Preschoolers | Goddess in Progress

Archive for Preschoolers – Page 2

Afternoons

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (2)· November 17th, 2011

Afternoons are mighty quiet around here. I make it a point to give Ellie a nice, long, uninterrupted nap in the afternoon, since mornings are so unpredictable. And believe it or not, the big kids still nap a fair amount of the time (maybe 30% of the time for Daniel, probably 80% of the time for Rebecca). Even if they don’t sleep, it’s mandatory “quiet time” in their rooms for an hour and a half. Ultimately, that means we’re fairly shut down until at least 3PM, sometimes close to 5PM. We make very few plans out of the house for anything after lunchtime on weekdays.

The kids are back in a big Wii phase, and finally the two of them are really playing together much of the time (usually Rebecca prefers to watch and give Daniel “helpful” feedback). The game of choice is Mario Party, which is about the weirdest, trippiest thing you’ve ever seen. But they’ve figured it out and they love it. I put Lego Star Wars on their Amazon Wish List in the hopes of getting the annoying Mario Party sound effects out of my head.

Ellie says, “whatever, y’all. I got my toes.” She has literally no interest in any other toy. She just wants to hang out and grab her toes. Whatever makes you happy, my dear.

Comments (2)

Categories : Infants, Preschoolers

Tags : NaBloPoMo, video games

Picture Day

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (4)· November 16th, 2011

I don’t envy the guy who showed up at my kids’ preschool today, and somehow managed to wrangle 50 three-to-six-year-olds in three different classrooms in under two hours. But hey, that’s why we leave this up to the professionals.

Thanks to the modern magic of digital photography and photo-printing, I hear we’ll see the pictures within two weeks. Didn’t we have to wait ages and ages back in the dark days of actual film?

We missed last year’s school pictures while we were in Hawaii (not that I’m complaining about that trade-off!), so I don’t have them for comparison. But I’m kind of excited to get our very first official school photos. One more sign that they’re just getting bigger and bigger…

Comments (4)

Categories : Preschoolers, School

Tags : NaBloPoMo

My favorite time of the year

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (1)· November 12th, 2011

I’ve always loved Fall. I love sweatshirt weather, I love the different quality of the sunlight. I love those clear, crisp days.

Of course, the truth is that those perfect Fall days don’t necessarily come along that often. Freak warm front, freak cold front, freak day-before-Halloween Nor’easter that dumps snow and messes up trick-or-treating for three states.

But when those perfect, sunny, chilly days come through, it’s not half bad. Especially when the three gigantic oak trees in your yard are about halfway done dropping their leaves.

Which reminds me…. where’s the phone number for that landscaper to come clean up my yard? We have a quarter acre (huge lot ’round these parts) and once-a-month yard waste pickup. No way am I doing this myself.

Comments (1)

Categories : Preschoolers

Tags : Fall, leaves, NaBloPoMo

Birthday Buzzkill

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (8)· November 11th, 2011

I was about eight years old when my dad first pointed out what would become my favorite numerical phenomenon. I think I’ve mentioned it to practically everyone I know over the last 25 years.

On 11/11/11, I turn 33.

Not many people spend more than two decades looking forward to their 33rd birthday. I mean, really. It’s 33. An entirely nondescript birthday. But it’s been out there for me, waiting. I thought it sounded like fun! What kind of party would I have? What would we do?

Somehow my 8-year-old self neglected to consider the realities of life as a 33-year-old stay-at-home mom of three young kids. Remember how fun it was to have a birthday on a national holiday? Never went to school on your birthday? Guess what… now that means YOUR KIDS don’t have school on your birthday. Not nearly the same indulgence, believe me.

Still, I thought I’d start the day on a positive note. I was up early and got my run done, outside, nice and peaceful. It felt pretty good, as running goes, and I found the increasing light of 6:15AM much better than the pitch black of 7:45PM that I’ve been running in recently.

Sadly, it was pretty much downhill from there. Rebecca spent half the morning uncharacteristically weepy and refused to eat breakfast. After a complaint of a sore throat, and a warm body but cold hands and feet, I made the call to the pediatrician’s office. What time was available? NAPTIME. SUPER.

