The Preschooler

I'm playing catch-up a bit tonight.  We are at the Farm, and due to traveling and then visiting with family, I have not had a chance to post about Miss's preschool graduation party until tonight.  Of course, she didn't graduate from preschool, but a three or four of the other kids in her school did, so there was a little party last Thursday to celebrate the end of the school year and say farewell to those kids heading off to Kindergarten next year.  I love that her school is a mixed age school and that it is so small, so that she sees her older classmates taking this step to Kindergarten and yet doesn't lose too many of her friends from the past year.

The party was lots of fun.  Miss spent almost the entire time intently focused on making a necklace for herself.

Once she finished it (you can see how long it is in the photos below!!) she went over to the face painting area.  She was a little unsure about the face painting at first.  She is my cautious girl, and she wanted to think this one over a bit.

She eventually sat down and allowed one of her teachers to paint a flower on her cheek.  A blue flower of course.  I love that her teacher knew that blue is her favorite color and commented on it to her (Miss wears a blue shirt to school almost every day).

Though she didn't graduate from preschool to Kindergarten, she did get a certificate for completing her first year of school.  I am so proud of how far she has come in this past year.  She has learned so much and really gained in confidence.  My girl who used to cry every time I dropped her off at school now doesn't want to leave when I come to pick her up.  Every day she says, "Mama, I had so much fun at school today."

When we got home Miss proudly showed off her necklace and face paint (which took three days to wash off, by the way).

Then we had our own little party with some treasures from the Target dollar aisle (have I mentioned how much I love the Target dollar aisle?) and some new sunglasses purchased for our trip to the Farm.

I have so many great photos already from the past weekend of the girls with their cousins at the Farm.  I will post them very soon.  'Night.

What is Valentine's Day?

When I was much, much younger, I thought Valentine's Day was a sweet, romantic day for flowers and gifts and professions of undying love.  Then I grew up a little bit, and I decided that Valentine's Day was kind of a silly, overly-commercialized "holiday" that was nothing more than a way for card companies and jewelers to make lots of money, and that one should really try to show love every day, not just on Valentine's.  Then I grew up a little bit more, and I revised my opinion of this holiday a bit.  I now think of Valentine's Day as a nice enough day.  There's nothing wrong with a day that encourages people to show their love for one another.  I don't think it's necessary to show that love through expensive gifts, but showing love?  That's cool.  I still think it's much more important to show how much the special people in your life mean to you every day.  An "I love you" and a kiss before leaving for work, or the store, or the basement.  A kiss before bed every night.  "I love you" and holding hands or giving a kiss for no reason at all but to remind someone they are essential to your world.  That's the good stuff.

Now that I have kids, Valentines Day has become something even more.  It has become yet another way to have some fun with my girls.

I like home made gifts for days like Valentine's Day.  I make stuff with my girls for this holiday.  To me it's a great way to have fun together and it helps to neutralize the messages out there that your man must buy you big diamonds or a trip to Aruba to show that he really loves you on Valentine's Day.  Not that my girls see or hear these messages now, but someday I'm sure they will. So we're starting early to make a point of showing love through special gestures and thoughtful, simple gifts, rather than flashy stuff.

We made little heart-shaped crayons for Miss to give to her friends at school, like the ones shown on my friend's blog here, but smaller.  They were inexpensive and pretty easy to do.  The hardest part was getting the paper off the crayons (even soaking them in warm water didn't work for many of them).  The girls loved breaking the crayons up and putting them into the molds.  Miss specially chose which crayon each of her friends would receive and she was very excited to go to school yesterday and give these special gifts to the other kids.  Mission accomplished.

Miss had a great time at her school party, as did I.

She made another craft at her party, a potpourri ball.  She also gave me another school-made gift that is made with paper hearts, her thumb prints, glitter, and her attempt to write her name, all laminated into one big beautiful work of art that currently hangs in a place of honor on our sliding glass door.  She was so proud and excited to give these gifts to me that she had made.

When we got home, she and Lass had fun going through her box of Valentines from the other kids in her class.

Then we made special Valentines to give to Daddy, which they excitedly ran to give him when he got home from work last night.  And as we do every day, we gave lots of hugs and kisses and "I love yous" and "You're my wonderful girls," etc.  Just because that's what we do.  I always want my girls to know that, on Valentine's or any other day, showing your love for someone, and thus the genuineness of their expressions of love for you, is always about what you do, day to day, not how much you spend or how grand your gestures on one day of the year.  A happy life is made up of lots of small moments, not just the few big ones that tend to get lots of attention.

