milestone

Time for pull-ups!

| patmcg

Molly has gotten very interested in ditching her diapers for the more grown-up and mature pull-up.  This is basically just a diaper, but she can pull it on and off by herself.  Many of the kids in her class are doing it, so it may be some positive peer pressure leading Molly to the pull-up.  So we are sending Molly yo school with pull-ups now.  Bye bye diapers!

Molly often calls her pull-ups “underwear” and seems to think they are real underwear.  She is somewhat interested in using the toilet, and sometimes even sits on her little started toilet, but to date we have not had to clean it out.

Molly begs to wear her pulls to bed at night, but that is the one time we are still requiring diapers.  We have a vague sense that a pull-up might not be as thick and durable as a diaper and might not last a whole night.  One step at a time, people!

It’s Kindergarten!

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Today, Claire entered the brave new world of kindergarten!

The morning went pretty smoothly.  Claire has been waking up around 6:45 for a few weeks now, so that put her on kindergarten time right off the bat.  Claire was in a good mood and ready to roll.  We were out of the house in plenty of time and at the classroom at 7:35, 10 minutes early.  Grammy and Granddaddy were in town, which was good for Molly, who has been waking up between 7:30 and 8:00 most days.  She got to sleep in and have a nice slow breakfast with her grandparents while Claire, Kit, and I were wading through the mass of kids and cars up at Claire’s new elementary school.

One of the nice things about the new early 7:40 drop-off time is that Kit can drop Claire off at school pretty regularly and still get to work on time.  Kit is excited to see more of Claire regularly in the mornings. I am excited too since I will not have to rush around town quite as much on those mornings.

Anyways, the classroom was already awfully crowded with excited kids and parents when we showed up.  Claire was familiar with her classroom and her new teacher from an open house the previous Friday, which she enjoyed but had been a little scared to be left there alone.  Kit and I explored the classroom with Claire and helped her find her desk.  Before we knew it, the final bell was ringing and the teacher was subtly shooing the parents out of the room.  Claire seemed nervous and a little clingy but held herself together as we left.  Kit did not have quite as much luck holding herself together and teared up a bit a we walked down the hall away from the classroom.  I did not expect to feel sad myself — just excited — but I did feel a little lump in the throat as we walked away like we had 1000 times before in daycare.  But this was different than daycare.  Elementary school was so much bigger, and bustling with the rush of nearly 900 students arriving at exactly the same time.  After the tardy bell rang, and all the kids were in their classes, the halls got quite very suddenly, filled only with somber parents hurrying off to work.  There was also a fair number of “exercise moms”, breezy moms donned in jogging gear who stayed to chat with each other for a while.  I think I heard two of them making plans to meet for coffee.  We did not have exercise moms at daycare since it was populated entirely by working parents.

Grammy came along to pick up Claire in the afternoon.  Kit would, much to her regret, not be able to pick Claire up in the afternoons except when she was on vacation.  Anyways, Claire is the only kid from her class in extend-a-care.  Even though it goes on until 5:30, we picked her up around 3:15, largely out of impatience to see her and to hear about her day.  When we saw her in the cafeteria, Claire looked red and nervous and unhappy.  Claire would later explain that she liked kindergarten and had a fun day in class.   She liked her teacher, who was really nice and not mean at all.  But she was confused about going to extend-a-care, and she was scared that we would not be able to find her.  She was really scared that she might just be left there.  That must have been a terrifying feeling for a kid.  I was a little surprised this was an issue since we had picked her up every day without fail from daycare, I had explained extend-a-care to Claire ahead of time, but I guess it was still weird getting separated form her classmates and taken off to the cafeteria.  Of course, I assured Claire that me or Mom would always come get her every day, and we would find her no natter where she was.  And she could always ask a teacher if she was confused or lost for any reason.  This seemed to help, but it was a tough ending for a big day.

