Sunday

Yes, it's Tuesday and I am blogging about Sunday. Look at my pretty girl! She actually smiled and posed for me! This kindergarten thing is truly the best thing that has happened for her. She is responding so well to all the instruction, new stimulus, structure, etc. She is still full of energy but I am noticing a lot of positive changes, too. (And this dress was her Easter dress in 2009 - it was just longer!)

Another fun thing from Sunday came from the backseat as we were driving home from supper out at Moe's. Amelia said, "Let's say our day verse." At first I didn't know what she meant and then she said something along the lines of, "Always be kind to one another. James 1:10:30. Now you say it Mommy! Make sure you say all of it!"

[picture dated 8/29/10]

Happy Birthday Nana!!

Today Nana turned 78. We had her over for dinner and cake and a few presents. On Saturday Amelia informed me that, "The day after tomorrow, it's your husband's mother's birthday." She blows my mind.

[picture dated 8/30/10]

Jokester

About a month ago Amelia learned a knock-knock joke - the one where you ask knock-knock a few times with the same answer and then on the last time you answer "orange" ... "orange you glad I didn't say banana?". When she got laughs from it, she became a joke teller and it was so funny watching her crack up because people were laughing at her joke, even though I am not sure she truly understood the play on words. Now she has learned a new one that isn't so funny, but the fun has started all over again because it's so cute to watch her try to be a joke teller.

Yesterday we presumed she learned about home safety because any time any of us left the house she loudly told us to be sure we locked all the doors. We live in a small town and while we try to make sure the doors are locked when we leave or go to sleep, we don't really worry about it too much most of the time.

Friday was library day and I wonder if they went over sorting. All day yesterday and most of this morning Amelia has sorted all her books into a book store. She'll ask if a book is "a character" or "just a book" and then separates them all accordingly. We have a very small group of Clifford books, a small group of Veggie Tale books, a larger collection of Dora books, other small "character" groupings, and then a large selection of "other" books. This morning before leaving for church I was asked to come to her bookstore to buy a book. She charged me 50 cents (which I then had to put in the offering at Sunday School) and took the book from me, then my money, then gave me the book back. (She is getting the clerk thing down.) When we got home from church, I learned that she only charged Daddy 11 cents for his book. I think I smell favoritism in that deal!

Apparently someone has gotten in trouble at school and has been sent to the principal because one of her stuffed ducks just got sent to sent to Mr. Tigger's office (her bouncing Tigger) to spend the day. Hmmmm (At the wedding she told Pastor Tommy that he looked like her principal. Tommy, who knows the principal, thought that was very funny.)

Friends of Dodah brought Amelia a lei from their anniversary party in Chicago. (I'd rather go to Hawaii for my anniversary but that's another story.) DeMarcus seems to enjoy the lei better than Amelia has, don't you think? Here he is bidding you "Aloha".

First Time Flower Girl

Our really good friends, Tia Polly and Cristian, got married today. It was a lovely, small wedding on the deck of some older friends of theirs. Amelia was the only attendant - a flower girl and ring bearer combined. We tied the rings to some netting around the black-eyed Susans she held (and then dangled between the porch rails when she got bored - which worried me to death!). Amelia then tried to entertain the dog by shaking the flowers in front of its face. I think she expected it to react like one of our cats and was disappointed when it didn't.

Afterwards we went to dinner and Amelia was really well behaved, sitting between me and her daddy. The restaurant staff gave her a blob of dough to play with while she waited for her food and she had a lot of fun with that. She was twisting it at one point and Lila pointed out to Debbie that she could come work at their restaurant because she was twisting the dough just like they do with the rolls.

[picture dated 8/23/10]

Sunday

This morning at breakfast Amelia was chattering on about going back to kindergarten tomorrow and seeing all her friends. While it was a relief to know she is still looking forward to school, it was just a wee bit disappointing (to my ego) that she is looking forward to it when there is so much weekend left!

Rainy Saturday

It rained all day today but that's okay because we didn't have anything planned except to hang out together.

One night this week Amelia told me that she wanted to spend more time with me. She said something along the lines of "I really just want to be with you all the time, Mommy." It was sweet. I think two full weeks of kindergarten are beginning to take their toll - the novelty has worn off. She is still excited to go and excited to tell me about her day, but I think she is also realizing how much less time she is home and with me. So yesterday I promised her that I would be with her all day today and I made good on that.

