Friday, November 30, 2012

It's Friday!

Which also means its payday, which unfortunately means that I'm sitting on the computer paying bills and drinking hot chocolate(I don't drink coffee), which means all that money will be gone very shortly. But I'm just thankful that we have the money to pay said bills. 

Miss E and I started the 25 days of Christmas crafts yesterday. She remembered us doing it last year so she was very excited to start this year. We started off with a construction paper Christmas tree. She loved cutting the strips of paper with her little safety scissors, she thought that was a big deal. I'm thinking we will do the Popsicle Santa's and Reindeer today. 

As most everyone knows, Miss E is and will be home schooled. We don't like the public school system here, or really anywhere close to here. If she gets older and decides she doesn't want to be home schooled anymore, we will look into private Christian school. Right now since she is only at the Pre K level, we don't have to report yet nor do I have to follow a set curriculum. I started her when she was 2 to just get her into the routine of it and it became  something she loved doing. She knows when we wake up and eat breakfast, that afterwards it's school time. She loves talking about it to other people and telling daddy about what she did for school when he gets home at night. It has just become a routine part of our day. 

She knows her alphabet really well and you can say a random letter and she can tell you what comes before and after it. So now we are on to letter sounds. She thinks letter sounds are hilarious, she particularly loves the 'Z' sound. She knows how to spell her name and knows how to spell it in sign language, so she is working on writing it right now. She does the 'E' and the 'L' well, but has a hard time with the 'Y' and 'S'. That wasn't something I was going to start with her yet, but she drew the 'E' one day and said "look mommy, I drew E" and we just went from there. She loves drawing smiley faces and circles and squares too. She just loves to learn and soak everything in right now, so I want to cram all this knowledge in there while she is so willing. We don't have a set amount of time we do for school, just whenever she starts getting antsy, it's usually an hour to an hour and a half. I don't push things on her, I really just follow her lead, she usually lets me know what she is ready to learn and that has been what works for us. So far anyway. The day she tells me she doesn't want to home school or if she gets older and it is just something that isn't working anymore, we will enroll her into private school. I'm not going to push it on her because that just defeats the whole purpose of it. 

Since we are done with school and bill paying for the day, I'm going to take her to do some Christmas shopping:) We still have a few people to buy for and she loves picking out presents for other people!


Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Lets play catch up!

Truth: I am a horrible blogger. It's been almost 2 months again since I've blogged and I said last time that I wouldn't let it go that far again, but I did. I think about it often, but since the death of my laptop and my desktop being a dinosaur, and it's just a pain to blog from my phone or tablet(unless it's something really short) so that is why I haven't been keeping it up. Brandon did a reset on the dinosaur computer and it's actually working really well now, so here I am.

Lets see...since my last blog post, Miss E has been to Disney for the first time(without mommy or daddy), we've had to switch her dance schools because of a bullying issue, and I'm sure there have been significant other things, but those are the 2 that pop into my head right away.

So Disney...it was a very last minute thing. Like night before last minute. My MIL called the night before they were leaving(they already were planning a trip to Fl for a vacation) and said that they had been given tickets to Disney and really wanted to take Miss E. I was invited too but I had no one to take care of the 3 dogs on that short of notice. We had been planning on taking her next year to Disney for her first time and so this was a difficult decision to make. We decided to let her go because what if something happens and we aren't able to take her next year? Plus, I didn't want to be selfish and not let her go just because I wouldn't be able to. So she went. It was a hard 5 days for me, but she had so much fun with her aunt, Grammie, and great grandmother. I know she will have those memories forever(and the pictures) and I don't regret the decision one bit to let her go.

We had to pull Miss E out of her old dance school, and that was a very tough situation. She adored her teacher, it's the only teacher she has ever had. She had her last year, over the summer, and this year. But it was something that had to be done. There were 5 little girls in the class and one of them, who was the youngest in the class btw, was a bully. At first, it was a push here or a kick there. The mom always had an excuse. No nap, loud house, something about daycare, etc...Well the behavior continued and was getting worse. The girl just didn't want to be there, she was always trying to escape from the class while her mom held the door shut from the other side. The mom eventually stopped watching the class, she would wait in her car for it to be over. The teacher was spoken to, I know we all had communication with the owner of the studio, and I spoke to the mother as well as one of the other moms did. Nothing was done. The owner said she was going to sit in a classes for a bit, she sat in the class the day that I spoke to her and the bully wound up leaving halfway through the class. The next week she showed up the last 20 mins of class bc her kid was sick. Well that week the teacher shut the curtains so we couldn't see in and I was pissed about that. When the owner finally showed up, I told her I was NOT happy about being shut out and she kinda laughed it off and went it. The girls Halloween party was also that day so we tried to be calm for the girls sake, but after class was over, I pulled the mom aside and basically let her have it. A few days later I sent an email to the owner saying we weren't coming back. All four of us left that week. So she lost 4 students over that one. Bad business, bad policies, just all around bad. We tried 2 studios the following week and really liked the second one. The first thing I asked was the policy on bullying. 

I hate it because this has really stayed with Miss E and the other girls. We all four wound up at the same studio, 2 of us in one class and the other 2 in a different day. But they all 4 still talk about it. Every week when we go, Miss E asks if that girl is going to be there and how much she hurt her feelings and how she was mean to the other girls. I'm hoping eventually she can put it behind her. I can't believe this starts at such a young age. I teach Miss E to be nice to everyone and she is. She is such a sweet girl to everyone she meets, so she just didn't understand why this girl acted like that. But I am glad that it is over and we have moved on. 

Oh, we've started going to story time every Tuesday, she has loved it. It has replaced our home schooling on Tuesday mornings. They sing, dance, learn sign language, and of course have 2 books read to them. They wrap it up every week with a craft. We both really enjoy it and I wish I would have learned about it sooner. 

Miss E turns three in a month and a half. I will be a mom to a three year old. It looks weird even typing it. But I am very proud to say that she is fully potty trained! I may have mentioned that in my last post, I don't remember. She's been partially trained for a long time now, but she would still still have an occasional wet pull up in the morning. But for the past few months she will wake up to go pee in the night if she has to go, so now I say she is fully potty trained. I can't really take credit for anything because all I did was put her on the toilet, she completely did this by herself, no pushing from us. Now she just goes whenever and just calls me when she needs to be wiped. I'm just glad she decided to do it before she was 3 and I'm thankful it was so easy because I know it's not easy for everyone.

We are in Christmas mode full swing here. All of our decorations are up and the majority of the presents are under the tree(I am on top of it this year!). Miss E actually likes Santa this year, she had a photo shoot with him and got to hang out with him and drink juice and eat cookies and she thought that was really cool. The only thing she wants for Christmas is a Cinderella carriage  with Cinderella and Prince Charming. She's going to be a happy kid come Christmas morning:) We were talking about Santa the other day and she said "mommy, does Santa come in the house to bring presents?" I told her yes, and she said "while we are all sleeping?" So that freaked her out some, I told her that mommy and daddy would meet Santa and he would give us her present and we would put it under the tree. She said "good"! 

I've been at this for awhile now, so I think that's going to be all the catching up I do tonight:) I'll catch up on her schooling and stuff tomorrow hopefully!