Don’t Give Up On Me!!
I promise I am not one of those bloggers that starts off strong and gets bored with writing a blog. I LOVE writing but just have not had the time. In fact, except to eat dinner, this is really the first break I have taken tonight and I only have a minute before I have to get back to work.
A quick overview on our life:
- I have started a new blog at http://steppingstoneschildrenscenter.wordpress.com/ to keep the community updated on our current fundraiser. More on that soon!
- “Stepping Up” (our preschool graduation) is Friday. I have been working very hard on the slide show. It is truly a labor of love for me. The only problem with taking so many pictures is that I have a very hard time choosing which ones to use.
- Michele at Quickshot Photography took beautiful pictures of our girls during a portrait party this past weekend. We are looking forward to a full session with her later this month. I want a large portrait of our girls together before Hailey loses her first tooth.
- We have three different programs to attend for Hailey’s kindergarten class over the next 3 school days.
- Ed is in the process of constructing a playset for the girls. I will post before and after pictures once it is complete.
- Ed signed up on facebook.com to help promote Page Law Office and he prompted me to start my own profile. I have had a lot of fun connecting with people I have not talked to in years!
- Buster (the cat) is now taking two antibiotics and two pain meds…6 syringes of liquids a day. Not a happy kitty. He is not putting pressure on one of his front paws. He either has a very, very bad bone infection or a tumor. I pray that if it is a tumor that it has not spread past his leg and he can have his leg amputated and live for many more years. We take him back to the vet on Monday for more x-rays.
- We finally ate at Myra’s Kitchen because we had to taste for ourselves what Kim and Amy kept talking about. I wish we could eat there every night. We have gone twice and both times Hailey ate every single bite (which NEVER happens). Leah did the same the first time but when we went last night, she was more interested in playing. She still did a really good job, though. yum, yum, yum!
Please check out the Stepping Stones blog!!
Kindergarten Update
Hailey is the Terrific Kid for her class this week. She is the last one in her class to be chosen because you had to have not moved your apple all week in order to be chosen. She got to choose 5 things to take to school in the TK bag. Here is what she chose:
- First Tracks by Johnny Boyd – a children’s book about learning to ski that we got in Park City, Utah when Hailey learned to ski.
- Her “Bear” that she has had since she was a baby. This bear was given to a friend of ours at a baby shower that Hailey and I attended when Hailey was just starting to pull up. The friend had already received several of these bears and so she let Hailey have it. The two immediately became inseparable.
- Her sketch book – the cover of her sketch book is actually a color self-portrait she did of herself.
- A picture of our family with Cinderella when we had lunch at Cinderella’s Royal Table inside the castle.
- Her Carolina Kids Club basketball
Hailey is very excited about getting to sit in the bean bag in the classroom and in the booth at lunch.
Hailey has been moved to a seat by herself when the kids are doing seat work. Hopefully this will keep her out of trouble. She has mastered the first grade words and is on to the second grade words. She tells me all the time that she is bored. I think she really likes the math papers they are doing now because it is something different from writing letters and identifying the sounds.
Today was picture day…I hope they got a real smile out of her and not her fake smile!
Me (as a child) vs. My Kids
Me: Tang at breakfast, Kool-Aid at lunch, Sweet Tea at dinner
My Kids: Milk at breakfast and dinner, Gatorade at lunch
Me: Nesquik out of a can with a lid you had to pry open
My Kids: Nesquik out of a boring plastic box
Me: Metal Sesame Street Lunch Box
My Kids: Pink camouflage -insulated lunch bag
Me: Awesome home-cooked meal from scratch every night
My (poor) Kids: Awesome home-cooked meal sometimes
Me: Smurfs
My Kids: Harry Potter
Me: Fisher Price Little People and Matchbox Cars
My Kids: Dolls, dolls, and more dolls
Me: Dolls that talk when you pull a string
My Kids: Dolls that talk when you install batteries
Me: Summers and “preschool” at Grandmama’s
My Kids: Child Care and YMCA
Me: A mom who can do anything
My Kids: A mom who still takes her sewing to HER mom
Me: Free rein to ride my bike and play outside
My Kids: Not allowed to play out of my sight outside
Me: Intellevision 
My Kids: Hopefully PS3 someday!
Me: TV with no remote and an antenna on the roof
My kids: HD TV with an antenna on the floor (someday maybe we will have satellite again!)
Me: Superman and Follow that Bird in movie theaters
My Kids: A large collection of Disney movies
Me: A toy poodle naked Trixie and a cat named Fluffy (and lots of her offpsring)
My Kids: Two beagles named Copper and Daisy and a cat named Buster
Me: A manual typewriter
My Kids: A computer
Me: 9 1st cousins, 5 Aunts, 6 Uncles
My Kids: 4 1st cousins, 4 Aunts, 5 Uncles
Me: Learned to ski at 22
My Kids: Hailey learned to ski at 3
Me: Kindergarten where you play in centers
My Kids: Kindergarten where you learn to read and do math
Me: Raised as a Wolfpacker
My Kids: Raised as TAR HEELS!!
Haileyism
Hailey has two nasty bruises on her arm. I asked her if she knew where she got them. She looked at me very seriously and then said, “I have things written in my head and that might be written in the back.” She punctuated this remark by grabbing her head in both of her hands and twisting her head. Once she had successfully dislodged the memory from the back of her head, she gave me a 5 minute discourse on how she got one of the bruises. It involved sliding on the floor, a box, a somersault, and various other crazy things…but to be honest, I tuned out after the second minute.
During Hailey’s first week of kindergarten, she was having a hard time remembering her classmates names (actually, it was only the female names she had a problem with. Hailey never forgets a boys name!) I gave her several tips that I hoped would help her. The next day, I asked her if she remembered any of the girls names that she played with. She told me she could not remember. She even “taped it to her brain, but it fell off.”
Next time she should try duct tape.
The Apple Tree
In Hailey’s kindergarten class, there is an apple tree. It isn’t a real tree of course, but pieces of laminated posterboard made to look like a tree. Each child has an apple with their name on it. If they misbehave or don’t follow directions, they have to move their apple off the tree. If they go the whole week without moving their apple, they get to pick a prize from the prize box. Hailey goes to a year-round school so she just started her third nine weeks in January. In that time, I can count on one hand how many times she has been able to get a prize out of the prize box. The girl loves to talk (she gets that from her dad I’m sure). She talks when she is bored, she talks when she is sad, she talks when she is happy, she talks when she is told not to talk. A couple of weeks ago she was doing really well and then had to move her apple. She said she cried on her way to the apple tree. She really wants to follow directions, but more than that, she wants to do what Hailey wants when she wants to do it and who cares about the consequences. It is worse if she moves her apple at the beginning of the week because she doesn’t have as much of an incentive to keep her apple on the tree for the remainder of the week.
Hailey wants to be Terrific Kid. In her class, the kids vote on the Terrific Kid each week but they can only choose from the children who did not move their apple at all the previous week. It is hard to be TK if you are never one of the possible choices. It is hard for Hailey to follow directions all day every day. She actually told me one morning that she really tries and she wants to do good but that when she wakes up in the morning, her brain is on backwards. (I know the feeling.)
We were so excited that she made it through Thursday this week and had not moved her apple. Celebrate! But wait…at the 11th hour, she moved her apple. Her teacher had already written a note on her sheet that they were proud of her for having such a good week and then she had to go and move her apple. Apparently she was given a piece of candy with gum in the center and was told she could not have it until she got home and she ate it anyway. Her excuse? “I was hungry” *sigh* Maybe next week.
