I just finished a zippered cardigan for Carrie a few days ago, so we went out and took a few pictures of her wearing it…and blowing bubbles.
Thursdays are the only day of the week where we have no morning plans – Carrie has dance at 4:30, but I avoid scheduling anything else for Thursdays. So we have our Thursday morning tradition: pancakes! It’s gotten so I can make pancakes without a recipe. Unfortunately, Anna is not quite old enough to eat pancakes, since they have eggs in them. And sometimes she gets up earlier than Carrie, and is just about ready for a nap while I’m making pancakes…
There’s a lot more time to fill up on Thursdays, so we do things like color, play with Little People, and play in boxes:
Next year, when Carrie’s in Kindergarten and riding the bus, we’re not going to have our lazy Thursday mornings, so we make sure to enjoy each one thoroughly! (Every now and then we do get dressed before lunch…)
Today is my Dad’s birthday. We didn’t get a chance to see him today, although Carrie did get to wish him a happy birthday on the phone. Happy birthday, Daddy!
In other news, it was “Pirates and Princesses” day at school today. The kids got to wear a costume to school, so Carrie spent the day in her Belle dress. The also had a treasure hunt with a map in the school, which sounds like it was a lot of fun.
Finally, Anna has started crawling. She’s been doing the “commando crawl” for almost two weeks now, but today she finally coordinated getting her tummy off the ground and moving her hands and knees without collapsing. She can’t go far or fast yet, but it’s time to start rethinking the tiny toy containment strategy…
I have had a digital SLR for more than 5 years, and I’ve barely ever used any lens on it but the one it came with.
This afternoon it was almost warm and since Anna was napping Carrie and I decided to hang out outside for a while. On a whim, I dug out the telephoto lens that I used on my old film SLR – and with the smaller aspect ratio of the digital camera, it winds up being a super telephoto lens.
This is one of my favorite shots from the afternoon:
I think I need to play with my camera and my (very) small lens collection, because this is the sort of photo I’d like to be able to take on purpose, and often.
Dear Carolyn,
I don’t know where the months go – I feel like I’m writing one of these letters to you every day. At the same time, as you’re getting older, not that much changes from month to month…
Sleep has been slightly better. I’m almost afraid to type that, but your bug phobia (which morphed briefly into a ghost phobia earlier this month) seems to be abating, and bedtime doesn’t involve quite so many bug (and ghost…and at one point ogre) checks.
I think part of your willingness to go to bed more easily has to do with your room. I finally got my act together and found you a real bookcase and – combined with a Rose Petal Cottage that Target had on sale after the holidays – I made you a little reading nook. Honestly, there have been several nights when I’ve gone in to check on you before I go to bed and you’re curled up in your cottage with the book you couldn’t quite finish before you passed out.
In the process of moving things around in your room, I wound up moving your old book and toy bin shelves into Anna’s room, along with several of the more baby appropriate toys…which didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped. Luckily, you decided that trashing Anna’s room with those toys is at least as much fun as trashing your own room with them! But it was a good reminder that even though you look and sound and act so grown up a lot of the time you’re really, truly, only four.
Sometimes I can actually see the conflict in your heart about growing up. You want to be so independent and do things all on your own – and you’re getting so good at doing things like getting dressed, getting your own glass of water, and pouring your own cereal – but in the next breath you want me to baby you and do everything for you. All I can say is that those conflicting feelings? I have them too. I love to watch you change and grow, but I will always miss the sleepy warm baby snuggled into my shoulder that I used to rock every night.
Love, Mommy
We went to the museum today. One of Carrie’s favorite parts was actually in the planetarium, where they had a huge screen and colored lights set up to show how cyan, magenta and yelow light could combine to make the other colors.
Carrie definitely had fun making her colorful shadows dance!
I think we’ll stick with the children’s museum for a few more years, though. While it was a mostly enjoyable trip I felt pretty stressed with all the much older children who were there. Many were not well supervised and there were several times that Carrie got shoved out of the way by older kids while she was patiently waiting her turn to look at or do something. I never know what to do in that situation…if their “responsible” adult is standing right there and doesn’t say anything, I kind of feel like I can’t say anything either.
I am slightly jealous that she got to go in to the planetarium show featuring Stomp! with Sammy and Lisa while Anna and I stayed outside, but really, Anna needed a bit of quiet down time by then anyway. I’m sure there will be many more planetarium shows in our future!
