Jane
-She's completed her second week of school! And she loves it. I'm really happy we decided to go this route with her. She's been making new friends, which I'm really happy about. Going into a new school where most of the kids knew each other previously, I was a little worried she's be an outsider. But, she's not very shy and luckily has made friends easily! I hear a lot about one girl in particular, Caroline, and how they play Malificent. Score for her! Another princess-a-holic!
-Though, on the first day, she told me she was going to be a little shy. Ha. I don't know if that happened.
-She gets all the normal school specials; art, library, computer, gym, music. This is awesome for her, she's really loving the time she leaves the classroom to go to them. And she even gets to bring home a library book each week.
-It's a whole day, so she eats lunch in the cafeteria and then goes out to recess like the big kids. They get 3 recesses throughout the day. After lunch and recess, the kids take a 25 minute "rest". We've found some maze books, dot-to-dot, a Frozen look and find book, and a Sophia sticker book to pass the time. She can hardly wait to look at them, but I don't let her open them until she's at school for rest.
-Her teacher seems so kind. Every time I see her, she is super friendly, with that pleasant softness that only a preschool teacher would have. Jane seems to really enjoy her.
-I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about her being away from home all day. Turns out, it's been a lot easier for me than I thought. By the time we have lunch, I'm getting Molly and Owen down for a nap. I feel good that Jane is at school having fun, rather than watching tv or playing by herself. Most days, I find myself having to lay with Owen for nap, and I don't have to feel guilty because Jane's at school. And then we're off to pick her up by 3:20 anyway. She's doing pretty well keeping up with these long days. Most days, though, she does have a meltdown as soon as we get in the car. But by the time we get home, she's fine and has a little snack. Plus it helps that Brian is home, or almost home, by the time we pull into the driveway.
-Not school related, she's one practice away from cheering at her first football game. She asked to be a cheerleader, so we decided we'd let her give it a go. I'm all about her exploring different hobbies at this point. I want her to find something she really loves to do. She does still love dance. And she will be starting that again next week. Cheerleading has been interesting. We missed the first week of practice because we were on vacation, so when she started, she seemed so out of it. I just didn't think this was going to be her thing. But she has proved me wrong. She's a really fast learner, so she picked up the cheers rather quickly and has one of the loudest mouths out there- imagine that ;) She's probably the youngest one there, too.
Molly
-I've been really enjoying my time with just Molly while Jane is at school and Owen is taking his morning nap. We do a lot of playdoh. I know she loves having me give her one on one as well. Next week she starts school, so we wont have as much time together.
-She started gymnastics yesterday. She loved it. It's nice to see her get to do something. Usually she just watched Jane go off, but Molly was really happy to do something of her own. And she was such a great listener! She made me really proud!
-Food. It is my biggest headache of the day. This girl won't eat, yet she's starving. Makes me insane. If I'm going to lose my patience, it's over this. So last week I bought some different things at Trader Joes. Things for lunch that I thought she could eat and possibly like. The problem is her even taking the first bite. She doesn't have the phobia of food the way Jane does, I know Molly can take a try without this completely scaring her. She's just stubborn. So finally I got her Elsa doll and pretended to feed her the food. Then continued to pretend to be Elsa and tell Molly how great the food was. Two seconds later, Molly was trying the food. Finally I found something that works! But I'm definitely not trying to over use it, only for new things.
-It's crazy how she is all of a sudden seeming so much older to me. She's so much taller, her body long and lean. No more little pot belly. She is saying things that completely catch me off guard, remembering things that I don't expect. She's my girl who just likes to have fun and could care less about school kinds of things- like knowing how many noses a person has....ugh. Anyway, maybe some of the academic things will stick a little better this year.
Owen
-He's started to stand without holding on and has actually taken one to two steps a few times! Yikes! I can't even believe it!
-He seems so much like a little baby to me still. So when he does things like stand up without hardly holding on, or push cars across this floor, I can't help but just stop what I'm doing and watch him. He is literally growing and changing before my eyes and I hate it!
-He is finally starting to eat solid foods! He was choking of everything I was giving him, then all of a sudden, about 2 weeks ago, he wasn't. We're taking it pretty slow, but I'm so happy. And he eats! Like actually tries things! (Ok, Molly, sometimes tried things, mostly not though.) He doesn't eat much at a time, but I'm just happy he's actually putting food into his mouth at all.
-A few days ago, he was nursing so much, or trying to, that I thought I might actually have to start supplementing. I even went so far as to buy him goat's milk. (Dairy seems to still have a major impact on him- so that rules out most formula. And goat's milk is gentle for a baby to drink.) Tonight I tried to give him a bottle. At first he was a little interested in checking it out. But that lasted about 20 seconds. After that, every time I brought the bottle close to him, he'd push it as far away as possible.
-He's still me happy easy going baby. Though the past couple days have been kind of challenging. He's had a low grade fever and been cranky. I think it might be his teeth, but it's so hard to tell with babies.
-Tonight when I was trying to get him to go to sleep, he was just not settling down. I put him in the stroller and started taking him for a walk. We stopped to talk to our neighbors, and when they bent down to talk to him, he just lost it and started crying. I took him out and carried him back to our driveway, pushing the empty stroller. I left the stroller and continued walking up the street, holding him against my chest. It was dusk/ It was still warm, but the cool late summer night air was starting to settle in. The night time bugs were chirping. It was so peaceful. We walked until it was dark, the moon bright and overhead. It was probably one of my favorite moments.
