Claire had an exercise at school today that involved listing “what makes me excited about kindergarten, and what makes me nervous about kindergarten!” Claire illustrated each item with a little picture. Claire is excited that her classmate Lyla will be there and about doing homework. There it is for the record… excited about homework. She is nervous about making new friends and “because it will be tricky in kindergarten”. I have mentioned the early kindergarten start time to her, but it may not have hit her yet, or else she would have listed being nervous about getting to school every day by 7:40. At least I would have listed that one.
school
Check Mate
Claire told us this story tonight over dinner…
During her gymnastics class at school today, Claire accidentally bumped into her friend Julian. Claire and Julian get along great, and Julian’s parents have even told us “he has been sweet on Claire for years.” Anyways, when Claire bumped into him, she followed standard school protocol and checked on him. “Are you hurt?” she said. “Yes”, Julian replied. “What do you need?” said Claire, following protocol. Julian thought for a second and replied, “I need you to stop checking on me!” Then he “laughed so hard he cried”, according to Claire.
Anyways, this was supposed to be a joke of Julian’s, not anything mean. But you could interpret it as sort of a mean joke, if you didn’t know these kids. Taking on the role of amateur psychologist, I asked Claire how this exchange made her feel. She thought for a minute and said, “It made me feel… weird.” I swear, these kids are getting complicated.
Pinned Up
Molly’s picture was featured, along with a few other kids, in a display that everyone sees right when they enter the day care. And she is, of course, wearing her signature “HOLA!” T-shirt.
Scoping Out School
Kindergarten is still almost a year off for Claire, but we thought it would be fun to drop by her upcoming school and play on the playground to help warm her up to the idea. The school is rather big for elementary and has over 160 kindergarteners enrolled, so we want to ease Claire into it gradually.
Anyways, we all had a great time in the nice weather on the playground. While Claire was introducing herself to some of the other kids hanging out, Molly also had a great time. She got to ride around in a pink, plastic, rather bumpy, little car. The faster and bumpier we went, the more giggles from Molly. She also got to dig around in some dirt and rub it on her face. What a day!
An Unruly Bunch
Here are the photos of Molly’s class wearing their Halloween costumes. You can see Molly in the right-center area slightly behind a large blonde boy wearing a silly sweater. Molly apparently loved wearing her pumpkin fairy outfit and complained when they took it off.
Toss Up Talk
Molly woke up last night at 4 am to discover, to her astonishment, that she was vomiting. Of course, she probably had no idea what was going on, but her cries made it clear she did not like it one bit.
Pretty soon, the whole family was awake and gathered around poor Molly. While Kit held and comforted Molly, I got some paper towels to clean up Molly, Kit, and myself. Claire, who was suffering from “walking pneumonia” and had missed the prior day of school, was very interested in what was happening and asked how she could help. Claire and I quickly removed Molly’s stained sheets, wiped down her plastic-covered mattress, and put on a fresh clean sheet. We sent Claire to the guest bedroom to sleep while Kit and then I held Molly until morning.
We kept Molly home from school the next day. Molly’s teacher called me in the morning to ask if Molly was okay. She said she had visited Claire’s classroom and saw Claire was in school, so she figured Molly was sick (oops, I should have called). She said Claire told her excitedly that Molly threw up in the middle of the night.
Molly spent the day at home with me mostly sleeping, drinking Pedialyte, not eating, and acting groggy. Her fever spiked to 102.
When I picked up Claire, with Molly in tow, Claire’s friends on the playground were excited to hear about Molly’s misadventure. After I explained to them what had happened, each of the cute little girls, each dressed in a cute little dress, proudly shared their own unique story of vomiting. One had vomited all over the carpet at night as a baby. One had vomited on the kitchen floor and got to watch a movie while her mom cleaned it up (it took quite a while, I am told). Claire got to tell everyone how she had vomited on the stairs while racing up to our bedroom. There was a debate about the best place to vomit, with “outside” being the consensus. Molly, who I was holding during all of this, enjoyed the animated conversation and, for the first time that day, smiled a great deal.
We headed home to try to get a little solid food down Molly and wait for Grammy to drive up and help with the crisis. Trusty ol’ Grammy would save Molly from being taken care of by a random temporary nanny and/or me from taking a third day in a row off from work.
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Busy Body / Sleepy Head
Molly has so much fun at school playing with her friends and exploring her classroom. But she gets pretty worn out during the week. She rests up on the weekends, sleeping in late and indulging in two long naps per day. And these are hard naps; she tends to wake up all sweaty and disoriented.
This Saturday, Molly was especially sleepy, and Kit kept track of her sleep and wake times. For the 24 hours from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, Molly was actually awake for just over 7 hours of the day. Sometimes she starts to “cave” within an hour or two of waking up from a long nap or even a full 12-hour night’s sleep.
But no wonder she is so tired. Those are some very busy 7 waking hours, with barely an idle moment. She has lots of exploring to do, household items to pick up and drop, household items to shake and roll, furniture and people to crawl over, stairs to climb, dogs and kids to giggle at, silly games to invent. She makes the most of her precious 7 hours!
Busy Body
Molly has been so busy! She is learning to move herself around and is so excited about it.
She recently started “army crawling” (todo: link or video), and today at school, for the first time, Molly sat up all by herself! She also pulled herself up using the edge of a little table. I heard about this from Molly’s teacher when I picked her up today. Molly especially gets a real workout everyday at school, where, unlike at home, it is safe enough for her to crawl around wherever she wants.
Here are some sample daily notes from her teachers:
Date: 5/26/2010
Disposition: Busy, determined, happy
Activities: Worked her way into bottom book shelf for teether -> got out by herself! Speed-scooting around the room. Trying to pull up on ducks.
Date: 5/27/2010
Disposition: Busy, focused, cheerful
Activities: Played outside -> chewing on & waving shovels. Laid on her back squealing @ the trees! Army crawled under the sorting table to get blue bucket.
Date: 6/10/2010
Disposition: Active, determined, happy
Activities: “Real” army crawling w/ both arms! Reaching for & batting @ elastic bands under high chairs. Sweet smiles!
The Petite Ninja
Molly is really getting around at school, where we has free reign to explore. She can’t crawl yet, but somehow she finds her way from one side of the room to the other without anyone actually seeing her do it. We think she uses a complex series of rolls to get herself from one place to another, probably taking a break when she catches anyone’s attention. She moves around so much, and so invisibly, that the teachers have dubbed her The Petite Ninja!
(I would have included a silly picture of a petite ninja, but alas, all the top image hits are for something called The Petite Ninja Warriors on “America’s Top Model”. Sigh.)
McG Kids 