And speaking of showing your love through the things you do, last night I attempted to make paleo-friendly brownies for Miss to take to school today.  Since her birthday is on Saturday and she won't be back to school before then, I wanted to send her with a special birthday treat to share with her friends at school today.  She requested brownies.  I wanted to make them myself and make them relatively healthy, though still a "treat."  I had the best of intentions.  Unfortunately, last night I had a bit of a mom failure, because the brownies just didn't taste that good.  They turned out how I think they're supposed to.  They're edible, and not horrible.  But they don't taste like brownies.  And if I'm going to send my child to school with a treat to share with her friends for her birthday, I'm going to make sure it's yummy, for pete's sake.  So, I made a run to the grocery store last night, when I otherwise would have been composing this Valentine's Day blog post, and grabbed some grocery-store-bakery-made mini cupcakes.  They're good, and I think they were a hit with the kids.  So even though I totally flopped in my Mother-of-the-Year-all-natural-gluten-free-super-delicious-brownie attempt, the late night trip to the grocery store saved the day.  I feel like a dolt and it sucked to make a run to the grocery store at 9pm, but that's okay.  And that's why my Valentine's Day post is a day late.  Hope you had a Happy Valentine's Day.  We did.

"Do You Have a Baby in Your Butt?"

Yesterday I volunteered to help at Miss's school because one of her teachers had to be out for a funeral.  It was a really fun experience.  I loved getting to watch her in her space and get to know some of the kids she goes to school with.  I was quite a novelty to many of the kids, who got a kick out of my big belly and kept asking about the baby, poking my belly, etc.  One little girl was especially sweet.  She sat next to me every time the class sat down to listen to a story, sing songs, or do other learning activities all together (weather, calendar, etc.).  She hugged me.  She said she loved me.  She was that super sweet and lovey little girl that every preschool class probably has at least one of.  Then it happened.  After looking at and asking me several questions about my belly, she asked a different question.  "Do you have a baby in your butt?"  Um.  No.  But thanks so much Sweet Little Girl.  Thanks a million times for asking me that.  Man.  Kids say the darnedest things.  

I really wanted to take some photos of Miss at school, but I was afraid my big camera would be disruptive and wasn't really even sure about sneaking some with my phone.  I was supposed to be helping after all.  So, these photos aren't from school, but I still love them.  It amazes me how quickly my big girl's (and my little girl's, for that matter) skills are increasing.  Miss is getting very good at coloring in the lines and can draw a wicked smiley face now.

It was wonderful to have a special day with her at her school yesterday.

Membership Has its Privileges

For months now, I have been saying that I want to rejoin the YMCA.  My husband and I were members when we first moved here, because we lived in a rental house and didn't have a good place to exercise at home.  When we bought our current house, we set up a nice garage gym area and let our Y membership lapse.  Miss was too tiny to do any activities there and we could exercise at home, so we let it go. BUT, now Miss is bigger.  She's old enough to start getting into some of the little classes they have at the Y and I really need to keep up with swimming lessons for both of the girls. There are so many good activities for families at the Y.  Plus, there isn't a whole lot else to do indoors in our town during the winter.  So, this week I finally got myself in gear and went to the Y to renew our family membership.  We started taking advantage of it yesterday by going to "Wiggles and Giggles."  Our Y has an indoor soccer field, and they open it up twice a week in the mornings for little ones to come and play.  They pull out ride-on toys, balls, big mats, and various other things for the kids to enjoy.  Not to mention there's lots of room to run.  The girls had a blast.

 (Quick snack break)

I'm so glad we joined.  The girls ran and danced and got to blow off some steam.  And we met some other moms and kids there, so I got to visit with some grown ups.  

And speaking of visiting with grown ups, my husband and I had a great date night last night.  We went to a new sushi place, and it was pretty good.  Of course the best part was just being able to hang out and chat with my hubby.  Before dinner we went to Miss's school and met with her teachers for our little parent-teacher conference.

It was great to hear all about what she has been doing in school and to see how thorough they are in their assessments of her.  And it was pretty cool to hear someone else describe her spot-on and know how much time and attention she must get there for them to be able to really "get" her so well.  I loved when they told me how much she likes to sing at the top of her lungs and to shake it when they dance.

No one needs to tell me how much my girls love to dance and that they've got some moves.

Miss got new ballet shoes yesterday.  The ones I got her for her Halloween costume had cut into her little heels and one shoe had totally split on the side from being worn so much, so I told her she couldn't wear those anymore.  She was so upset and asked repeatedly for them for several days.  When I pulled out the new shoes yesterday, I was relieved to find that she loves these just as much even though they're a different style.  She immediately asked, "Momma, can you play some music so I can ballet dance?"