This morning I sent Carrie off to school with her hand-made Valentines:
These can be summed up in one word: MESSY. Good gracious, I think I’m going to be finding glitter from these for the next several months! And I think I’d get card stock for next time. We used construction paper, pre-cut heart doilies, little heart confetti bits and glitter, but the amount of glue involved caused the construction paper to curl a lot. Maybe card stock would stay flatter?
I traced the hearts, Carrie cut them out. I applied the glue, she stuck on the doily and added more glue on top to help the confetti and glitter stick. Oh, and before the whole messy gluing bit I wrote the recipient’s name on the back, along with “Love,” and Carrie alternated between writing “Carrie” and “Carolyn” depending on her mood. Except for one or two that are signed “Carriolyn” because she just couldn’t decide…
Yesterday was the parent/teacher conference for preschool. And one of the main points the teachers wanted to get across was that Carrie is a really good reader. Well, of course, I knew that. But no, reading – and understanding – chapter books at four is not just early reader material, it’s way more than that. And they’re concerned that she’s going to have a hard time in kindergarten because there won’t be anything at all to challenge her.
I wasn’t all that concerned until they got me worrying about it. I mean, there’s lots of things that kids learn in kindergarten besides reading, right? Social skills, writing skills, tying your shoes (oh, that’s actually probably something I should teach her here at home, I guess), getting through a whole day without mommy or a nap. Right?
So I used a couple of different homeschool tests on the web to see whereabouts her reading level might actually be. Are you ready for this?
She’s reading at a fourth grade level.
Um. OK, then.
I’m choosing not to completely panic, but I think I will make a couple of calls to the school and just try to find out how they might handle a very advanced early reader. It’s not as though we could (or would) skip her up to first grade anyway, so I think I just need to have a basic comfort level that they’re not going to completely ignore the fact that she can read and will find ways to channel it so that they don’t have to chastise her for reading whatever they write on the board instead of sitting there sounding out individual letters with the class.
Dear Carolyn,
Today you are four-and-a-quarter. You wanted to know if that was almost like four-and-a-half, but it’s not. You should still tell people you’re four. Really, you only get to be four once, please try to enjoy it!
So, sleep. We talked about this last month. I thought maybe we’d found a solution with the sleep fairy CD, but after I posted about it last, you absolutely refused to listen to it that night. And the night after. And pretty much ever since then. But sometimes you do manage to sleep, except of course on those nights when you don’t.
You’re dealing with a slight (OK, maybe more than slight) bug phobia right now. To the point where we have to go upstairs and do “bug checks” multiple times before you’ll fall asleep, and you’ve woken me up out of a sound sleep several times screaming that there’s a bug crawling on you – in your hair, on your leg, wherever, and I have to check you all over (including getting out the comb and picking through your hair) to assure you that there are no bugs. From what I’ve read, this is quite normal at your age, to have a fear and have it be all-consuming. That doesn’t make the reality of it any easier – for either of us! No amount of reassurance that January is not a terribly bug-friendly month, or that bugs are so much smaller than us that we terrify them, or any such thing has worked so far.
But aside from that, things are great. You’re loving school, loving being a big sister, loving life in general. You really enjoy playing Animal Crossing on the Wii – actually, as games go it’s probably a great thing for you to play: there’s a lot of reading, some money management skills, and plenty of virtual gardening.
I’m still getting used to your short hair. Don’t get me wrong, I love it, but I do look back at pictures of your long hair (especially in braids) and kind of miss it. But neither of us miss the tangles and the twice daily battle to try to get a brush through it. Daddy thinks your short hair makes you look younger, but I think it makes you look older. You definitely could pass for a kindergartner now. ;)
And speaking of kindergarten…I can’t believe I’m even starting to think about kindergarten for my baby girl, but here we are. Registration is just six weeks away, and I bet before I can say “my cute kindergartner” three times fast I’ll be putting you on the bus for your first day of school. I’m going to pretend I didn’t just type that, and go back to living in denial for the next few months of preschool. You know, the days can seem really long, but these years are flying by so fast it takes my breath away sometimes.
Love, Mommy
Carrie decided she wanted a new haircut, so yesterday she and I went to the kid’s salon. Ta-da!
I’m going to miss braiding her long, thick hair – but after how easy it was to brush through this morning, maybe not so much as I thought I would! And actually, I’m kind of jealous. I really, really, really want to get my hair cut now…