Claire’s teacher, Ms. B, sent out a nice note to all the parents that evening, starting…

Congratulations on surviving your first day of Kindergarten:):)  We had such an amazing and busy day!  Time flew by and as many of the monkeys said, ‘I’m hungry’, ‘I’m tired’, and the best ‘I never knew Kindergarten lasted so long!’.  As I’m sure you are noticing your child is probably exhausted.  Please be sure they are getting plenty of sleep because we will continue to be super busy the rest of this week…

She ended her note with a well crafted hint to not storm the classroom too early like we did today.

See you tomorrow at 7:40 (my door will be shut until then to prepare for the day).

Besides the extend-a-care hiccup, it was a good start to “real” school.

Claire Goes for a Swim

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Just a few months ago, Claire’s swimming skills had plateaued, falling somewhat short of actually swimming.  She was starting to dislike her indoor YMCA swim lessons and actively campaigned against going to the YMCA each Saturday morning.  She did not like her goggles.  She was even starting to get a little more scared of the water, and resisted getting in.  So we gave swimming a break for a while.

Things have really turned around this summer.  Claire has started to enjoy swimming again, thanks in large part to swim lessons with her friends at summer camp.  And today for the first time, she actually swam all by herself.  It happened during a weekend visit to Houston to see her grandparents.  Claire love’s their community pool, which has a 3-foot shallow end, the perfect depth for Claire to take some chances but still touch the bottom in a pinch.   We went swimming four times in under 48 hours, at Claire’s repeated request.  We calculated that Claire spent roughly one third of her waking hours that weekend in the pool.  We are very grateful for sunscreen!

Anyways, Claire was so happy and proud when she swam all by herself.  Here is some documentation of the big milestone, including videos of both her underwater style and her dog paddle style.

Besides the solo swimming, Claire is also enjoying her goggles now.  She loves putting her face in the water at the 9-foot deep end, in particular, to look down to see just how deep it is.  That is a far cry from the scared girl who wanted to sit out swimming class at the YMCA just a few months ago.

Sentences

| patmcg

Molly has just recently started putting together simple two-word sentences, the main one being, “eat it”.  This normally refers to actual food, and not a mean jab.

I am not sure if this counts as a sentence, but Molly also loves to say “Oh, Daddy”.  I invariably reply “Oh, Molly”.  Clever, I know.  We riff back and forth like this for minutes at a time.  Molly loves it.  She has a big smile on her face the whole time, and she plays around with different ways to inflect the two words “Oh Daddy”.

For her part, Claire insists that Molly is not saying “Oh Daddy”.  She strongly believes that Molly is saying “Old Daddy”, and she thinks I should not say “Oh Molly” back because it’s supposed to be “Old Molly”, and that doesn’t make sense since Molly is a baby, or actually a toddler, or a “Boddler”, as Claire says.

One of Molly’s favorite phrases is actually three words, although it sounds like one word when she says it: hearyago.  She’ll often walk up to you and hand you something, saying “hereyago”, aka “Here you go”.

She also recently learned a classic three-word phrase, although she was just repeating it at her Mom’s prompting.  When I was leaving the room one night for Kit to put Molly to sleep as she does each night, Kit said to Molly, “Can you say I love you to Daddy?”  Sure enough, Molly repeated “I love you”, her first time to say such a difficult phrase (in more ways than one!).

Today, Molly made her first original, unprompted three-word sentence.  While eating lunch, she dropped an orange slice on the floor.  When our dog Muffin came to inspect it, Molly said, “Muffin eat it.”  Pretty good for a boddler!

Writing for Real

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Claire has been trying to master her reading and writing skills, and is making steady, incremental progress on both fronts. I can actually show you the writing part.

For a while, Claire was happy to put any sort of letters on her pictures. These were either super-secret, encrypted words, used for national security… or just random letters. Sadly, we’ll never know for sure.

Now Claire is writing her first real, actual words, as seen here.
Sometimes she asks us for help to write out something more involved, for instance Rapunzel, let down your hair! to accompany a drawing of a very long-haried girl. I could not scan that one because she gave it as a gift to her friend Maddie, who can read.