She is also missing her Nana. Nana used to keep her two days a week and now she gets her just 2 hours one afternoon after school. So we went to the Wagon Wheel and met Nana and her friends for breakfast. Meg, Bethany and Hailey were there, too. Amelia and Hailey were excited to see each other and moved their chairs so they could sit next to each other and color. After they ate they wanted to play tag in the restaurant. It took a little persuading on Bethany's part, but they decided maybe sitting at the table together a little longer wasn't such a bad idea either.

We had a little visit at Livia's and then came home and played for a few hours. All three of us played Silly Switch and sat on the sunroom listening to the rain. Amelia and Daddy colored together after playing with her oversized legos. Amelia was "assigning" Daddy "work" and then evaluating it.

Then we picked up a pizza and went to Nana's where we had supper and Amelia practiced the piano before playing with the Thomas set (which included finding some dolls small enough to ride in the open cars).

In just these two week of kindergarten I can see that Amelia's socialization skills are improving by leaps and bounds. On the way to Nana's this evening she asked, "Do you think Nana will share some of her pizza with me?" How cute is that? (especially since Amelia isn't overly fond of pizza ... I think she just wanted to know if we thought Nana would be willing to share.)

Earlier today Amelia and Daddy made a "cat inn" - a tent using some chairs and a large blanket that features a cat. DeMarcus took them up on their offer!

[picture dated 8/21/10]

Settling Up

Amelia was bouncing up and down the minute she saw me in the carpool line. I love her enthusiasm. Apparently the adult in charge of line #4 doesn't ... we learned later she told Amelia to "settle down" to which Amelia said she was settling up!

Amelia is very excited about next Tuesday when they are going to do a "pretend lockdown". I immediately knew what she meant and thought how sad, a sign of the times. I asked her about it and she said, "We'll hear a different sound (different from a fire alarm I presume) and we go this way and then that way (as she mimics walking and turning). Then we go to the corner and hide behind Miss Mary's desk." She has it down pat. I hope she never needs to do it in real life.

We had a busy afternoon. After picking her up we headed to John L's for the oil change. Amelia did not want to walk to the post office. She was adamant about waiting and so we did. She announced when my car went up and again when it went down. She acted scared of the car getting a new tire as we got back in the car. After the bank we stopped by and said hey to Tia Polly at work and then onto the post office and finally the library.

After supper we headed over and saw Livia who is back from Romania. Amelia really enjoyed playing with her, going down the slide and "washing" their fence with the water gun while Livia scrubbed with a brush.

School is beginning to take its toll. Amelia is quite tired by 7pm and so we've been putting her to bed by 7:30 pm. Tonight before supper she started crying, saying she missed being with me. I think part of it was an act, but of course I indulged her. I stopped making dinner and sat down, pulled her into my lap and told her how much I enjoyed being with her. She's been in school for two weeks now, so maybe the novelty is wearing off, or maybe it's just part of the adjustment. She was herself the rest of the evening, so I think she's fine, but she's definitely noticing that life is different now.

First Full Week of Kindergarten ... a Success!

Amelia made it through her first week just fine. She bounded out of bed each morning ready to go back. I think she really has enjoyed all the new stimulation. She also has renewed enthusiasm for doing coloring books and workbooks at her desk. Her new things seems to be using a marker to draw shirts on the coloring book characters but putting lines for the neck, arms and waist, and then coloring them with a crayon. Often she just colors the shirt. She will tell us that she is going to do her work and then disappears to her desk for long periods of time. Here she is today, so serious, doing "her work".

She did have an accident Monday which was her second day of school. Her teacher said she didn't think Amelia went potty when she told her to go after their outdoor time. I was concerned because Amelia didn't seem unhappy about having had an accident and it was just the second day of school. I was afraid this may be the first of several if she thought it was okay. After we got home I asked Amelia if she went potty after outdoor time like Miss Mary asked her to. She said she didn't need to go and so I told Amelia that she needed to go potty whenever a grown-up tells her to go, even if she doesn't think she needs to go. She needs to try. And if she ever needs to go when someone hasn't told her to go, she just needs to ask. I reiterated these 'rules' to her the next morning and she did fine the whole rest of the week. In fact, she hasn't fought me at all when I've told her to go ... so maybe something has finally clicked for her.

