The End of the School Year

Maddie's preschool wrapped up for the year last Thursday, finishing with a cute end of year celebration: an animal fashion show. Miss Kate went all out and rented a tent for the Pre-K graduation and the preschool refreshments after the show. The kids had each been assigned a particular animal and had to do homework assignments concerning that animal over the past couple of weeks. Madelyn had chosen a lion - and had been going around the house practicing her roar for at least a few weeks! (Funnier still is that she's also had her sisters practicing, so Sienna and even Little Miss Lyla have gotten their ROARRRs down pat!) Miss Kate had taped each of the kids describing key facts about themselves as the animal, which she played while each child was walking down the "runway." It was so adorable to hear Maddie's cute little recorded voice saying, "I am a lion. I live in Africa. I weigh 500 pounds. My enemies are: buffalos. Something special about me is: I only live in Africa." She had her face lightly painted and a posterboard lion placard that she had painted and decorated hanging from her neck. Some of her friends were frogs, panda bears, tigers, etc. and they were all just adorable.

After the fashion show was over, the kids sang some songs and then we headed to the tent for refreshments and socializing. It was a very nice end to what has been a great year. It's amazing the difference that a great school can make... Madelyn has truly flourished this year in Miss Kate's class, and has so thoroughly enjoyed it that I really wish I could send her every single day, just because it makes her so happy to go. The amount of things she has learned in one year just amazes me, and she's had such a nice opportunity to grow her leadership skills and to make some good friends with the other two girls in her class. Her end of year report indicated we should continue to provide her with opportunities to do higher order math (addition, subtraction, word problems, etc.) and to sound out words, etc. These are things she loves to work on -- she amazes me with her ability to do math in her head at age 4! If you ask her what 7 minus 5 is, for example, she can usually answer without hesitation and get it right. I think she has inherited her daddy's mathematical mind -- because it surely does NOT come from me. The thing about Maddie is that we're never trying to encourage her to learn this kind of thing - I'm all for kids being kids, knowing they'll spend plenty of time over the years in school, etc., etc. But Maddie usually begs for this kind of exercise and just really has fun doing it. So we figure we might as well encourage it. She probably won't enjoy word problems and homework forever!

I give it max 2 weeks before Madelyn is begging to go back to Miss Kate's. One thing is certain, she will definitely get bored around the house this summer with a less structured weekly schedule, so I need to find some ideas for Rachael. Bored kids = trouble for everyone around!

Maddie Knows Best

Maddie is 4.5 going on 30. More specifically, she's a preschooler going on being a mother. Her most favorite activity is to boss her sister around and "discipline" her as if she's a parent. She is driving us NUTS with this. Poor Sienna gets told how to dress, what to sing, where to dance, what she should go to time out for, what color cup she should drink out of, what to build with the mega blocks, etc. etc. Seriously, it's amazing that Sienna even knows what she wants at all or has an opinion on anything, given that Maddie seems so willing to impart her wisdom on every aspect of Sienna's thoughts and actions. As ridiculous as it seems, I often find myself trying to defend her and speak up on her behalf. I have such a hard time just sitting and watching her get told which play food to put in the play oven, for goodness sakes!!

The flip side of it is that even though her bossiness seems to have reached a new level lately, she really is a good protector of her little sister -- and sometimes with Sienna, you're really grateful that Maddie's always got her eyes out for bad behavior, LOL. Maddie's the first to let us know when Sienna is getting into trouble, and also the first to help keep her out of trouble when we're out and about. So I guess there's a positive side there somewhere.

The other day I had had enough of Maddie acting as if she was Sienna's mom (she was telling her she was going to have to go to time out for some little thing) so I said, "Madelyn, PLEASE stop telling her what to do. We have enough parents in this house!" Without a moment's pause, she shot back, "Moooomm! We ONLY have two!" Didn't even have a response for that one!

