Preschool: Day 2

Scheduling is NOT working out.  I just have to much to do during the days.  So this is going to be very loose preschool, which dissapoints me.  I really wanted to do preschool at least three times a week. I'll be lucky if I average once a week.

On a brighter note, Allie enjoyed her second day of school.  She had been asking for it all week.  Today we did the following activities:

Sang Alphabet Song

Today is...

 

Weather

Allie really enjoys running to our window and seeing what is like.  Today was cloudy and apparently I didn't draw enough clouds because she made me draw more after I only drew one!

ABC tracing card

I found this awesome printable HERE for this.  It is the second link down entitled: A-Z and 123 Tracing Worksheets. I printed it on cardstock and then slipped it into a page protector.  I have plans for going and laminating it at the local copy spot because I like this so much!

Cutting Practice

Introducing scissors to a kid is scary.  Allie has always ignored scissors in our house and I liked that because I didn't have to worry about anything getting cut.  But I felt now is a good time for her to start working on that skill.  She had a lot of fun with it.  She is still getting the correct technique down of holding the paper and keeping the scissors upright.  As I held the paper for her there were a few times I feared for my fingers! : )  I found some printables HERE for cutting practice.  You could easily draw your own lines on paper, but I don't draw straight lines so this was easier.

Letter Hunt

I held up a letter flashcard and Allie circled the appropriate letter on the alphabet sheet I made.  She got a bit angry when we didn't finish the alphabet.   We only did about half of it.

Tracing Name

I found a site {right HERE} where you could type in any word and it would create a writing practice worksheet.  I typed in Allie's name, so that she could practice tracing it.  She got ambitious and wanted to try writing it by herself after she traced it.  It was difficult but she is making progress!

My Alphabet Binder

As we crusie through the alphabet we are going to be creating many projects.  To help Allie see all the fun things she has made, and to remind her of the letters she learned, we will be creating a binder.  Today I had all color the cover of it.  I didn't think to pull out things to decorate with, but she enjoyed just coloring it.  She even drew a picture of herself on the cover.  This is a HUGE step for her because she has never had much desire to draw, and she has never gotten past scribbles until today.  I also saw her consciously make the effort to hold her crayon and markers the correct way.  Sometimes she got sometimes she didn't.

Charlotte's 1st Tooth

Yep that's right, Charlotte's 1st tooth finally popped through.  She's had a white blister on her gum for about a month now, and everyone has heard about it being there.  I got a whole new perspective on what, "gnashing of teeth actually means" this past month.  Poor Charlotte was miserable!  At one point in time she would shove her hand in her mouth and rip her fingers out of her mouth while pulling on the side of it.  I was for sure she was going to rip the corner of her mouth, she did it with such force.

Last night I was joking around with Lily that the tooth fairy just might take her tooth and give it to Charlotte.  Guess the tooth fairy knows a little something about teeth, lol!  This morning I did my morning routine of checking how Charlotte's tooth was coming along when I noticed a hole in her gum on the bottom left.  I felt around and sure enough felt the hard tooth instead of the soft squishy blister!  As of yet it isn't in enough to take a picture but as soon as it I'll be capturing Charlotte's toothy grin!

PS For the most part Charlotte's disposition has improved, although at times when she hits that gum with something she does howl in pain and it takes awhile to calm her down.  She seriously is such a drama queen sometimes!

Preschool, Converstations from the Backseat, and Flying Teeth!

I've been a bit concerned about my Allie for awhile.  She is so complacent that sometimes I forget that I should be helping her do things.  Lily was very in my face and constantly needing me to come up with new things for her to do.  Allie is the complete opposite.  As I was thinking about this, I realized that by this age Lily knew most of her letters and could write her name.  Allie can't do any of that, however she is an amazing counter.  She impressed the doctor at her last visit by counting to 20!  I also realized that at this age I started a homeschool preschool with Lily.  Things needed to change, and now!

I decided to do preschool a bit differently with Allie than Lily.  Lily needed challenged, whereas Allie needs the basics.  So I searched and searched until I found a curriculum online that I enjoyed.  {see here for more info} One reason that really led me to choose this curriculum was because it had many craft projects instagated into it.  Allie lacks quite a bit in that area too.  Right now our schedule is very loose, mainly because I'm trying to figure out what will work for us.  I also need to get more organized, so I'm not flying by the seat of my pants.  I hate that feeling.

Today while Charlotte was taking a nap we did our first day of school.  I thought it would be appropriate to do a "Intro to the Alphabet" before delving into the individual letters themselves. Allie was very tentative at first and didn't want to participate.  So I reordered the things I had planned and started with singing a song she knew.  She quickly got over her fears and declared she wanted to do more school.  Her favorite activity was covering her name up with blocks.  In this activity she is learning the letters in her name, the shapes of the letters, the difference between big and small, and  also shapes.  She already knows all her shapes, but it was a good review to have her keep saying what shape she needed.  Here she is finishing it up...

