On Tuesday I took Alice to her 4-year-old wellness visit at the pediatrician's. Several things were new this time: she took a vision test, had to give a urine sample, and got to wear a paper gown. Her appointments are so easy now that she is interested in everything and cooperates. I think when she was two it was pretty rough, because she would refuse to stand on the scale and was freaked out about everything. Now she is a model patient and her favorite part is where the nurse sticks her finger to squeeze blood out for a blood sample. She barely even winces; the nurse said other patients, even older than her, will sometimes scream and flail like it's the end of the world.
Her stats continued the same pattern as before: she is tall and lean. The doctor says she is technically underweight, but that she's not worried because by looking at me she can tell it's just genetic. I love taking Alice to the doctor's just for the flattery, although the good doctor appears to be focusing only on my scrawny arms and shoulders and ignoring my bottom half. At any rate, we always feel very fortunate to have such a healthy, happy kid.
Today started my seven weeks of summer break. The plan for the summer is for the kids to go to daycare part-time, on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. They would stay home with me on Mondays and Fridays. I am looking forward to using my child-free days off to do a little reading, take walks, and listening to podcasts and NPR while tackling the closets and cupboards that have been getting increasingly cluttered over the last four years. A brief recap of past summers, so you can appreciate why I'm looking forward to this summer so much:
Summer 2011: Give birth to Alice and stay home with her for 3 months.
Summer 2012: Keep 1-year old Alice home with me all summer. All I remember is she cried a lot.
Summer 2013: I had a month where Alice was in daycare before I gave birth to Simon. All I remember of that time period was sorting through hand-me-downs and getting the house ready for another munchkin, all while finding it terribly difficult to move or bend over. Then Simon was born and I stayed home with him for 3 months.
Summer 2014: I kept Simon home with me full-time, and Alice went to school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
So I think this summer will be just the right mix of relaxed days home with the kids and days for me to get stuff done around the house, as well as get ready for the several trips and visitors we have scheduled this summer.
Day one got off to a good start. Alice entertained herself by playing rocket-ship with the shopping cart after eating breakfast.
Then, in preparation for Father's Day, I made this little video of Alice talking about Zac. I didn't really plan my questions out very well, so it gets a bit redundant.
I took the kids with me on a grocery trip to Harris Teeter and when we got back, we had a snack on the porch and they played outside for a bit.
I was able to sit in the hammock while the kids played in the yard, which was more interesting to them than normal because our water table was still out there, left from the party. They fight a little bit, mainly because Alice will grab something Simon has or wants, but they can also play together a little bit now.
They were all wet and finally ready to go in, so I stripped them on the porch. But Simon had found some bubbles left over from the party, that he refused to part with.
Later, after nap, he had a lot of fun playing with his green balloon. Given that he's so uncoordinated in other ways, I was impressed when he could catch it.
When I thought about becoming a parent, one of the specific things I remember dreading was that if I had kids, I would probably have to throw a children's birthday party at some point. We put it off for for years, but alas, the day had come, we were having a party for Alice. We just invited her closest inner circle of friends, since we couldn't fit a large group into our house and had failed to find a suitable alternate location.
I'd been planning and preparing all week, and it paid off. The party was a lot of fun, and really fairly simple for a normal person who is not party-averse. We started by blowing up a lot of free-range balloons, because you can't go wrong with kids and balloons. Simon and Alice proved this by playing happily with the balloons for quite some time while we got other things ready.
My genius idea was to combine party-favors and decorations all in one. So the helium balloons are each tied to a fancy bottle of bubbles (thanks, dollar store!) and they would serve as decorations during the party, then each guest would take one home.
We set the water table up in the backyard, with water squirters and water balloons. The balloons hanging from trees are meant to be targets, so they'll have something to squirt other than people.
In the little play house, we stashed a bunch of bottles of bubbles. The idea was to not have any organized games, but just let the kids wander around and play.
Soon, the kids arrived and the fun began! Alice was so excited and happy that at one point that she just ran around the house flailing and talking incoherently. It was like her joy at having her first birthday party was overwhelming. Actually, she always goes a bit nuts when we have guests at our house, so having so many at once probably just about caused her to explode.
We had pre-ordered pizzas for lunch, and that worked out really well.
Simon, of course, was not interested in cake, only the candles and bubbles.
I had put on the invitation to not bring presents, but Grayson brought Alice one anyway. It was a volcano, which we played with in the afternoon after her nap.
All in all, it went really well and I was very proud of myself for accomplishing happily what I had once dreaded and feared.
We had a tradition in prior years of making a wake-up video on the child's birthday. But this year, Alice woke up on her own and got partially dressed. I had been telling her for weeks that when she turned four she was going to start dressing herself. She's been able to do it herself for a while now, she just refused to. I was watching her on the spy camera, and she got her undies and pants on fine, but then put the shirt on backwards. When she took it off, it was inside-out, at which point she gave up. She then went in to Simon's room (where I could also watch on the spy camera) and proceeded to give him her singing, glowing seahorse since she was a big girl now and didn't need it anymore. She quickly rescinded her gift, and gave him a musical light-up cube she saw on his dresser instead. But it was interesting that she thought of giving it to him.