Sienna takes a lot of it in stride, but does get ticked off every now and again. And her repsonse is usually to squeal or yell back and say "NO Maddie! I'm NOT doing that!" or "No Maddie! I NOT going to time out!" And then every once in a while, she tries it out on me and sends ME to time out...because who wouldn't want to copy big sister? Gotta love it. I've already spent more time in time out as a mother than I can remember spending in TO as a kid!

This is one of those lovely behaviors that I'm really hoping is a phase...

Sweet Summer Evenings

On Thursday, the weather was just so beautiful and perfect that when 5 PM rolled around and we finished work for the day, we just couldn't imagine *not* taking advantage of it. Brad and I talked it over and decided to quickly grill dinner, feed the kids, and head down to the waterfront for an ice cream. Actually in our world, having an ice cream out means stopping at McDonald's for a soft serve - since it's pretty much the only allergy-friendly ice cream option we have for Sienna in terms of restaurants. But even soft serve vanilla from Mickey D's tastes great when you're sitting by the harbor on a beautiful night (and when you're a toddler/preschooler and ice cream of any sort is a treat!).

Brad looked at me a little strangely when I suggested the idea, because I think he thought it was odd that I mentioned going down to see the boats in the harbor as an activity. But that's one of those things we did plenty of times with my parents as kids, so I have fond memories of it and seems like a real summer thing to do. The tourists must feel the same way, as the harbor and waterfront was really busy - in a good way! The kids were so well behaved and so many people stopped to smile or say how cute they were...which always has a way of making me feel so proud of them. Maddie and Sienna had fun climbing up a little tree, and checking out the boats (even spotting the pirate ship that they went on last summer, which was obviously a huge hit!). Little Miss Lyla was walking all over the place - and was very mad that she didn't get her OWN ice cream and had to share with me.

It's taken us a while to adjust to a new life since moving from Chicago, but this was one of those nights where it was fun to see this town from an adult perspective, and from the standpoint of now enjoying it with my own kids instead of just calling on my own memories of it growing up. We hit one of the gift shops before leaving (potty stop!) and picked up a couple of town t-shirts for the 4th of July for $5. Hard to believe they'll be wearing them soon! An all around fun way to kick off summer, though.

I'd love to say that the evening finished really sweetly and all, but hey - 3 kids, an extra dose of sugar, pushing a late bedtime, an unexpected delay in departure due to the (LONG) potty stop Maddie needed to make, and you figure we were headed for some meltdowns. Sienna and Lyla both had had their fill of fun summer activities, and after some major tantrums, both passed out in the car on the way home.

Well...

The Fish
It didn't take one to lose one... sadly, we had a ceremonial toilet flushing this morning to mourn the loss of "Lyla's Little Orange Fish," who hadn't even been with us long enough to get a real name. Though it's not really funny, I seriously think that the reason poor little Lyla Jr. died was because the other - bigger - two fish in the aquarium were terrorizing the poor thing. Brad and I had a feeling the orange fish wouldn't be with us too long, because by day two the poor fishy was hiding out under the pirate ship, with "Spotty" (Maddie's big spotted black fish who loves to eat and seems a bit aggressive) always standing guard on either side and looking like he might be getting some enjoyment out of it. Hmmm...does this seem to reflect our lives at all? Any symbolic meaning here??

The newest members of the household are...

FISH! Yep, as of tonight we've got a cute 10 gallon tank set up with three little fishies in it. The kids are so excited to have "pets," and I think that even though they're really young they definitely understand that Mommy just isn't a pet person and this is the closest they're likely to get to having animals in the house!

The fish are the result of a successful round of the chore chart, which we labelled "The Fishy Chart" in honor of the reward at stake. The chart was honestly for Sienna... we told her she could earn a fish if she had no accidents for five whole days. We couldn't really do this for just Sienna, and since Maddie has been asking for a fish for a long time, we told her that if she cleaned her room - and kept it clean - for five days, she could also earn one. Lyla earned one by default if the other two did, but I guess that's the benefit of being the baby! So Sienna took a couple of extra days, but she did in fact earn the fish -- she's not exactly 100% trained because she still hasn't got the pooping in the potty thing down, but she's wearing underwear all day long and doing really well even out in public. She's waking up mostly dry, too, so I'm hoping we'll get rid of the nightime pull-ups soon. But even still, it's nice to be getting back to only one in diapers!

