September 15: Audrey's Reading Chart

Audrey and I were super excited for her to participate in the summer reading program at the library this summer.  Early in June, we went to the library, picked up her stuff, and put her chart on the refrigerator to keep track of how much we read this summer.  Audrey was so excited about being able to earn prizes for reading books (or in her case, listening to books).

Then, we had a crazy summer and the chart was mostly ignored.  Finally, about a day before the library's program was ending, Audrey found the chart and got super excited again about reading books and earning prizes.  By then, it was a little too late to participate.

I felt bad, so I decided we could just make our own chart and pick our own prizes.  I made a chart with 100 spaces, and she got to put one sticker on a space every time we read a book (except for books before bedtime, we always read two books before bed each night and we did not count those in our total). 

I let Audrey pick her prize.  That was kind of brave as she could have picked something really expensive.  But she didn't.  She chose a Sleeping Beauty doll, which costs about $10.  I thought that was a very reasonable request. 

Because 100 books seems like a huge amount to a three year old, I added in some smaller prizes along the way to help keep her interested and motivated.  After 20 books, she got her very own slush from Sonic.  After 50 books, she got her very own ice cream.  (We make her share often, so getting her very own treat is a big deal!)

We completed her chart this week.  It took us about six weeks to read 100 books.  That averages out to about 2.5 books per day...plus we read two more at night before bed.  They say you are supposed to read 30 minutes a day to your kids.  I don't think it took us 30 minutes to read 4-5 books each day, so I guess we should be reading more.  But I felt like 100 books was a fairly big accomplishment!

Here is Audrey with her beloved prize!

September 13: Lessons from Preschool

Audrey is having a good time at preschool, and I am having fun hearing about what she did each day.  It's kind of weird to not know every single thing that she does, but it is also kind of fun to hear her tell stories (and try to figure out what really happened).

She doesn't really like to tell me much right when we get home from preschool.  But she gradually tells us more and more throughout the day.  Especially today!  She just kept talking about school, and she spent most of the afternoon playing "school" with her toys and dolls.

At one point, she had all her My Little Pony figurines sitting in a semi circle in front of her.  She was holding up her The Little Engine That Could Book and was reading it to the ponies.  Her reading (aka memorization) of the book was quite impressive.  But what was even more impressive was her tone and inflection and teacher-like skills.  She kept stopping her reading to ask the ponies questions, like:  "Have you ever been on a train before?"  and "Do you think this train is going to help them?'  When she finished reading, she said, "Good job, boys and girls.  You did a great job listening."  It was so adorable.  I wanted to record the whole thing, but I knew she would stop if she saw me with the video camera.  So I snapped a quick picture instead.

They are learning about the color yellow this week in her class (she is in the yellow room).  Today, she could not stop talking about "amarillo" (the Spanish word for yellow).  I'm guessing she learned that word in school today.  She kept saying it over and over again, then pointing to yellow things and saying "amarillo" and laughing.  

Yesterday, Audrey was having a hard time doing something, and she was getting frustrated.  Normally she will just cry and scream when she can't figure out how to do something.   It is something we are constantly working on...getting her to ask nicely for help without any tears or screams or fits.   But yesterday when she was stuck, she said, "Mom, I need a helping hand!"  Another new thing she learned at preschool!

She was also singing a song today that went like this, "Hips and lips are what we do when we go down the hallway."  I had to ask her to repeat it several times to make sure I was hearing correctly...hips and lips??  But then she put one hand on her hip and one finger to her lips and started walking around.  I guess that is how they walk down the hallway at her preschool!

Other things she has done in her first three days of preschool:  learned how to write an uppercase L, painted several pictures and made other crafts, held the door for her classmates when coming in from the playground (she was VERY excited about this), and  received her first birthday treat bag from a classmate.  Fun times!!

