Photo Dump 3: Birthday Pictures

The cake.  OK the cake is kind of a funny story.  We did a "Giving Tree" theme because we had it at "Inside Out Play Park", which is an indoor playground with an indoor fake tree and tree house.  I made the invites look like the book cover and they were really cute.  DH was going to take care of the cake, and took the cover to Publix to ask if they could do something Giving Tree inspired.  We didn't expect them to copy the cover, but apparently it's still too much of a copyright violation so they refused.  Fine.  I suggested that he kind of free hand a picture for them to use as inspiration.  I said, "Just put a tree on it.  Just a tree.  It doesn't have to look like the cover."  And he did, and took it to a local bakery.  What you see above is the result, and it's pretty much EXACTLY what he drew.  So it's pretty hilarious in its lack of artistry.

Char and Mimi

That's my Charlotte.  BTW, that's about 8 feet off the ground.  Yikes!  On the left you see her brother, who is NOT the adventurer even if he is the senior by 16 months.

Char insisted on cutting the cake herself.

Climbing the slide.

The venue offers a "birthday surprise" where they pull out this battery-powered ATV thing and let the birthday child ride around the track while their friends chant their name.  Char did great, staying in the track the whole time (which weaves and winds a little bit).  In fact the staff didn't even stay right with her like they usually do, and the owner said she's never seen such a young kid do so well.  And just LOOK at the child's face!  Have you ever seen a more proud child?

Feeling a little tired after the party :)

Photo Dump 2: Easter (these are not in order!)

Photo Dump 1: Char's First Riding Lesson

The second day after Char turned three, we took her down to the stable and got her her first riding lesson.  She won't be taking "real" lessons for quite a while, but I thought she would enjoy being able to get a pony ride on our horse but also get a sense of the gravity of it all.

Showing off her "riding clothes".  Really it's just tan corduroys, a pair of Stride Rite boots she can wear this fall, and a white polo shirt. But she was THRILLED.

Brushing Sunny off with her instructor before riding him.

More brushing

Yay!  Riding!!

A warm-up game called "Airplane, Duck, Soldier"

My favorite cropped/edited pic

Another I love

And this is almost EXACTLY what a rider's stance should look like.  Arms at 90 degrees, back straight, sitting on the pubic bone, ankles back in line with back and bum, heels down (unfortunately I cut off the heels).  Her left hand isn't quite right but really she did awesome.  Of course the lesson didn't really teach this; she just seemed to KNOW somehow.

Also, LOOK at that tiny little saddle!  My mother-in-law got it for her birthday, and it is SO CUTE!  It weighs about 2 ounces as it's made of synthetic materials, but it's a quality synth and will last her a good while.  The helmet was one of our gifts to her.

So a longtime friend of mine emailed be yesterday asking for the blog link because he’d lost it, and I decided to try to start up again. I quit for a while because we had a bit of a family tragedy; we had to put 2 of our beloved dogs to sleep, and I didn’t really want to face it. And honestly, I still don’t, so I’m not going to write about it right now, but I am going to write. Or try.

It looks like I haven’t written since March. At that point, Charlotte was just starting to get interested in letters. I got her the Leapfrog Talking Letter Factory on DVD, and then downloaded it and soon the Talking Words Factory for her Leappad, which she plays with/watches in the car home on our commutes. And between that and starting Montessori again in late Feb, her interest in letters and numbers was sparked and has not abated since. She went from not only not knowing ANY letters or numbers but also having zero interest, to knowing all upper and lowercase letters and all of their sounds within a month or two. And now her favorite game is “_____ starts with _”, and she’s even started sounding out a few easy words like “at” and “up” and “red”.

She’s also gone from being a straight up die hard scribbler to starting to draw actual things. Or at least to copy them. I can definitely say that fine motor skills and art are not her forte’, but she can kind of sort of mimic a smiley face when she feels like it, and copy a few letters J. Yesterday she had her 3 year doctor’s appointment. (Oh, yeah, and she turned THREE!!!!! Unbelievable!) Anyway, she is 37” tall, 29 pounds (barely), and I forget the head, but it worked out to 45% height, 29% weight, and 90% head LOL. She’s always had a substantial noggin. The doctor was very impressed with her conversation and said that she knows that “redshirting” is a trend right now but she really would advise against holding her back from Kindergarten even if she is small and has a summer birthday. She said she would be very bored (and probably will be anyway).

More importantly, I was really proud of her behavior in the waiting area. They had a rug with roads on it and a little wooden play toy in the middle and she wanted to play with them with the other kids. She said, “Mommy, may I play with those?” “As long as you can play nicely and share with the other children, you may.” Not only did she play very nicely, she went into her backpack and found a few little toys I didn’t know were in there (a little car, a farmer, and a cell phone), and SHARED them willingly with the other children. And at one point she had given all three toys away and she said, “Oh, no, there’s no toy for me.” I said, “There are three toys and four children. That is a problem.” She said, “I’m sure someone will share with me soon.” OMG she’s growing up to be such a sweet kiddo!

She does have some issues. Her attitude lately has been atrocious at times. She has developed a really harsh, hateful tone of voice, especially when yelling “NO!” I have been working with her on it, though, asking her to really stop and think about whether she’s using a nice, gentle tone of voice or a harsh, mean tone of voice, and the past few days have been much better. Hopefully it’s relatively short-lived and not part of the treacherous threes I keep hearing about (Terrible Twos, Treacherous Threes, WTF Fours lol). But boy, overall she really is turning out to be a very thoughtful and considerate girl, and I thank my lucky stars (and God) that she’s in my life.