Stopped by Starbucks to redeem my free birthday drink, and the kids got an extra snack courtesy of their favorite barista. Drove to M’s office to have lunch, mostly because it seemed like a fun way to kill time, and he likes to show off the kids to his coworkers.

Off to the pediatrician, who was impressed by how quickly Rebecca’s strep test came back positive. Delightful. More driving around, poor Ellie has been in her carseat for the better part of the last five hours. To Target for the bright pink antibiotics, then finally back home and a late nap for everyone.

I was pretty ready to start drinking by then, but mostly just zonked out on the couch and vowed to order delivery for dinner.

Oh, birthdays when you are at home with small kids. Such glamour. Such pampering. Still, it wasn’t all bad. I got lots of sweet, heartfelt birthday wishes at random intervals throughout the day from my kids. A hand-written card from Rebecca (she did get some spelling help from M), and Daniel’s total incredulity at the fact that we weren’t celebrating my birthday with a party at a bouncy house and dinner of pizza and cake. In fact, both kids are insistent that we bake a cake tomorrow. Really, who am I to argue?

Farewell, 11/11/11. It was fun anticipating you all those years, and totally anti-climactic when you finally arrived. Guess I’ll have to find a new random factoid to bore people with at parties.

Comments (8)

Categories : Birthdays, Illness and Injury, Just me, Preschoolers

Tags : 11-11-11, 33, NaBloPoMo

The Death Thing

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (3)· November 10th, 2011

My four-year-olds are obsessed with death. It’s more than a little disconcerting.

Who even knows how it first came up. I know at one point we were at a stoplight, waiting for a funeral procession to go by, and the kids asked about the flags on the cars. I said something about the people in the cars knowing someone who died, and from that point on, it was all “do we know someone who died?” “When can we know someone who died?” “I know who died! Nana.” It was all alarmingly nonchalant.

I have no idea what line to walk on this one. We’ve done our best to sort of explain what death means, talking about bodies not working any more, and that you don’t get to see that person again, etc.. I want to convey that it’s something serious, not something to joke about, something permanent. But I also know that death is a part of life and all that, so I don’t want to make Death something more scary and sad than is necessary.

For a while, the kids got it in their heads that people died when they turned 100. Daniel temporarily freaked out and said he wanted to stop having birthdays so he wouldn’t get to 100. Thankfully, that one passed relatively quickly. Now, we’ve moved on to “when I die” as an expression of forever. “He’s my friend, and he’s going to be my friend until we die.”

Honestly, it gives me a start every time it works its way into conversation. And, as four-year-olds will do, it comes up at the most random times. blah blah miscellaneous mashup story of preschool and tv shows WHEN I DIE. And then I jump and try not to look too alarmed.

As with anything at this age, I kind of just try to acknowledge and move on, answer a question if it’s asked, stay as matter-of-fact as I can about it. And cross my fingers that the fixation passes soon. And hope that the only first-hand knowledge of death that my kids have for a very long time is the unfortunate bird we came across on a walk last week.

Oh, I’ll never hear the end of that poor, dead bird.

I know this is just one of those developmental phases, as the kids get older and start becoming more aware of life and death around them. They seem to be doing just fine, absorbing bits and pieces on their own level, no major anxiety attached to it. But I won’t complain when we move on to other things for a little while.

Comments (3)

Categories : Preschoolers

Tags : NaBloPoMo

Pride

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (3)· November 8th, 2011

Daniel is in such a nice place right now. Oh sure, he still frustrates me on a daily basis, and tries to wheedle his way out of things. But in general he is so charming, so funny. Polite, enthusiastic, downright compliant by 4-year-old standards. He randomly compliments people. Delightful.

And he’s doing so freaking well in school. Reading amazingly well, picking up the wacky nuances and exceptions of written English faster than I could have imagined (seriously, we have a messed up language). Picking up all kinds of new concepts, getting to the point that his handwriting is fairly legible most of the time.