So I did.  What better for ballet than The Cure??  

I got a question in a comment about organizing photos, related to my last post about taking at least one photo a day.  Unfortunately, I'm not really great about organizing my photos.  Mostly I just dump them into iPhoto.  I do "flag" my favorites when I'm going through and editing them, which is how I select the pics I'm going to upload to a blog post or use for something else.  Just in the past few days with the start of this new project I have begun putting photos into folders by month, so I will have a little bit better organization of them that way.  I also have set a goal to start deleting photos a little bit more so I won't have such an overwhelming mass of pictures.  And few years ago I set a goal to make photo books for each of my girls for each year of their lives.  Unfortunately, I've only completed Miss's first year book.  So making the rest of the books needs to become a priority, and I'm hoping to get my photos more organized that way too.  I will make folders for each girl, each year in my iPhoto in addition to making the books.  That's it.  I don't have a great system yet.  Anyone else have a good way of organizing digital photos?

Christmas-ing

Oh, we are a-Christmas-ing at our house this week.  Lots of carols and shopping and wrapping.  We even did a bit of crafting, making ornaments out of bread.  We started by using cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the bread.

Lass mostly just wanted to eat it.

After we got them cut out I used a straw to make holes in them for hanging and we left them to dry out/get stale over night.

Then we painted and glittered them (I mixed some glue into the paint).  Yes, I hate glitter.  But it is a necessary part of holiday crafting with little girls, in my opinion.  So, we braved the glitter.  Lass hasn't done painting with a brush yet (unless you count her painting/eating endeavor with the pumpkins at Halloween), so I was just going to let her go to town with crayons and a piece of poster board.

But she saw Big Sister with the paint and was not about to settle for boring old crayons.

She did a great job.  She did immediately try to put the brush in her mouth, but refrained when I told her no.  Perhaps that's why it wasn't long before she got tired of painting and wanted to get down.

This girl, on the other hand, was all about focus.  She painted and glittered ornaments for her babysitters, her two teachers, and her Daddy, carefully choosing the shape, paint color, glitter color, and  hanging ribbon color for each recipient.

There are only a few left that haven't yet been given out or put on our tree.  I think they turned out pretty cute, though I'm not sure how well they'll hold up.  The one Miss gave to her Daddy is already in the trash after Lass tried to eat it and broke off the top of the ornament where the string hole was cut.  They are made from bread, after all...

Today was Miss's holiday party at her school.  She got to play a game where she tossed a big jingle bell into a bucket to win a present.  This is her shy smile after achieving her objective.

She decorated cookies to set out for Santa.

And she filled a bag with reindeer food (which looked like a mixture of oatmeal, glitter, and maybe some flour, with a few jingle bells and cinnamon sticks thrown in).  We will be taking this to the Farm tomorrow night.

The girls had lots of fun playing with the Christmas tree tonight.  You might have noticed that Lass has a new hairdo by the way.

The barrette just wasn't always working that well, even when she did keep it in her hair.

So we're all about the spouting pony look these days.  It works much better and is so stinking cute.  You wouldn't believe the number of comments this thing gets when we go out in public.

I did a little experimenting with my fun new-ish camera lens to try to achieve a new photography effect I have recently learned about.  It's called "bokeh" and is basically "the aesthetic quality of the blur," or something like that.  Look at how the Christmas lights are twinkly and out of focus behind the girls.  That's what I was going for.

I love Holiday bokeh!

And I love this.

Check out the leotard/tights/ballet shoes combo on Miss.  Notice she's wearing the same leotard in the top photos as well.  She has been in one or the other of her two tights/leotard combinations since we got back from Kentucky for almost every moment of the day.  It is like pulling teeth to get her to put clothes on to go to the store or to school.  She had on that adorable Matilda Jane top at her school party today, and asked to change back into this as soon as we arrived home.  She got back on the ballerina kick when my Auntie got her a magnetic wooden "paper doll" ballerina for Christmas.  The first night we got home from Kentucky she asked to put on her ballerina costume.  I let her put on the shoes and tutu, since it was almost time for bed (thinking these would be easier to get into and out of when it was time for jammies).  She ended up sleeping in those anyway, and has slept in some sort of ballerina get up every night since.  And she dances the part too.  It's awesome.  

Tomorrow will bring lots more Christmas-ing, with tons of shopping, wrapping, caroling and then packing and traveling to the Farm, where the Christmas-ing will continue through the weekend.  So I'd better get some sleep!