She also had a fire drill this week and said that they line up on the asphalt, "but Miss Mary and Miss Merita call it the blacktop".

Tuesday she came home and it was all about having an "art center" which she made in the middle of the kitchen floor. (Tuesday is art day.)

She also had her school physical/5-year check-up Tuesday afternoon which Daddy took her to and I met them later. She is 42 lbs., 42 inches, which is funny because for the longest time last year she was 38 lbs. and 38 inches! She also got four shots ... ouch!

Wednesday morning she came in our room and said that Caden had kicked her the previous day. After determining it wasn't a hard kick I asked her why she thought Caden kicked her and she said, "He wanted me to stop messing with him." So I said, "Hmmm, well, maybe you should stop messing with him," and she agreed. It was a pretty cute exchange and I like seeing how she seems to have started figuring out some of the socialization aspects of kindergarten. (She plays with Caden on some Wednesday afternoons at Mimi's, so they know each other. I think she tries to annoy him on purpose because he doesn't like to be touched.)

Wednesday was P.E. and they went to the gym and played some games which Amelia came home and tried to replicate. Very cute.

On Thursday Amelia was all excited about her music class. She said Miss Robin (who is a recently retired elementary music teacher) from church came to do their music lesson and she changed her name! She said her name was Mrs. Smathers!! And then Amelia laughed and laughed. She still thought it was so funny.

Daddy wasn't home Thursday night so we ran some errands and stopped off at McDonald's. For the most part she was happier playing with the Littlest Pet Shop toy that came with her Happy Meal and less interested in the Playland. She sure loves their parfaits and I still get a kick out of hearing that word from such a little girl!

Yesterday she told me the parts of a the book - including the spine. So apparently that's what they did at the library on Friday.

She had a little bit of a stuffy nose Friday, more of one yesterday and seems a bit better today although her voice is croaky. I don't know if it's from being at school (all those kids, all those surfaces, etc.), a new schedule, the shots, or germs from the Playland at McDonald's. But she is still going strong and her appetite is holding up, so I've just put her to bed a little earlier tonight and last night so she can hopefully get back to 100% sooner.

Yesterday was a fun day ... I took her to a Wal-mart that was doing a Dora party so she could get a free cupcake. I thought the email notice said Dora would be there, too, so I purposefully didn't tell Amelia in case it was a madhouse. Well, since it turned out to be just free cupcakes, it wasn't crowded but Amelia didn't seem too excited either. She enjoyed her cupcake that came with a free plastic Dora ring, but otherwise it was just another Wal-mart trip as far as she was concerned. We picked up some Pooh toothpaste and Dora band-aids and then headed to Belk since they had advertised a Kidfest yesterday, too. Amelia tackled the poor Chik-fil-A cow who was probably mentally going through his/her other job options by the end of his/her shift. Amelia was all into high fives and hugs. Then she spun a wheel and won "free chikin". She wanted to go down to the Food Court immediately and get four chicken nuggets, but I distracted her with the coloring table. (Food court at the mall on Saturday, yep, let me just pull my hair out now. We'll wait and use the freebie coupon this winter when we are looking for indoor things to do.)

[pictures dated 8/14 and 8/15/10]

First Day of Kindergarten

Amelia started kindergarten today! She seemed very happy to be there so it was easier to leave her than I thought it would be. They had a sign-in board just like her pre-school where she found the first letter of her name and hung it on her peg. Then we found her cubby, put away her backpack, lunch box and mat. After that she found her name tag and then sat at her table where there was an activity waiting for her which she found absolutely delightful. So we left at that point to let our little girl be a kindergartener.

I was hurriedly taking pictures this morning because we were running right on time, not a little early as we had planned because it took a lot longer to get from the parking lot all the way into her classroom than we thought it would, and she has to be there no later than 8 am or she is marked as tardy.

Daddy picked her up since I had to work, but they stopped by so I could get a quick report. She LOVED it. She went on and on repeating a story, I am assuming verbatim, about a dog that goes, "Woof, woof, woof, bow-wow, wow!!" She was so enthusiastic and animated. When I asked her if she wanted to go back she said, "Yes!! Tomorrow!!" and was visibly disappointed when I told her she had to wait until Monday.

