Molly turned five years old today! Way to go, Molly. We love you!
Instead of a blog post, I put together a quick video montage of her birthday, which was a regular school day followed by present opening (mostly Frozen (movie) stuff) and a special pancake dinner at Kerby Lane Cafe.
Molly is officially not a baby an more. Today she discovered the last vestige of her babyhood, an old container of diaper cream. In a grand symbolic gesture, she decided to throw it away. Well, at least it was a grand symbolic gesture to me. I think Molly just wanted to put something in the fun panda bear trash can.
Claire finished second grade on Thursday. How did that happen? One minute, there was a month of school left, and the next minute it was over.
It was a good year for Claire. She loved her teacher, loved her school routine, loved riding the bus home, and loved her school friends. Second grade was a fun year, but with hints of growing up. I think of it as the beginning of “the later Ramona years”, where Ramona is maturing past the silly little kid she once was and moving into new challenges. (Molly is in the early Ramona years.)
Academically, Claire started the year still struggling a bit with basic reading and ended the year strong, tackling big chapter books. She learned to methodically attack challenging words and was coasting through works like “business” and “experiment” by the end of the year. She also conquered speed math (doing basic addition and subtraction quickly) and addition with 3, 4, and more digits. As a challenge, I would sometimes have her add up two really big numbers like 465,777 + 261,222, which she handled with ease. This is a long way from struggling with 9 + 7 just a few months before.
This progress was due to Claire’s hard work and her teacher’s strong dedication. Claire was invited to join two before- and after-school “clubs” lead by her tireless teacher, who had adopted a baby mid-year. Handwriting club was two days a week before school, and math club was one day a week after school. Claire loved handwriting club because it was “cozy” being in the quiet classroom before most of the kids had arrived. She loved math club because her friend Susie was also in the club, and Claire usually got to go to Susie’s house afterwards to do homework and play and hopefully get a Slurpee.
On her report cards, Claire’s teacher praised Claire’s work ethic as “working hard on her handwriting and spelling” and “becoming more confident with continual math practice.” She also focused on Claire’s story telling. “Claire is a lovely story teller. She continually wows me with her word choice and plot development. She is engaged in class discussions and makes fascinating connections.”
The main challenge this year was homework, which was about an hour of reading, spelling, and math. Claire seemed to really enjoy her in-school work but often struggled and railed against homework. Sometimes she would complain openly, but more often she would just procrastinate and lollygag as long as possible. I think by this time of day, Claire was tired and felt she had already done her honest day’s work and should be able to just unwind and relax. This may be Claire’s first real lesson in growing up — yes, you should be able to relax now, but sorry, you had stuff to do first. Welcome to the club. Homework had to be finished in the narrow time between the end of Claire’s school day and when we picked up Molly at 5:15, or else it got pushed to either immediately before or after dinner, both stressful times to squeeze in that extra burst of brain focus before calling it a night. Basically, 3:00 to 7:00 was a tough time of day for everyone, with homework, finishing up work, picking up Molly, making dinner, cleaning up dinner, starting baths all sort of at the same time.
The homework issue got better over the year, and eventually our afternoons were improved dramatically thanks to the new after-school nanny we hired towards the end of the year. More on that in another post.
Claire officially lost her first tooth today. That bottom-middlish tooth had been loose for almost two months but finally let go at school today during lunch. Apparently it comes out as Claire was eating a pear in the cafeteria with her friend Harper. Claire stared run-walking to find a teacher and almost got in trouble with the cafeteria monitor. Claire was very proud of her missing tooth.
The tooth stayed in Claire’s school desk the first night but came home the next day where it slept under Claire’s pillow in a special tiny pillow of its own to help the Tooth Fairy could find it. When I woke Claire up the next morning, the very first thing she did was check her Tooth Fairy pillow. In it, she found her tiny little tooth had been traded for a special half-collar coin. That was a special coin from the Tooth Fairy, who will probably end up slipping a plain old dollar bill in there on later teeth. Claire was surprised it was a silver half dollar coin, thinking half dollars were normally gold. Still, she really likes her “only silver” coin.
Claire just got her first loose tooth! It’s a bottom tooth near the front.
Claire is so excited about this. It’s the first thing she tells everyone. Claire has been watching her classmates lose their teeth for the last couple of years wondering when it would happen to her, and now she’s really in the big kid club.
Molly says that she will probably be getting her loose tooth any day now too.
As a side note, I just had a gum grafting done on my own mouth, so I have to be a little careful about which part of my mouth I chew with. Now loose-tooth Claire gets to join in the weird-eating club.
Driving Claire to a birthday party, just the two of us, Claire brought up the topic of Santa Claus. She started out asking in a roundabout way, “So what’s the deal with Santa Claus?” I provided a non-committal answer. After a little back and forth on the topic, Claire finally asked outright: is Santa real?
So she had figured it out. Of course I gave her a straight answer to a straight question. She said, “I knew it! I knew it!” with a big smile. Then she went through all of Santa’s presents and stocking stuffers from this Christmas, one by one, to ask who thought of each one. She seemed to really enjoy this game, sort of an inside track on a big secret. She asked a few more details about who easts the cookies we leave out, etc.
When Claire was done enquiring for details, I asked her, “How did you know figure it out? Did a friend tell you? ” She said nobody told her. She just figured it out herself. She said there were little clues. What really gave it away, she said, was the “believe in Santa” movies. They gave the most glaring clues. We’re talking primarily about The Polar Express and Elf, favorites with the girls this Christmas. If you watch the movies, you’ll see what we mean.
I congratulated Claire on figuring out this fun little trick, made a point of saying this was basically the only thing we had ever mislead her about, and asked for her help to keep this fun kittle secret safe for Molly. Claire agreed with a big grin on her face.
Molly is down to her last diaper. Once this diaper is gone, she will only have the toilet (or her pants) available for her urine and BMs.
It has been a long and winding road getting this point, but Molly is finally pretty much using the potty now, and we do not feel the need to pay Target for any more diapers.
I have not written a whole lot about the long saga of Molly potty training because, frankly, it has been a confusing topic devoid of concrete milestones. There have been false starts, regressions, and slow progress that you don’t even notice until later. There was some traction way back in January and February. But progress has been fuzzy since then, and nothing could really be pinned down to a single event or milestone. Until now. The picture to your right is Molly’s very last diaper. Molly understands this and is even excited about it, at least for now.
Now it’s off to London with Kit while Grammy deals with the consequences for the next week on our behest. What timing! 😉
While driving Molly and Claire home from school this afternoon, Molly was looking at a picture book, as she often likes to do. She tends to sort of babble about the pictures while she reads, and we don’t always listen very carefully to her. About five minutes into examining the book today, though, Molly said, “That word is ‘Luke'”. At a stop light, I asked her to show me the word, and sure enough, she pointed right at the word “Luke” in the story.
So that is officially the first word that Molly has read (that I know of) besides her own name. Molly must have recognized the word from a friend’s name, but still… preschool literacy is working for Molly!
According to Molly’s daily note from school today, “Molly put a lot of urine in the toilet after nap — it surprised and scared her”, apparently including some crying. That must be a weird feeling the first time it happens!
This milestone comes after a few weeks of experimenting with the potty at school as well as the little plastic one at home, including looking at it, playing with it, pushing it around, sitting on it with a diaper on, sitting on it without a diaper, and occasionally proposing to use it as a container for her toys.
McG Kids 