Watch out, MaryLou!

It's been quiet around here and as usual, I have a bunch of posts all at once again (three more exactly -- at this moment).  Our current obsession in our house is to "do gymnastics".  She will pull the cushions off the sofa and pile the other cushion on top of that.  And then she proceeds to be flips and jumps off the cushionless sofa.  She is quite a daredevil lately.

Another new obsession is "naked" gymnastics, which take place right before bed.  When I get the two of them undressed for bed, they get about five minutes to race around the upstairs hallway in the buff.  She will run from one end to the other and do her forward rolls along with some spins with her legs up for added bonus.  He will just run back and forth and screech at the top of his lungs.  It is wonderfully to see them both have such a great time together, even though they aren't actually playing together.

This one...  He got a haircut this week and I miss the mop that is on top of his head in this photo.  He looks like such a little boy now -- not my little Fish.  Don't get me wrong, the cut looks great on him, but I miss my little long haired boy.  I really wanted to grow his hair long, long, long -- imagining a beautiful head of curls and such.  But we got lots of frizz and static instead.

She is also still attending preschool two days a week.  I think that she is settling in.  She was really scared to go to school each morning.  And at pickup, the teachers bring the kids out to the waiting line of parents in their cars and when I would pick her up at noon, she would tell me that she didn't want to go back the minute that I held onto her hand to walk her around the car.  I realized I got to the root of the problem when she told me that the kids at school were scary because she didn't know their names.  So I contacted the administrator (as I don't have the teacher's contact) and asked that more name reminding happened with Finn.  And in the last week with that in place, today was the first day and I picked her up and she had nothing but positive things to say about school.

Mornings for Fish and I are quiet on the days that she is gone, like really quiet.  He is still a morning napper.  Due to the timing of his naps (he usually goes down between 10-10:30) and the length (usually between 45-90 minutes) and the time we have to leave the house to pick Finn up (11:30), we don't venture too far away together.

Slainte!

Happy St. Patrick's Day from our little Irish step dancer and little leprechaun! 

 

(Thanks, Granny, for the step dancing dress!  We received it yesterday and it inspired these photos.  Let's just say someone was very excited to wear it and refused to take it off at the end of the evening.)

This is the face of a boy who sees a dog in the park.

A Week in the Life (v.2015.4)

We hit up the Rainforest (which is attached to the Zoo) a couple of weeks ago.  They have a small safari set up with porcupines.  Every 5-10 minutes, a "thunderstorm" comes through complete with rain and fog after the rain.  Fish was quite intrigued.

It was our lucky day!  The sloth was right next to the window!

Finn got up in the window to take a closer look.

She asked me to hold the mirror and then proceeded to make funny faces at herself.

Group selfie with a boy with a fever and a girl in her jammies at 5pm.

Somebody wasn't feeling good at all.

And somebody else refused to get out of her jamies.

School sends home homework with her each Tuesday which needs to be completed before Friday.  Crazy the puppy watched her.

Practicing writing "7"s.

Morning songs with Fish.

It was a rough week last week.


We are having problems with her eating all her snack at school.  Well not problems with her not eating it, just problems with her "wanting to save it for later" -- especially items that can't be "saved for later".


Sunday mornings are for play-doh.  Last Sunday, Mommy got in the action and made Sven into a pig.


And Mommy also turned Elsa into an elephant.


Someone loves to get dirty while eating.


We are now running into issues with her being scared to go to school (more like nervous), some mornings she is treated with a donut (don't judge).


Dancing on the car ride to school helps with nerves!

She is already prepping for her day job!

School daze are here again...

Now that we have a three year old, what should we do with her?  We put her in preschool!  Last week was her first week at school.  The jury is still out most mornings where we have to leave for school, but I think that's how every normal kid is -- no kid really likes going to school until they get there.  Two weeks ago, we went to her preschool for an "interview" -- to see if she would be a good fit for the school.  Finn is a pretty shy girl initially, so I was a little nervous that she wasn't going to like it.  My way of reassuring her the morning of her interview was that we were going to "visit" a school and if she didn't like it there, we didn't have to go back.  I should also add that we do a lot of foreshadowing in our house, so there are no surprises.  We talked about school and how fun it would be for at least two weeks beforehand and the "visit" as soon as the appointment was made.

Thanks, Auntie Anita, for the super-fabulous first day of school outfit!  There was NO question in her mind which outfit she was going to wear for her first day.

She was only slightly shy when we got to the school and that lasted for a whole two minutes.  The teacher welcomed her into the classroom and she got to play with the art supplies.  She seem to forget that we were even there and didn't want to leave when it was time to go.  So we were all set for her returning to school the following week.  As we left the school, she kept saying how she wanted to go back and she was excited to return.  We signed her up for two days a week: Tuesday and Friday.  Unfortunately, we didn't get Thursday, which was gymnastics day.  She has been asking and asking about going back to gymnastics class -- so I was hopeful that we could get her in on gymnastics day.  (Guess I'll just have to find a class locally for her.)

We did our supply shopping the day before school, including snack-shopping.  She had a great time picking out her folder and her bin that her extra set of clothes would go in (it was pink, of course).  She seemed pretty amped about school the next day.  Until the next morning came...