While she was "performing" the dog book story for us, I looked over at her Daddy and said, "We made the right decision," (about pushing forward with public kindergarten) and he readily agreed. Now we'll wait and see how she does next week when she goes 5 days a week for 7 hours a day.

[pictures dated 8/6/10]

Kindergarten!!

It's been a roller-coaster getting Amelia into kindergarten.

She is 23 days too early to start without getting tested, etc. My mother-in-law, a retired 1st grade and special ed teacher insisted that Amelia is ready for kindergarten and offered to pay for the testing, which was good considering it cost $455.

The list of approved psychologists was 2 people long and only one called me back last Spring. He said to wait until the summer. When I called in June, it turns out they close for two weeks so we didn't get her tested until July 13th and she exceeded the required 98th percentile. He also said she was reading on a 2nd grade level. I asked about how much she fidgets, etc., but he said she was totally normal for her age (the testing took two hours so he saw her in all her glory) and that she was not hostile and was easily redirected. Despite her meltdown at the beginning of the session because when they called us back she dropped her markers and had to put them back in the exact order in which they came, he didn't mention anything about her having autistic tendencies. (She also did her hand waving thing when she gets excited - it's rare but she does do it. I actually think it's cute since she's been doing it most of her life.) And despite how active she is and how easily distracted she is, he said nothing about ADHD which was a relief because it runs in my side of the family. (I later learned that being able to be redirected means she isn't ADHD.) [Note: I was not overly concerned about autism or even ADHD ... but from time to time I would wonder if my super active, intelligent girl who doesn't seek out friends might have some tendencies for either or both. She is very happy, not given to hostile outbursts at all, and makes eye contact, etc. BUT as a mother one does worry more than is healthy.]

So all of that was a relief until I contacted the school and was met with an icy, "Are you sure he gave her the right tests? Tested her for both ability AND aptitude?" I actually did say, "I would hope for $455 that he did." I didn't say, "And he was on your mighty short list of options!" but I thought it. I knew I had to get two letters of recommendation from preschool teachers and/or caretakers so I had already gotten that ball rolling. However, I also needed to put together a portfolio of her work that came to include examples of her cutting (fine motor skills), art (kitty cat drawings), letters and numbers.

When I turned everything in - the formal report from the psychologist, the letters of recommendation and Amelia's portfolio, I was told that Administration had up to 30 days to make a decision, even though school started in less than a week. I was shocked! It turns out that IF they let her in, she would be treated as any other transfer student. Her absences would not be counted against her because she wasn't enrolled. But I worried about her not getting to start with all the rest of the kids.

The teacher I want her to get is Miss Mary because she comes so highly recommended. Seriously. I've heard about this teacher since before I even thought about having Amelia. After I turned in the materials, Amelia and I went down to meet her and see the classroom so she would have a point of reference in case she does get in. Miss Mary was also concerned about Amelia missing the first day of school. Our back-up plan is a private school that we visited in the Spring. We love it, and it doesn't start until September 1st so that buys us some time, but we would prefer not to have such a high tuition bill so early in Amelia's schooling.

Public school starts tomorrow and I was informed at 2:06 p.m. today that she met all the criteria and that tomorrow we go in at 1 pm to enroll her. What a relief!! During the call I begged for Amelia to be placed in Miss Mary's class. (Yes, I really begged ... at this point in the Hoops Nightmare, and I'm not referring to basketball, I lost my decorum.) Around 5 pm today I found out Amelia IS in Miss Mary's class. (She also happens to be my boss's wife and the founder of the preschool Amelia attended last year) So that was a HUGE relief. Even better ... kindergarten has a stagger start so only half the class starts tomorrow and the other half, including Amelia!!, starts Friday. So not only did Amelia manage to get in, but she won't miss the first day of school.

Wow! I am excited and relieved, but I also have a lot of logistics to figure out in a hurry including getting her supply list tomorrow so we can go shopping in time for Friday morning.

When I told Amelia she would be starting school Friday she was pleased but not nearly as excited and relieved about it as I was. Her daddy looked at me and said, "That was your battle, dear." Yes, I suppose it was, but I'm still nervous about whether it was the right decision to push so hard.