I hope to be able to post at least a picture and a small listing of what we do each time we do school, be on the look out for that!  If you see an activity that you would like more information on be sure and leave a comment or e-mail me : )

Later this afternoon we had to run to the store for a few things.  While driving I heard some hilarious things from the backseat and had to jot them down.

Allie:  Eww, Charlotte don't lick my hands!

I looked back to see that they were holding hands.

How sweet!

Charlotte thought this was an invite to put 

Allie's hands in her mouth!  Yuck!

While waiting at a red light the 

arrow light turns from green to red.

Allie exasperated: Ugh! Mooooommmm, green means go!

Me: Honey it is red for us.

Allie: Well, NOW it is!

Normally I wouldn't document about Lily losing her second tooth, but there is a hilarious story with this one so I have to!  Even as a child I was obsessed with loose teeth.  The minute they are the least bit wiggly they must come out NOW!  It has been driving me insane that Lily has three teeth that have been loose for a few weeks now.  Her bottom one has become particularly wiggly so I decided to do something about that today.  I tied a piece of floss around her tooth and gave it a tug.  To my dismay I noticed this tooth wasn't going anywhere.  I gave the strings to Lily and told her to give a pull.  Apparently I'm a woose because she gave it one tug and it went flying out her mouth and hit me on the shoulder.  We both screamed as it bounced off of me and onto the carpet.  Charlotte got a good scare from us screaming and started to cry.  I spent the next 20 minutes feeling around on the carpet until I FINALLY found that tricky tooth.  Hopefully the tooth fairy isn't unprepared with this tooth coming out unexpectedly : )

The "dirt" on laundry

I stink at doing laundry.  When we lived in our duplex in Idaho Falls I was much better at it.  Since moving Texas, I routinely forget to change the laundry over to the dryer.  Oh and even with the mounds of clean clothes staring at me all day I somehow forget that they need to be folded and put away.  It isn't that I intentionally forget them, it is just how poorly my mind remember to things right now.  {I could give you an earful about dinner and me forgetting to make it, but that isn't what I'm supposed to be talking about.}  Russ is great about checking the washing machine at night to see if I've forgotten a load, and on weekends he'll sit and fold clothes while watching his cartoons.  Even though I don't have the best record at getting the laundry finished I'm always pretty dependable on getting it started.

A small wrench was thrown into my successfulness when one night a few weeks ago Russ and I were watching a movie and our washer started to sound like a garbage truck...super loud!  With apprhension we had a service guy come look at it.  Turns out my three year old washer had its barrings{sp} going out.  It would cost the roughly the same amount to buy a new one as it would to fix it.  Turns out that Cabrio's are notorious for breaking down.  Ugh!  I was crushed that it had broken down when it was so new, and also I loved that machine since it was so nice.   

In the end we bought a new washer, a Maytag Bravos.  The good news is that part of the cost was covered  by a warranty we have, but it still hurt handing over the money we had to pay for it.  The Sears guys delivered it yesterday, and I'm grudgingly learning to like it just as much as my Cabrio.  It plays music for me every time I turn it on, which puts you in a cheerful mood right off the bat.  And it doesn't have an agitator in it!  Do you know how much more laundry you can stuff in a machine without an agitator?!  Tons!!! Now if I could just figure out a way for my brain to function better, I just might be able to get the laundry done with my new beauty.

Post Overload

If everything goes as planned today, I'm going to be posting a bunch of OLD posts.  Ones that I started but haven't finished, ones that I meant to write but never did, etc.  Read them if you want but be rest assured they are from the past.

Let's cry it out!

For some reason I've dragged my feet a little bit with training Charlotte to sleep through the night.  I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that it is easier to lay next her and fall asleep while she nurses.  It is also was because every time I told myself "this is the weekend we start" something came up to stop me. Whether it was her being sick, Russ being sick, me forgetting, etc, it just didn't happen at six months like I had planned.

Friday morning I got a kick in the bum about getting this task done.  See Charlotte had woke up and wanted to nurse.  Russ dutifully brought her too me and promptly fell asleep.  I nursed her like normal, but she was still hungry.  Against my better judgement I scooted to the middle of the bed and nursed her on the other side.  She now didn't have anything blocking her from the side of the bed.  Apparently when she was done eating she was happy and awake.  So awake that she rolled herself off the bed while Russ and I slept.  We woke up to the thud of her hitting the floor.  We have a king size memory foam bed that is tall!  It comes up to my waist, so it was a pretty big drop for her.  It turned out she was fine just scared quite badly.  She spent the day clinging to us, and I spent the day kicking myself and vowing we were done with her not sleeping through the night.