Today, he finished his first map. The Montessori families in the crowd will recognize this work. They use a push pin to punch out the shape of each continent, and then glue it all onto the map. He’s been working on it periodically for several weeks.

I’m so proud of him, and I love how proud he is of himself.

Despite only being two short months into the school year, we already got the re-enrollment forms for next year. They’ll be five next August, just making the cutoff for kindergarten. We could certainly save a lot of money by sending them to the neighborhood public school next year. But I already signed the form, and the kids will stay at their school next year for “Junior Program,” the name they give to the kindergarten year. Worth every penny, we’d practically keep them in that school until they’re teenagers if we could.

Three cheers for preschool.

Comments (3)

Categories : Behavior, Preschoolers, School

Tags : montessori, NaBloPoMo

If you say so

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (11)· November 3rd, 2011

SCENE: Dinner, tonight, or just about any other night. Kids in their seats, mom letting everyone know what’s for dinner.

Me: … and there are some dumplings* for you to try.

Daniel: But Mom, I don’t like dumplings.

Me: How do you know? You’ve never had them.

Daniel: Yes, I have! I tried them before!

Me: When have you tried dumplings?

Daniel: A long time ago, when I came out of your belly, before we lived in this house. I lived in Africa**. And when I lived in Africa, I tried dumplings. And I really didn’t like them. I tried them, and I said, “eew, yuck!” So I don’t like them because I’ve tried them before.

Me: In Africa.

Daniel: Yeah. Remember?

/SCENE

* Substitute yogurt sauce, hummus, or any other vaguely exotic food item he has decided he doesn’t like.

** Sometimes it’s India.

Comments (11)

Categories : Overheard, Preschoolers

Tags : food, NaBloPoMo, picky eater

Too Clever By Half

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· November 2nd, 2011

I have long suspected that Becca’s teenage years will be the death of me. OK, who am I kidding, it’s going to start so much younger than that.

Like, you know, now.

Someone told me that Four is the age of attitude. (Well, Four through Seventeen, but whatever.) Rebecca seems to have gotten the memo. For all of the times that Daniel has been the one to push me straight over the edge, these days he is downright compliant. Persistent and stubborn, sure. But reasonably compliant.

Rebecca… oh, she has mastered that sulking, pouty glare when she doesn’t get her way. She’s not foolish enough to actually talk back and get in trouble, but she will give you the stinkeye, big time. She calculates, she manipulates. She knows exactly how to poke Daniel and rile him up and piss him off, all while technically not misbehaving.

The daily occurrence is with regard to the carseats. While the seats are identical, they each have a “side” that is their own. Occasionally they like to switch seats, and the long-established rule is that both kids need to agree on the switch, or you can’t do it.

At least once a day, I watch her block him out and say “no,” just to assert her power to do it, and to piss him off. Daniel being Daniel, this tends to send him into dramatic wailing, which only satisfies Rebecca even more.

I can see that she’s manipulating him over something completely trivial. I can see that she’s doing it on purpose. And yet, technically, she is doing something that is well within her rights.

I am trying to tell her that I’m onto her, that I see what she’s doing and she needs to stop being mean to her brother. I am trying to get Daniel not to react so strongly, adding fuel to her quietly smoldering fire. But this stuff is so subtle, it’s a tricky line to walk.

Since she was a baby, I knew Rebecca was clever. Always watching, always figuring people out. Sometimes a little quieter than her brother, but more because she is observing, and lying in wait. She is figuring out the game and exactly what she needs to do to play it.

Middle school? High school?

I feel faint.

Comments (7)

Categories : Behavior, Discipline, Preschoolers

Tags : attitude, NaBloPoMo, sibling rivalry

The Halloween Bender

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (7)· November 1st, 2011

I thought this Halloween was going to suck. Not least of which because, in case you hadn’t heard, it freaking SNOWED two nights before Halloween.

It’s also possible that I never brought down any of the (very few to begin with) Halloween decorations from the attic, and left the pumpkins in the back of the van before suddenly remembering them on Sunday night, only to discover they were starting to go bad, so all we did was paint them.