Land distance record

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Molly has been developing her walking skills over the last few weeks. We have been counting how many steps she takes at a time. “She took 8 steps!”  “She took 10 steps at school!”  These accomplishments are all normally in a nice controlled indoor environment with some parental or teacher encouragement.

As of today, I think we can stop counting steps. For that matter, we can stop the nightly walking practice.
Today at a birthday party at Claire’s friend’s house, Molly was hanging out, sitting on the driveway playing with an orange golf ball, surrounded by kids on bikes and scooters. Then Molly decided that she wanted to get to the back yard where the petting zoo was set up. So she just got up on her own and walked the length of the driveway to the backyard, dodging bikes and scooters along the way, eventually arriving at the steps of the backyard on two feet with orange golf ball in hand. Molly had taken 50 consecutive steps, that I counted.  There is no doubt this kid can walk now.

Molly then climbed four or five steps up, and then climbed back down, and then climbed up a bit, and finally dropped the orange golf ball, and cried a bit, and climbed back down to get it, and then climbed back up a bit. Then it was cake time, so we went inside, where Molly just helped herself to a seat at the table alongside Claire’s friends. I think Molly earned that seat.


Walking Practice

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Molly can walk, a little bit. But she seems unsure about this whole two-legged balancing thing, and she still prefers to crawl. To encourage her to stand and walk, we have even been having “walking practice” every night after dinner. This was Kit’s idea. It is a fun event. It starts with us chanting over and over, “Walking practice! Walking practice! Walking practice!” Molly gets real excited, as does Claire. Kit sits on the floor holding Molly out in front of her in a standing position, and I sit a few feet away with Claire in my lap. (There is a continual debate about exactly how far I should be from Kit, ie how far Molly should walk. I want to let Molly stretch it out a bit, while Kit wants to avoid a discouraging fall, depending on how you look at it.) Nonetheless, Claire and I wave our hands and yell, “Come on, Molly! Come on!” Molly slowly plods over in our direction, slowly planting one foot in front of the other, sometimes falling before she gets to us, but usually making it far enough to tumble over into Claire’s and my arms, where we pick her up and shout “Yeah Molly!”. Molly and Claire are all grins. They love the cheering and seeing Molly walk. We repeat this event a few more times and then put the typically exhausted Molly to sleep.


“Doggie”

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Molly has been fascinated with our dog Muffin for weeks.  Muffin is always there as Molly sits in her high chair and drops (actually, throws) her unwanted food on the floor.  Molly has actually gotten pretty good at throwing her sippy cup at Muffin, but Muffin gladly braves the possibility of suddenly being pelted on the head for the possibility some spare bread, cheese, or sometimes better.

Lately, Molly has been trying to say “doggie” as she watches the fuzzy dog on the floor.  She always seems to get stuck on the “G” sound, and it usually comes out as “daddy” even though she is clearly pointing at the dog.  But Molly seems determined to say this tricky word more than any other right now, and she keeps pointing at Muffin’s picture in a little book we have (from Grammy) and trying to say “doggie”.  Until yesterday it still normally came out as “daddy”.  But no longer.  Yesterday she got it several times, as you will see (actually, hear) at the end of this short video.

First step!

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Molly took her first official step (that I know of) today when I dropped her off at school. I was chatting with her teacher out n the playground where they go in the mornings, and I had to put Molly down to get something from my bag. I expected her to just sit down when I let her go like usual, but this time she kept her legs straight and just stood there by herself looking up at me. She stayed there standing nice and steady for a long long time, maybe more than a full minute. (It is hard to judge these things since I was standing there in shock with my jaw wide open.). Finally, Molly decided she wanted to come to grab onto my pant leg for support, but she did not want to sit down and crawl only a foot or so to make that happen, so she tentatively and slowly stepped towards me! The first step was successful — she did not fall, and she stayed up for another step. She took a tumble on the second step, but it was amazing to see her first real step.

Here is some video a couple days later in the same spot standing (but not walking) for a much, much shorter period of time. These moments are like the Sasquatch — impossible to catch on film!

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