So Madelyn picked a black and white spotted fish; Sienna picked an all-black Molly. And Lyla got a red/orange fish with a black tail, picked by Mommy. The girls are still contemplating names, but so far Maddie has tossed around Spotty, Speedy, and Miss Caitlin (in tribute to her and Sienna's dance teacher, and enthusiastically seconded by Sienna - but I told them I wasn't sure if Caitlin would consider it a tribute to have a fish named after her, though we can ask tomorrow at dance!), as well as the very descriptive "Black and White Spotted Fish." Stay tuned for the final decision...

Hopefully the fish survive the introduction into the H household. Sienna has already been asking if she can pick the fish up in her hand tomorrow (um, NO!!) and Lyla has already gone straight for the tank a few times. But it's great to see them so excited, and proud of their accomplishment in earning those fishies!

A taste of summer!

We really got a taste of summer today, with hot humid weather and lots of sun. Yay! Of course, our neighborhood is really close to the ocean and seems to always run at least 10 degrees cooler than the center of town (today we were about 14 degrees cooler than it was at the next exit north - crazy!), but it was very nice and it just made you want to get out there and dig out the kiddie pool. I won't post pics of everyone since I don't have their permission, but our yard seemed to be the place to be today among the neighborhood kids. As my mom said earlier today, it doesn't take much to keep little kids entertained...and that was certainly true today, with 7 kids in a kiddie pool! They ranged in age from 6.5 down to Lyla at 14 months, but they all had a ball playing. We've gotten more use out of our Little Tikes kiddie slide and swing combo as a slide into the pool than we ever did when the kids were smaller.

Maddie is really into digging, making mud pies, and collecting bugs lately. So she and our neighbor, Ryan, spent a decent amount of time digging in the backyard along the tree line, and making things to eat. Maddie's favorite menu item of late is "Raspberry Sorbet" which totally cracks me up -- she's never even had it, so I have no idea where she got that idea for her concoctions.

Other that the fun in the backyard, Maddie had soccer and Sienna had gymnastics today. Sienna's gymnastics class is gearing up for a little show in a couple of weeks, which I honestly could care less about. This is all new to her, so getting her to "perform" is the furthest thing from my mind.... and with the dance recital just ending, I think we've had enough shows for a while! But Sienna is enjoying it and she actually follows directions really well, for the most part, so it's been a lot of fun to do with her so far.

"Drek-shuns"

Sienna has a habit of running into my walk-in closet as of late, and trying to get into my craft stuff. Generally, I keep a doorknob lock on our bedroom door and that does the trick. But those have never kept Maddie out, so if she opens it, or if I forget to shut it for whatever reason, Sienna tends to go right for the closet while we're getting the other two ready for bed. Tonight I was handling the bedtime routine on my own while Brad was out, and she made a beeline for the closet while I was finishing Lyla's bath up. Which was guaranteed trouble...even before Madelyn headed right in after her. Not two minutes after they went in, I heard muffled giggling coming from the closet. I went running in with a big 'ole "Sienna ABIGAIL!" and found the two of them hunched over a big pile of tiny colored eyelets from my scrapbooking supplies; I keep them in a little divided plastic organizer case and Sienna had opened it and dumped them everywhere. GRRR. Needless to say, I wasn't happy about it and had them in bed less than ten minutes later. They were overdue and I was worn out!

I went in to kiss Sienna goodnight, and she looked up at me with her huge eyes, sort of batted a little eyelash at me with what I think of as her "How on earth can you resist this magnficient cuteness?" look, and said: "Momma, I'm sorry I didn't do your drek-shuns (AKA "directions"), but I just don't CARE about drek-shuns!"

OMG, I nearly peed my pants. How much more brutally honest can you get? LOL. I think I'm headed for trouble. If she doesn't care about my directions now, I shudder to think how she'll react to the "drek-shuns" I'm going to give her when she's 16!