Then we came out and I helped her get her shirt on properly. The first thing she wanted to see was the cake, which Zac had spent a long time working on the night before. She'd wanted a superhero cake (since that's what Grayson had) so Zac made her this:
Then we opened presents.
After opening most of the presents and eating breakfast, we headed to Bond Park so she could try out her three main presents: the fishing pole, the scooter, and the stomp rocket.
She needs a lot of work on her fishing and scootering skills, but she had fun trying.
After scootering for a bit (Alice got tired pretty quickly because she wasn't able to balance yet and was basically hopping) we went to the playground, where Simon enjoyed swinging on Zac.
Then we went to a field to play with the stomp rocket.
After playing in the park for a while, we came home to eat lunch and have cake.
Simon was not the least bit interested in the cake. He just loves the candles.
We had Alice's daycare birthday celebration this morning. In the big class, they do it a bit differently in that the child is the line-leader for the day and the parents stay for a while in the morning. The first time we did the Around the Sun ceremony, Alice was turning two and didn't know what what going on really, so I just led her around. The second time, when she was turning three, she burst into tears after only going half-way around or so. This year, she told us, she was not going to cry.
But first, we had to spend some time in her classroom. It was quite interesting. I observed the interactions of these small humans like an anthropologist studying a foreign culture. We hear so little of Alice's interactions during the day, unless something traumatic happens. Here are a few of my field observations from the morning:
-small female humans behave much better than small male humans
-there's nothing cuter than two kids building a tower together
-kids are surprisingly fashion-conscious. One boy had a velcro cargo pocket on one side of his shorts, but not the other, and went around investigating and discussing pockets with all the other boys
-The kids noticed each other's shoes and compared shoe sizes
-Many of the kids just played with the toys associated with the work, rather than doing the work as intended
-Some of the kids were really sweet (or attention hungry) and colored pictures for us or came and talked to us
-The teachers are really good with the kids and gently direct them
The kids start their morning by doing "work" -- the Montessorri name for the the little self-teaching activities the kids do. In this class, each child works on a little rug and that is his or her space. If two kids are working together they will push their rugs together.
Alice first did the dinosaur work, where you match the picture of a dinosaur with two dinosaur toys--one of the full body and one of just the skeleton. She didn't seem like she had to work too hard on that one.
Next, she did some numbers work, where you put the written numbers on top of little hooks where you hang a string of beads representing that number. Meanwhile, a group of kids talk to me and show me what's in their pockets.
Oscar and Alice are working together.
Soon, the kids are told to get books and they sit on the line and read for a few minutes while everyone puts their work away. Alice's friend Rye was apparently telling me something very interesting.
Next, Alice the line-leader and her helper collect all the books and put them away.
Then we sang the national anthem.
After that, the helper asks the line leader "5 important questions." I'll let the video take over here. It's about 16 minutes long, so grab and snack and settle in for a spell.
After the ceremony, the kids went to their tables and ate the morning snack of cupcakes and bananas. I didn't want my cupcake, so Zac ate it for me, and Alice ate the frosting blob. We hadn't intended for her to eat it, but frosting left on a plate does not go unnoticed by this child, and she stuck her fork in it and ate it.
It finally occurred to me to just make Simon a train track on the TV table where he loves to drive things back and forth. He was using a slinky as a tunnel, or driving his trains through the ferry boat, so it made me think that he just needed a tunnel. He'll play happily here for quite a long time, and it's always the first place he goes in the morning and right after school. In fact, he loves it so much he frequently cries when we make him stop playing trains to do useless things like eat breakfast or supper.
Whenever his trains come unconnected or his track falls apart, he'll come to us for help. I'm training him to go to Alice for help, and it's having a good effect on their relationship, as Alice learns it's fun to be a big sister since she can do more than Simon, and Simon can have interaction with Alice other than screaming when she takes his toys.
Most of the time she still just scribbles nonsensically and says she's making hurricanes and tornadoes and spider webs, but occasionally she'll surprise us with something semi-coherent, like this picture of Peppa Pig.
On Tuesday I took Alice to her 4-year-old wellness visit at the pediatrician's. Several things were new this time: she took a vision test, had to give a urine sample, and got to wear a paper gown. Her appointments are so easy now that she is interested in everything and cooperates. I think when she was two it was pretty rough, because she would refuse to stand on the scale and was freaked out about everything. Now she is a model patient and her favorite part is where the nurse sticks her finger to squeeze blood out for a blood sample. She barely even winces; the nurse said other patients, even older than her, will sometimes scream and flail like it's the end of the world.