Allowing Charlotte to feel secure again we waited until Saturday night to start the training.  I don't enjoy the cry it out method by any means, but has been very effective for us.  We got Charlotte already bundled up, gave her a pacifier, rocked her until her eyes drooped, laid her in bed, and then turned on a movie so we wouldn't hear the cries.  She cried for 20 mins before I went and checked on her.  Poor thing had got her leg stuck in the rails of the bed.  I remieded the sitation, wrapped her up, popped in the paci, and got out of there.  She screamed another 40 mins to which Russ went and got her and rocked her to 95% asleep.  She stayed asleep when he laid her down.

Sunday went better.  She fell asleep as soon as I laid her down for her nap.  For nighttime she screamed 20 minutes then fell asleep!  Monday we soared through nap time with 5 minutes of "talking" and no screaming.  Bedtime only 10 minutes of fussing.  Tuesday and Wednesday there has been fussing but hardly any screaming.  I "think" that she has caught on to this even faster than Allie did, and Allie is our champion sleeper!  The best part is that I'm getting more hours of uninterrupted sleep, the bad news she can't quite make it 6:00 for her morning feeding.  It happens more around 4:30 - 5:30, which has killing me because I'm pretty much up from that point on.  I'm sure that will change soon too.  I'm so happy to have this training done and over with, still unsure why I dragged my feet with it!

Back to School Night

Lily's elementary school does things a little different for Back to School night.  They have all the grades go at different times to see their teachers.  While waiting for your time slot you can either go to the book fair or you can get some ice cream at the Ice Cream Social in the gym.

We headed straight for the book fair and picked up a few books.  I try and only buy one book for Lily and Allie but I always can't resist to buy more when they can't choose between two they like.  I need to be better about that!  While standing in line to check out the bell rang for us to go to Lily's classroom.  I left Russ there with Charlotte while I went with Lily and Allie down to Mrs. Hill's classroom.

Most the information was a repeat from everything she has sent home.  however we did find out what Lily's AR level is.  She know starts to take tests.  I'm not very happy that her school participates in AR but I will do my best to help her along with it.  I also talked to Mrs Hill for a short bit and she said Lily is "all over".  I was a bit surprised by this because it was never a problem last year.  Will have to follow more with that with Lily.

While there I tried to snap a picture of Lily at her desk, but she wasn't very cooperative.  She kept wanting to walk around and show us stuff, talk to her friends, or talk to Mrs. Hill.  Hmmm...maybe she IS all over the place, LOL!  Anyway, I did get this one of her that clearly shows how distracted she was.  It's all about keeping it real huh?

We headed to the cafeteria and then home.  While we walking we ran into some of our  neighbors we had never met.  Nice huh, we've lived here over a year and have never met them.  We had a nice little talk with them.  Overall a great night!

Changes for me

I've been dragging my feet with writing this post.  I just don't want to do it, but I know I need to.  I also think that I've taken some time to think about a lot of my feelings and allowed them to settle so that and I can write more objectively about these changes.

The day before I was to be induced to have Charlotte, I asked Russell to give me a blessing in hopes to calm my nervousness about her delivery.  Ironically, most of the blessing was about my life AFTER Charlotte was born.  One statement that stood out to me was about priorities, and finding out what they were in my life.  I struggled with this for months.  What did it mean?  Was I doing something wrong?  What needed changed?  I was a bit bewildered at what to do.


Then in July I was up late one night crazily trying to complete a large project for one of my scrapbook designers that I had spent many hours on.  Sometime around 11:00 my computer crashed taking with it my unsaved project.  I burst in to tears as I tried to start over knowing I would be up all night getting it done.  I was yelling at myself in my head for not saving wasting all this time.  The thought came to my mind, "I shouldn't be up late taking care of this, I should be in bed sleeping so I'll be prepared to take care of my family tomorrow."  The thought hit with such force that I stopped what I was doing and sat back.  The feelings I had been fighting for months rose to the surface again, and I knew what I needed to do.  I immediately quit 2 of the 3 scrapbook designers I was working for.

I went to bed that night with a sense of relief, but a hole in my heart as well.  It was hard to give up those two teams that I had worked so hard to get on.  The past two months I've slowly been getting a few things done that I never would have been able to do if I had not quit those teams.  It feels good to know that I'm becoming a better Mother through this choice.  I am sad to see my scrapbooking literally go out the window.  In two months I've created 2 layouts.  Typically I would have created closer to twelve.


The other major change for me...