OK, hopefully we’ve gotten caught up. I’ll probably do a photo dump post or two or three also just to document those. We did go on a short trip to Chicago recently and are in the process of building a tree house, which is an adventure all to itself.

Another stolen activity

It started with this, a silicone ice cube tray from Amazon that makes "perfectly square" ice cubes.

I colored water with plain food coloring and got these. Interestingly, the color separated somewhat and some of the cubes have concentrated color in the very middle.

Charlotte checks it out by placing the first ice cube.

And quickly wastes NO TIME!

"Mommy, it's cold! Is it ice?"

It quickly became obvious that the nice shirt needed to come off and pop in the washer, just in case the dyes are more colorfast than I thought.

"Mommy, may I please have a cup of water?" Um... sure. Well, she had to taste it for herself.

"It tastes green!"

"Mommy, I need to clean up my work." (Remind me to write a nice thank-you card to the teachers at the Montessori school!)

Messy girl!

She had to taste one of each color.

I have to say, this activity bought me a good 20 minutes before it started to get too wet and I put it away. (I don't think any water can get into the sealed box but I try to be cautious just in case, and after 2-3 cups of water getting poured out, I was not able to mop up as quickly as she was able to pour, so it went away). She protested, and ended up getting in the sink pouring water into the sink after the ice to watch it melt.

She was also fascinated at how a plain "white" (clear) cup of water became green after the blue and yellow ice cubes melted into it. I'd call it a very good activity, and I wish I'd had more leisure time to spend with it, but I was cooking and needed my sink back :). We will definitely play with this one again.

Conference

Tonight was the parent-teacher conference at Charlotte's preschool. It went very well! All of her teachers commented on how bright and quick to learn she is. She naps well and eats lunch well (and they love how cute her lunches are lol). She is doing a typical job learning and adjusting to the Montessori structure and rules (don't touch others' work or their bodies, clean your messes, etc). She is happy and seems to like school, loves her teachers, and they love her back. When I mentioned the slim possibility of her going to the public Montessori school next fall, they seemed disappointed, not just on a financial level :).

Now, her one issue is leaving the classroom and heading down the hall. She is fast as lightning and waits until the teachers' backs are turned. Thankfully she can't reach the magnetic release on the outside door, but she has gotten into the lobby/office area before. Not good, not good at all. So last night I had a talk with her about it, and the conversation was rather unbelievable. It's times like this I think she's really 42 trapped in a 2 year old body:

Me: I need to talk to you about you leaving your classroom.
Char: I just run away.
Me: Why do you do that?
Char: So the teacher will come get me.
Me: You want the teacher to come get you?
Char: Yes. I just miss her.
Me: You miss her? Do you think you want attention?
Char: Yes, I want attention.
Me: Hmmmm. Can you think of another way you might get the teacher's attention?
Char: (I swear this is the truth) I could push someone over.
Me: (shocked, trying not to laugh or cry or run away screaming) Um, that might get the teacher's attention but it wouldn't be very nice. Can you think of a nice way you might get attention?


After a moment of total silence...

Me: What do you think would happen if you asked the teacher for a hug?
Char: OK, mommy, I can say, "I want a hug".

Busy weekend!

We took these pictures on Sunday morning at the Nashville Zoo, where we went with some very good friends of ours and their little boy. I had no idea that S had taken photography in the past; I just asked if she'd take some pictures of us as a family and was pleasantly surprised. If we move forward on adoption, we may use some of these in our profile. I'm beyond thrilled, particularly with the slide picture of all of us sitting down and the candid ones of us while Charlotte climbs. LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Sunday morning was just approximately 1/4 of our big weekend. It started Saturday morning when I took Char to a gymnastics "tryout". Because she's not yet 3 and non-parent classes begin at 3, she had to do a trial and see if her coaches thought she was ready. Well, it was every kind of calamity possible. The gymnasium is Christian-based, and they start out with a Bible story. Seriously? Like my kid is going to sit still for 10 or 15 minutes for a Bible story and stretching when there's a huge gym full of amazing-looking equipment! Ha! Every 10, maybe 15 seconds, she was up and making a break for it for some piece of equipment or another. It got better once the sitting still portion was over, though she still wanted to do her own thing. I did notice she did okay at taking turns and sharing equipment, so that's good.

At the end of the session, the coach I talked to said that she was certainly capable of doing the equipment (well, not mastery, but she was at a level to be able to learn the equipment without it being dangerous or anything), but she suggested that Saturday morning might not be the best time since there's so much activity in the gym. She suggested a weekday morning, but that's not possible, so perhaps a weekday evening. I'm not sure if there's a spot available in any 6pm class, but that might be the way to go. Meanwhile I'm debating whether to do some mommy and me classes until she kind of gets the hang of all the equipment and the huge facility isn't as exciting and overwhelming again, or to wait a few months until she's fully transitioned at the new school and has the hang of listening a bit better.

Saturday she took a nice nap, and then we went to the playground in Franklin for a couple of hours. She loves that playground a lot. Sunday morning was the aforementioned zoo (for about 3 hours!!!), and then again she had a LONG nap, after which we all went swimming. I can't begin to tell you how exhausted I was Sunday night, but it was a good exhausted :).