Of course, the kids could have cared less. They had costumes, they had bags, the neighbors had candy. For bonus points, we even had a 7-year-old family friend join us for the festivities. Honestly, what more could a kid need?

M and our friends took the kids out for trick-or-treating while I manned the candy and the sleeping baby. It was chilly but not frigid, and thankfully I managed to convince Rebecca to wear her padded fleece butterfly costume instead of the flimsy princess one. The kids managed their longest stretch yet, and came home after more than an hour with a pretty impressive haul for a couple of four-year-olds.

But the fun was only just beginning. The adults wanted to dig into the take-out sushi we’d gotten for dinner, and didn’t want to have to just inhale it before we started wrangling kids again. So we left them in the living room, with their bags of candy, and put on Star Wars.

When we stopped gossiping (and eventually decided against opening the bottle of tequila) and our friends finally packed up and went home and we got the kids to head up towards bed, it was nearly 10PM. On a Monday night. Practically hallucinating from the sugar intake (in fairness, it took Rebecca nearly an hour to eat a package of Skittles), spilled cups of water on the couch, the playroom looking like a tornado had come through. It was like a frat party for preschoolers.

What’s that? We have school in the morning?

Oh hell yes, we’ve got those Parents of the Year Awards all wrapped up, baby.

Comments (7)

Categories : Holidays, Preschoolers

Tags : Halloween, NaBloPoMo

Apple Picking, Instagram-Style

By Goddess in Progress · Comments (5)· September 25th, 2011

Every year, M’s company hosts an apple-picking day at a nearby(ish) apple orchard. Perfect fall outing with the apples already paid for? Count me in.

Of course, I packed up our giant bag full of “necessities,” and then had to leave them all in the car. Though she’s come a long way, Ellie is still not a reliable fan of the stroller, so this was an all-Ergo outing. While I technically had my hands free, I wasn’t going to use them to lug my DSLR around the orchard. Phone photos it is.

But, of course, I am a huge Instagram addict. If you’re not using it yet, I highly recommend downloading it. It’s free, the social aspect is fun but low-key and not really mandatory, and the photo effects (which you can preview before applying) are great. I personally love that you can use a photo you’ve already taken on your phone, in addition to using the in-app camera, so that you can just snap away and edit later.

Anyways, here’s our version of Apple Picking 2011, Instagram-Style.

For starters, it was upwards of 75 degrees with at least 85% humidity. While I’m glad it didn’t rain, as originally forecast, it wasn’t exactly your typical crisp Autumn day. It was hot and sweaty, and I’m already a hot and sweaty person to begin with, not to mention when carrying a hot and sweaty 7-month-old on my chest. Ew.

Undeterred, the kids immediately latched on to all of the “extra” things you could do at the farm. In previous years, we’d managed to dodge paying extra for the hay maze, the bounce house, and the pony rides with a bit of distraction. Not this time. Daniel fixed his attention on the lame yellow bounce castle, and was not going to miss it. He dug the hay maze, too.

Rebecca’s laser-focus, on the other hand, was straight for the ponies. M chuckled to himself as he stood in line for well over half an hour with a dozen other dads and little girls, wondering where on earth the pony fascination comes from. I have no idea, but there it is.

Finally, we met up with M’s work-husband and his family, including their six-year-old girl who is much beloved by both of my kids. Though she and Becca may be a bit too similar… both very nice kids, but a little bossy and competitive. Still, it was mostly running and shrieking and laughing.

And this little friend of mine, so cranky on the drive that we stopped at Walgreens for some infant ibuprofen. Calmer, less tooth pain, happier in the Ergo, where she napped a while and then took it all in. Talking in her sweet voice, “bah bah buh bah,” with the occasional growl, because that’s how she rolls. Sweet, sweet girl.

A few hours later, we were back at home. Fifteen pounds of apples, yay, but even better was all three happy kids. All of whom slept for more than two and a half hours at the same time. It was the holy grail of parenting young children.

Comments (5)

Categories : Infants, Out and about, Preschoolers