About a month ago I was released from the Primary Presidency of our ward.  Interestingly enough I was released so that I could fulfill the position of a Primary teacher.  To say the least I was a bit shocked with this.  Quite a few people came to me that day and asked me why I was released.  All I could do was smile and say I wasn't sure, but I'm sure I would enjoy my calling.  It took me a couple weeks to ease into this calling.  I've always feared being a primary teacher because I feel like I know so little and these children need someone who can really teach them the gospel truths.  I'm feeling a little more confident each week that I teach and I'm finding how much I enjoy teaching my little class.  I must admit I fear this calling even more with the fact that come January I will most likely be teaching Lily and her classmates.  She has a VERY difficult class and I also find it particularly difficult to teach Lily because I tend to treat her as a mother and not as a teacher.  Maybe I will get lucky and they'll shuffle me around instead.

So two major changes that have literally upended my routine based life.  I'll probably finally get this new routine down, and then it will get upended again!  Such is life....

Clappy-clappy!

Allie was sitting next to Charlotte today making her laugh.  I was running around doing some laundry when I heard Charlotte squeal in delight about something Allie did.  I turned to look at her and was amazed to see her wave her arms a few times{her normal happy gesture} then clap her hands a few times.  Surprised I told Allie to make Charlotte laugh again.  Allie obliged and this time Charlotte squealed and clapped her hands several times.  She was so excited and so was I!  Throughout the day I've spent moments with Charlotte asking her to clap her hands and most times she will with a big happy smile to accompany it.  It is so fun seeing my little ones grow and reach these milestones!

Lily's Kidney's: Part 3

Holy cannoli!  I totally forgot to write about Lily's last kidney check up.  Not sure how that happened but it did.  We started out the day getting up just like normal, even at the normal time.  After quick breakfast we made a quick stop to fill up the Buick's tires with air.  Lily and I headed out in the Buick and Daddy took the other two girls home.  The drive to Houston was uneventful but I missed the stupid parking garage again and it took an extra 15 minutes to find the dang thing.  We still made it with plenty of time.  In fact we were so early that we had to find a spot to sit and wait.  I randomly picked a waiting area that had some cartoons playing for Lily.  I later learned this was the ER and I probably shouldn't have been waiting there.  OOPS!  

Around 10:30 we headed to our check in spot.  We signed a few papers and then was sent to the basement to the nuclear medicine area.  We were promptly seen, and were taken back to a room.  Then the fun began.  At first there were three nurses that were going to help, but when they saw how old Lily was one left.  I was asked how Lily does with IV's.  They were a bit shocked to hear that she has never had one.  I guess they are not used to seeing healthy kids come in that often. With that knowledge they decided it would be best to "seat belt" Lily to the table. {ie tape her down}  Lily giggled, and thought it was funny until they pulled out the needle.  I had her focus on me while they tried to get it in.  Of course Lily had inherited my tiny veins and the first shot at getting the IV in involved a lot of moving around of the needle.  They thought they had found a good vein when they declared it might blow.  I told them to take it out because I know how painful that is.  Lily was crying by this time, but their second attempt went flawless.  They found it right away, administered the medicine and had her taped up in no time.  She loved that she got the red colored tape for her owie, since red is her favorite color.

For the next two hours Lily and worked on homework and had lunch.  We had to move to different locations several times because it was getting loud or we were in the way.  But the wait went fast.  At 1:30 we went back to the basement to get Lily's "pictures" taken.  She got to watch cartoons on an adjustable TV while they were taken.  She had to hold really still for these pictures so they "safety belted" her in again.  It took about 30 minutes for all those to be done.  Lily was totally oblivious that anything had happened because when done she asked "when am I going to get my pictures taken?" LOL!

We wandered over to her doctors office and checked in about an hour and half early.  I apologized that we were early but explained we didn't have any where to go since we were from out of town.  They said it happens all the time, phew!  Lily entertained herself by watching Toy Story 3, which they have shown all three times we visited, and I read.  

We waited quite some time there, and then waited a very long time in the room.  Finally the doctor showed up and gave us the news....everything is fine!  Yipee!   However, because she does have the reflux they want us to come back in six months to make sure everything is still ok.  The doctor also gave us the recommendation to have Lily start going to the bathroom twice each time she needs to go.  Supposedly this will train her to know when she is empty and therefore curb accidents.  I think that is a bunch of bull honky, but we will give it a valiant effort.

I'm glad this ordeal is behind us with Lily.  I'm sure in the future we will have to go the same route with Allie, but for now we'll just stay blissfully ignorant.

Ahoy Matey's!

These two girls are cracking me up with their imagination lately!  Rus was out BBQ our ribs with the girls when he came and told me to grab the camera quick!  I ran around the house, finally found it and was rewarded with this scene.  They were pretending to row their boat and be pirates.  It was so cute how they kept declaring, "Ahoy matey's!", as they used there oars to row them. Oh and don't forget that they needed their rowboat to be cushy so they used a ball for a seat! LOL!

 A short clip of Lily describing what they are doing.

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