In the morning it was pretty evident that she was really scared and nervous to go when she realized that Mommy wasn't going to be going with her like last time.  She was very cranky that morning and she wasn't very cooperative (all signs of fear to me).  So I tried to calm her nerves by telling her that she was only going to be there for the length of a nap (three hours -- okay it's a LONG nap, but still).  I told her that she was going to get there and they were going to work on some fun letters and colors games, she was going to have her snack (which she was super excited about because it was in a Frozen lunch box), and then she was going to play a little more and then Mommy & Brother would be there before lunch time!  E was dropping her off and he said that there were tears initially upon getting in the car, but by the time that he walked her in to the school, she ran away from him even before he could take her coat off.

Her first day was pretty great for her.  They read a book and learned some Spanish (although she couldn't repeat any words) and she played with her friends.  I asked her about her snack and she said that she had to have help opening the water bottle and that she didn't eat it all.  When I opened up her backpack, the water bottle hadn't been closed all the way, so it seeped into her backpack and all over her papers that she was bringing home.  Her fruit bar was also water-logged and a mushy mess.  So for the second day, I told her to throw away whatever she didn't eat.  It was yogurt and a juice box -- I think you know how this ends...  There was yogurt everywhere inside her lunch box but I was able to save her backpack as I took out the lunchbox immediately when I picked her up.  When I asked her why she didn't throw away her snack -- "Because, Mommy, I wanted to save it for later." with a tone of "duh, Mom, why are you asking such a silly question."  The second day wasn't as exciting when she got in the car (which I think is due to the fact that she was exhausted), but the first thing out of her mouth was that she played Frozen with all her friends.  Heart melt...

When you ask her what her friends' at school names are, she can't tell her a single name.  But I have to say that it melts my heart to hear her say that she is playing with her friends so matter-factually.  It also amazes me how socially driven she is now.  It's almost like a light bulb flips on on their 3rd birthday and she now would rather have friends than stay at home with mom.  It's pretty awesome.  Before her 3rd birthday, she really didn't care if she had friends or not.  Now she talks about friends all the time and it's now obvious that it is very important to her to have friends and what she does with her friends.

So all in all, school at this age was an excellent choice.  She is thriving (at least in the first week) and it's so great to see.  We'll see how Tuesday's drop off will be (I'm writing this over the weekend) -- as I have to drop her off with E being out of town.  I'm hopeful there will be no tears.  Cross your fingers for me.

Long overdue birthday weekend

So I'm finally getting around to posting the photos that I took over Finn's birthday weekend.  We were fortunate enough to have BOTH sets of grandparents and an aunt in for the weekend for her special day.  My parents arrived late on Friday night.  Saturday saw a lazy day and baking holiday cookies, of course!  I'm sure that I've told this story somewhere on this blog, but my mother is the QUEEN of the holiday sugar cookie.

When I was little, my elementary school had three holiday parties: Halloween, Christmas and Valentine's Day.  I always always volunteered to bring cookies, meaning that I volunteered my mom to make holiday cookies.  Because who am I kidding -- I didn't really frost and decorate all of them.  She usually ended up with the short end of the stick after my brother and I got bored of frosting and decorating.  The roll-out sugar cookies have stood the test of time.  After my brother and I moved away, my mom would make holiday cookies with her sister's grandkids (my cousins' babies) just because she knew how much fun kids have baking these cookies.  Or maybe it was how much fun she had watching the kids decorate the cookies. 

Either way, the tradition continues.  They baked Halloween cookies last year(my, how time flies). And so Mimi and Finn spent a good chunk of Valentine's Day afternoon baking in the kitchen and a good chunk of Saturday evening decorating cookies.  If I'm being serious, Finn was just eating a lot of the decorations.  We ended up with way too many cookies that were eaten way too quickly.

Opa,  Granny, and Auntie Anita arrived after we all went to bed on Saturday evening.  So it was such a great surprise for her to wake up on Sunday and have them here for her!  We spent the weekend eating lots of breakfast together and spent some good ole' fashion quality time together.  I also apologize for not having any photos of them.  All the photos that are not gifts and cake were taken on Saturday.  I seem to have forgotten my camera for both Sunday and her birthday day.  We also didn't really get dressed all weekend either.  The Elsa shirt that she is wearing for opening up gifts was the only change from jammies that happened on her birthday -- as referenced by the fuzzy pink jammies that are also present in the cake photo at the very bottom.  The only reason that Fish got an outfit change on Monday was that he drooled through his shirt -- these teeth need to show up, the drool is getting out of hand!

Monday morning, I whipped out my camera long enough to take photos of her opening up her gifts.  I won't bore you with all the gifts, but I thought it was pretty funny that I had a before photo and an after (see three photos below).  I also thought that Norman was quite interested in what was going on with the gifts.  In fact, he was quite interested in all the guests that were in the house, which is unusual for him.  It's usually Lucy who is the social butterfly -- not this weekend.  Norman was up in everyone's grill for most of the weekend.

And we finished up the weekend with cake on Monday night, complete with a "happy birthday" rendition that satisfied Finn.  She is very particular about how you sing "happy birthday" if you dont' see the right notes, she stops you and tells that that you are singing it wrong and then begins to sing it the correct way.