  You said, "I'm really sad that my grandma and great papa died."  Then you asked who would be your mom if I died.  I had a hard time getting you to understand that I'd always be your mom even if I was dead, but that you could get someone to be like me (as mom) like Grandma Sandi has kind of become my mom now.  You said, "Well, who's going to get me to Grandma Sandi's?"  I said, "You'd still have Daddy."  You said, "But, what if you're both gone?"  I said, "Then Uncle Jeremy would take care of you and Stella."  You said, "But he doesn't know where Grandma Sandi's is!"

Putting up the Christmas tree

Christmas Eve with Aunt Kellyn and Uncle TJ

Christmas morning checking out the Elsa Frozen doll

Stella opening her basketball hoop

Emma in her Anna dress

Christmas morning

New Year's Eve with James and Spencer watching Despicable Me 2

The 4-year party

Emma, you decided that your theme this year was red, yellow, and orange.  Admittedly we didn't do much decorating and your foods weren't color-themed.  However it was still good food: a southern BBQ of pulled pork, cole slaw, sweet potato fries, macaroni and cheese, and apple sauce.

You were really funny opening gifts.  You made sure to find the cards first.  There was one gift that you pulled a piece of tissue paper out first.  You pulled your hand back as if it had been smacked and put the tissue paper back and looked again for the card.  You were in awe of each gift you opened and you wanted to play with each immediately after you opened them.  You got lots of clothes (you needed pajamas and pants) and some cars, puzzles, play doh, some other art supplies, and some books.  Your favorites seem to be the princess dolls with the snap on dresses (that you requested), the music toy Jeremy got you, and the GIANT box of art things -- over 1000 pieces -- from Uncle Denny and Aunt Marilyn.  Stella liked all your gifts too.  She walked around for 15 minutes or so going, "Whoa!!!"  You loved the princess figures with snap-on dresses that you asked for.  Uncle Jeremy won with the gifts again though, I believe.  What he got you is hard to describe.  He has an app on his phone that you love to play that has all different instruments on it.  He found a mini-orchestra with 13 different instruments that you can pull out and make different arrangements of and it plays the songs with just those instruments.  It tells you which belong to what family, which are accompaniment versus melody instruments.  It's really cool.  You and Spencer played that for a while.

You had fun with Spencer and TJ and James and Christopher too.  It was really great having family and friends together for the party.

The gift from Uncle Jeremy

Emma is 4!!!

Emma, you turned 4 and got an ear infection and a bit of a cold to celebrate it.  You were well enough to go to school to have cupcakes, and then that afternoon I got a call to pick you up as you had a 101 degree fever.  Daddy took you to the doctor today and seem to be better now that you're on antibiotics. That's good since your party is this Saturday!

You were so excited to tell people you are 4.  The problem is you don't lead off with that you just had (or were having) your birthday so people don't realize it's a big deal!

You are able to write your name but have to work on the lower case letters.  You've started doing some addition.  Tonight for example, at dinner you were asking what 3 + 5 was.  You were able to figure it out on your fingers.  I asked you what 5 + 3 was and you had to recount your fingers.  The development of those ideas is very interesting to me, and I'm excited to see you grow through those phases.

Your listening skills aren't so great lately, and it's not just due to the ear infection.  I have to ask you multiple times to get you to stop doing something.  It's very frustrating.  I try to praise you when you DO listen the first time.  I try to prep you with my expected behavior for you prior to going places.  I'm definitely learning it takes a TON of repetition.  I have more patience than Daddy (amazingly), but I'm running out.  I feel bad some days because by the time I see you after school, my students have already used up all my patience.  You're quite a trooper and rise to my expectations more days than not.  I hope you only remember the good times and not when I'm frustrated with your behavior or just frustrated in general and seem to take it out on you.  I hope when you're older, you call me out on that as well.  We love you!

Emma's first field trip

Emma, you had your first field trip this past Wednesday.  Your class went to the Country Mill.  Unfortunately, it wasn't exactly a new place for you to go as that's where we go apple picking every October.  I have a feeling being our kid you'll experience many field trips like that -- places that you've been already.  You were super excited to ride the bus though.  I can remember you being just around 2 years old pointing out every school bus we passed on the way home from daycare.  Your teachers were doing a good job telling you the expectations prior to the trip too.  Two days out you told me, "We have to sit completely on our butts facing forward in the seats."  I couldn't go with you as I had to work.  Daddy was out of town on business.  Fortunately you are in class with Owen Carmody whose parents we are good friends with.  His mom sent 3 pictures from the trip.

Left to right: Owen, Emma, and Jacob.

Picking out pumpkins in the pumpkin patch.

The bus ride there!  I love your smile in this picture.

On the way home, you informed me there was a second Jacob in your class that I hadn't met yet.  "There's two Jacobs.  The Jacob who loves me and the Jacob who doesn't.  Sometimes we just call them little Jacob and big Jacob."  Jacob is your buddy with braces on his legs.  There's a second girl in your class who started after the field trip day who has braces too and a walker.  You seem to think nothing of the difference, it's just what those kids need.  I wish more people kept that nonchalance longer.  I did use that as an opportunity to reinforce that you need to walk across the classroom so you don't accidentally knock one of those kids over.