September 12: First Masterpieces

Last week, I let Isla color on paper with crayons for the first time.  She has scribbled for a few seconds with sidewalk chalk outside, but that's about it.  I remembered the doctor asking if they were able to scribble at this age.  So I decided to give Isla a little test of her coloring/scribbling abilities.

She passed with flying colors!  Check out her masterpiece:

 I didn't do much of anything to help her, except hand her the bucket of crayons and paper and watch her get to work.  She did this all by herself.  I was so proud!  It may seem silly, but it makes me feel good to see that she is not behind in every skill!  Her fine motor skills are really good, and I constantly brag about them because it gives me reassurance that she is showing signs of good development in some areas.  (Still no progress in the gross motor development though.  Despite the first steps she took last week, she refuses to even attempt to take a step by herself now.  Frustrating!!)

As I was watching Isla scribble with such skill, I remembered how horrible Audrey was the first time I gave her crayons and paper.  She refused to push hard enough to make a mark, and the whole experience frustrated her easily.   She was probably two years old before she could color a picture like Isla did above.

This week, we found Audrey's very first coloring/scribbling masterpiece.  It looked like this:  (if you look closely you can see a few marks down in the bottom right, and I'm pretty sure I had to help her make those little marks.)

The funny thing is that Audrey had her first experience with crayons and paper when she was 15 months and 5 days old (2/5/10).  For Isla's first experience with crayons and paper, she was also 15 months and 5 days old (9/5/12).  Crazy, I didn't even plan that! 

September 7: 15 months old

Isla was technically 15 months old last week, but she had her 15 month check up today.  She weighed in at 20 pounds, 7 ounces, and she was 29.5 inches tall.

 At her last checkup, I was shocked at how low her weight was (19 lbs, 7 oz).  That is not really an extremely low weight, but she was so chubby; I was expecting big numbers on the scale.  Again today, I was expecting the scale to say somewhere between 23-25 pounds (Audrey was almost 22 pounds at this age and Isla looks bigger to me), and I was so surprised to see 20 pounds.  Our doctor was a little surprised at Isla's size too, as her growth rate has been decreasing for the past few months.

I have always used percentiles from an online chart to record Isla's growth because our doctor doesn't always give us a number (and I like to keep track of those things).  Today I got the percentiles from the doctor and they are significantly different than what I have recorded so far.  For my records, here is an update on her official growth percentiles so far:

Newborn-- Weight:  1%, Height:  40%, Head:  26%
2 Months-- Weight:  5%, Height:  33%, Head:  44%
4 months--  Weight:  28%, Height:  44%, Head:  47%
6 months--  Weight:  57%, Height: 37%, Head: 70%
9 months--  Weight:  65%, Height: 39%, Head: 68%
12 months-- Weight:  47%, Height: 26%, Head: 68%
15 months-- Weight: 37%, Height:  15%, Head: 67%

With the growth charts, the percentiles really don't matter that much.  What matters (to the doctors at least) is that they continue to grow on the same curve and the percentiles remain consistent.  Isla's curve was moving up consistently, but the past six months or so it has begun to take a turn downward.  Not too drastic, but still consistently down.

This caught me off guard, because Audrey was always so consistent and right in the middle of the growth chart every time.  Most likely, this is not a big deal.  After a quick inquiry on Facebook today, I got lots of feedback from many others whose kids had similar drops on their growth curves without any problems.   Even though she didn't grow as much as we expected, she did gain one pound and grow one inch in the last three months, so I think she is most likely just fine.

Our doctor was most concerned about her height growth moving in the wrong direction.  She wants to keep an eye on her.  If Isla's percentiles continue to go down at her next appointment (at 18 months), she may want to run some tests.  We'll see.  Since lack of growth was a concern before Isla was born and since she has had some developmental delays, I think our doctor wants to be cautious and make sure everything is 100% okay. 

There is always something to worry about with our sweet baby Isla, isn't there?   Fortunately, up to this point, she has never had anything seriously wrong with her.  I'm praying her good health and ability to prove doctors wrong will continue!