First parent-teacher conference

Emma, tonight we had your first parent-teacher conference.  It was a bit different being on the other side of the table for a change.  You are young for preschool: your birthday is actually 4 days past the birthday cut off.  (You'll do a second year of preschool for that reason.)  Mrs. Rogers said there are times she can tell you are definitely one of the younger kids but other times it seems like you're one of the oldest ones.  There was a lot of great feedback both things you're already doing well and things you can improve on.  One thing you have to be able to do is identify 4 out of 6 shapes.  On the way home, your dad asked, "Which shapes?  She could probably have asked about a dodecahedron and she would have gotten it right."  I don't know about that, but you'd definitely be able to identify some polygons some junior high kids can't.  A lot of the knowledge things we expected -- counting to 20, recognizing and naming colors, identifying all capital letters.  You need to work on figuring out "b" and "d" and "p" and "q" better.  I expected this.  I notice this when you're reading your words at night with me -- you'll read "be" as "de" sometimes.  Hopefully putting it in context of words will continue to help that.  We also have to work on you writing your lower case letters.

I think some of my favorite things to hear about were things not related to knowledge.  Apparently most often you are very caring and a great helper (although you like to draw attention to the fact that you helped).  You seem to have a soft-spot for a boy named Jacob.  He wears braces on his legs and seems knock-kneed.  I'm not sure if it's MS or just legs that didn't form right.  He is always excited to see you in child care.  He always pops up to hug you when you leave for the day.  Apparently you let him touch your hair but no one else can.  It reminds me of one of my current students who has taken a student with Autism under her wing to mentor completely of her own volition.  I hope you always are open to all students.

She had a sheet with numbers 1-9 that you had to trace and then glue the appropriate number of Froot Loops on it.  She initially thought you might struggle with it, but turns out you were fine (of course) AND that you were helping some of the older kids!  She said you also have some days when you have to go to the bathroom a lot -- sometimes it's right around clean up time or when another student has to go too.  She said she'll distract you with something else if you've gone not too long ago, and by the time you're done you no longer have to go (magically!).

We're super proud of you and all you're learning about your letters, math, and being a caring, generous person.  You've put in a lot of hard work to get to this point, and I hope you continue to reap the benefits of working hard!

Soccer

Our friends, the Cotters, have a daughter who is about 6 months older than you.  They put her in soccer in the spring when we did another round of gymnastics.  We didn't want to do gymnastics again because you weren't listening well to the teachers.  We put you in the same clinic as Bella.

You were super excited to start.  We got you shin guards and soccer socks and shorts.  Your Great Aunt Chris (Daddy's aunt) mailed you a pair of cleats.  You did pretty well your first day.  The club is Chill Soccer.  All their coaches are from the UK or Ireland (2 of them!).  They really focus on building good team players in addition to soccer skills.  They give out green cards if you are a good sport.  You earned one.  I think you were a good sport but could probably have done a better job listening.  (You thought so too.)

On the way home I said something about soccer next week.  You said, "I don't want to go back to soccer.  I just wanted to do it the one time."  You were near tears after a 15 minute conversation on the way home saying you didn't want to go back.  I figured you were just tired and we'd talk about it tomorrow.  You were frustrated the ball didn't do something it was supposed to do on some "back and forth" move you were doing, but you thought your toe touches were really good.  I think you expected to be good at it right away or have it be easy.  I tried to keep telling you that you had to go back more to practice and get better at it, that you couldn't do everything at gymnastics the first night either.  That seemed to fall on deaf ears.  (I KNOW your grandma and I had moments like this as well.  You get that attitude from me apparently.)

We got home and did bath time right away.  You sat down to pee before getting in the tub.  You said, "I had a lot of fun at soccer.  I can't wait to go back!"  Really?!  Sheesh.  You agreed to do the rest of the weeks at least.  I said if you didn't like it after that, you don't have to do the winter one indoor if you don't want.

What Stella did while Emma played: she put herself in the goal!

Emma is on the far left in the yellow jersey.

Warming up

Toe taps

Bella in the pink coat on the left

First day of preschool!

Emma, your first day of preschool was September 3, 2013.  (Today is the 12.  I also started school.  I've been trying to figure out schedules and splitting time between you girls, school, myself, and house things.  It's taken me awhile to figure that out and get to this.  Sorry!)

You were super excited!  Daddy took the day off to take you in the morning.  He was pretty nervous that you might have a meltdown and he wouldn't know what to do.  Fortunately you were awesome.  He said you were great -- talking to other kids even before you went inside -- until the little boy next to you had a meltdown.  Then you started getting a little whiny.  Fortunately Mrs. Reynolds quickly had you come up to the front of the line to lead everyone in.  Daddy said he poked his head in after you were in the class already and you had totally stopped crying.

I've taken over dropping you off in the morning since your school is 3 minutes from my school.  You go to child care in the morning and see Madeline Carmody every day.  Owen, her brother, is there 2 days a week and also in your class those two days.

You've already made 2 friends that you talk about often: Victoria and Abby.  (It's funny to me you also have "Abby and Emma" dolls with magnetic clothes -- think old-school paper dolls.)  You've also talked about a Joshua from morning childcare, who I think he might be the brother of one of my current students.  You also talked about a Tristan the other day.

They provide a rest time just after lunch.  You never sleep though.  You have fallen asleep on the car ride home a couple days.  We've also started putting you to bed about 15 minutes earlier.  You're out much quicker at night -- we don't still hear you around 9:30.

You've had all good days so far.  You had to go to timeout once for running across the classroom.  Otherwise I've had no bad reports.  In my head I keep debating between putting you in Dewitt schools next year or waiting until you and Stella can ride the bus on your own.  If we start you next year, Daddy will always have to work a later shift and will never be home in the evenings, unless it's his day off.  He and I have to keep talking about it.

Here are some pictures Daddy took in the morning.

Emma's new friend

The other day I picked you up from daycare, and you were talking about taking Jessie home.  Jessie appeared during the day and came with you out of the bathroom.  Jessie came home and ate dinner with us.  She also went back to Shawn's house with us the next day.

Some people freak out when their kid has an imaginary friend.  I had one (Strawberry) and your dad had 2.

Emma's first Gymnastics lesson

We signed you up for gymnastics.  You're often attempting flips and other yoga moves at home so I thought gymnastics would be a good outlet.  Rather than going through an expensive gymnastics place yet, we did a short course through Holt Community Ed just to see if you like it first.  They started the kids off with some stretching and some other balance things.  I was trying to help you with some.  I hear, "Mom!  Stop it!  I can do it myself!"  Oh boy.  This was 15 minutes into it.  You attempted everything: the beam on the floor, the small bar, somersaults, intro to hand stands and cartwheels, bear crawl (which she already knew).  Then they took the kids to the big apparatuses: the uneven bars and the high balance beam.  You pulled your feet right up to the bar straight legged.  The second time you tried to bicycle pedal your legs up so you might have been getting tired.  On the beam you walked right across with barely a spot the first time.  The second time they had you go side ways.  Matt, the ever-proud dad, "She was the only one they had go sideways."  I said, "She might have also been the only one to get through twice."  Matt, "Noooo..."

Emma, you've been pulling the "I can't" card at home lately.  I'm hoping that this also starts to help you see all the things you CAN do.  I hope it challenges you physically but mentally as well and shows you that if you work hard enough at something you can get there.

First dentist appointment

Today was your first dentist appointment, Emma.  We have been prepping you for 3-4 days now.  You were pretty excited to go.  Daddy sent me a picture and you were getting your teeth cleaned like a champ!  He said you only freaked out when the chair went to recline.  After, he was holding your hand, and you looked at him and said, "Daddy, you don't need to hold my hand."  Later, he told me, "Apparently I was holding it just for my benefit."  You came home with a new toothbrush, sparkly toothpaste, and binoculars from the toy chest.  Dr. Andy thought you did a better job than Daddy even!

Emma's 3rd birthday party

I can't quite believe you are 3 (well, officially not until tomorrow).  There are times that it seems like you're much older too.  Today we had your birthday party.  It was your purple and green party.  You picked the theme from the hat Aunt Kate sent you.  Last weekend I made your garland and decorations.  We hung them last night so you could see them this morning when you woke up.  I ended up sleeping on the couch this morning for a bit.  You came out and saw them.  Your words, "Mama!  I can't believe you put my decorations up!  I can't believe it!"

You were amazed to see everyone show up in a green or purple shirt.  You kept pointing out all the people who matched.  I did my best to have food support the theme: chicken salad in green wraps with dried cherries, cheese dip with blue corn tortilla chips, purple yogurt-covered pretzels, potato salad with red potatoes, tortellini pasta salad with broccoli, green and red grapes, and green apple cream cheese dip. Your cake was even purple with green frosting.  Unfortunately, making it 3 tiers make it a little unsteady.  We'll stick to two next time.

You went no nap today and did great.  You were very into opening your gifts and you thanked people as you went and showed off your presents.  We even had Mama Duby on Skype so she could share in the day and see your reaction to opening the cowboy hat she sent you.  We got you cowboy boots to go along with it.  Miss Tammy found you a cowgirl dress too so you have the whole set.  You got lots of art supplies, which will come in handy over the winter.  We'll have to work on making some masterpieces.

You ate your cake at the table with Great Papa, Great Grandma, and Grandma Erma (Marilyn's mom).  It was so funny.  I am amazed at the conversations you can carry on with adults.

Emma sitting in her Super Girl outfit, another one from Miss Tammy.

The cake.  Notice it leaning a bit to the left.

Birthday girl!

I found purple silverware after everyone had left.

Opening gifts.

There was a Brave theme this year to the gifts.

"WOW!  A princess scooter!"

This puppet ribbits songs.

Cowboy boots

"WOW! A cowboy hat!"

The ensemble, plus the Merida dress.

Not sure why she was staring so intently at the cake.

See, it's purple.  Notice it leaning MORE to the left.

And it finally gave up.

Having a conversation with the great grandparents.

"Yee Ha!"

With the horse.