This is a classic Isla face.  She just has this ornery, mischevious look about her, don't you think?

 I wrote an update a few weeks ago about some things Isla is doing now, here are a few more:

• She hasn't really added many more words to her vocabulary.  I would like to hear her saying more, but it's early and she is not behind yet.  So I'm not worried yet.
• She loves to point at things and say "huh??"  I think she wants to know the words for everything.  Even though she isn't really repeating words back to us much, I think she is still learning them.
• She knows a few more body parts, including eyes and belly button.
• She makes some sounds for different emotions:  "ha, ha, ha" for happy, "grrr" for grumpy, and "oh" for suprised/excited.
•  I feel like she understands A LOT of what we say to her.  I am constantly surprised when I tell her to do something and she does it! 
• Things she loves:  necklaces, shoes, the TV show Bubble Guppies, crayons, sitting in chairs, building towers, and imitating her big sister!
• When she sees Elmo, she starts saying "la, la, la" (that is the opening to Elmo's theme song, and she knows this thanks to an Elmo phone that plays the song over and over again)
•  She now has eleven teeth, including both molars on the bottom.  Her top gums are super swollen, and I expect to see those molars peeking through soon.  
• Isla is not quite as chill and laid back as she once was.  She is learning to express her opinion about more and more things.  She is having some separation anxiety and doesn't always like to go to the nursery at church.  She is proving to be very stubborn at times!
• Since my exciting news the other night that Isla was taking steps, she hasn't done too much more.  Yesterday, I got her to take some steps again a few times, but today she refused.  Anytime I tried to get her to let go and walk, she immediately sat herself down.  Frustrating, but I should have known better than to think it would be so easy!

Here are a few outtakes from our photo shoot today.   This was the first time that Isla would not sit still for me to take her picture with Raggedy Ann.  I think that shows big improvement in her development and movement...a 15 month old shouldn't be willing to sit perfectly still!

 And here's one more picture of my little chubster...to show that all this talk about her not growing enough is just silly!!

September 6: First Day of Preschool

Audrey has been looking forward to this day for a long time...her first day of preschool!!

Here she is at school with her friend Anna.  They are super excited that they get to be in the same class!

This is outside of her classroom, the Yellow Room.

She seemed to have a good morning.  She told me that her favorite parts of the day were snacktime (she had goldfish and juice) and playing on the playground (she went down the slide three times and drove a car).  She also learned a new song, but she can't remember the words yet.  And she colored a picture.  Fun times!

I wasn't too sentimental about her going to school for the first time.  I'm really just excited for her, because I think she is going to love it.  But as I was driving to pick her up from school, I drove past the middle school where she will go (assuming we stay in this house that long).  Thinking of her someday being old enough to go to middle school did make me kind of sad. 

After school, we took her out for a celebratory lunch at McDonalds.  She is always a fan of going to McDonalds, but she has been asking for months to go to the McDondalds that has the inside slide.  So finally today we went to the McDonalds with the big inside slide.  Audrey ate her meal very quickly and spent most of her time playing in the playland with all the other kids.

Watching her fearlessly climb all the way to the top by herself and watching her talk and interact with all the other kids (who were complete strangers to her) made me so proud.  Not too long ago she was very clingy and refused to do much on her own without holding an adult's hand.  She is growing up to be such an independent and outgoing little girl, and I'm excited to see all that is in store for her this year in preschool!

September 5: Someone is Walking!

Isla started walking tonight!!!

Well, she at least started taking steps on her own.  Over and over and over again.  It was pretty exciting.  But Audrey was asleep and Daniel was at the gym, so it was just me getting excited all by myself!  I hope she still remembers how to do it in the morning so the rest of the family will be able to see her huge accomplishment.

Last week she took four steps by herself with Daniel.  But since then I had not been able to get her to even attempt to walk by herself.

Until tonight, when she took about three steps from the coffee table to me.

Then she took about three steps from me to the basket of toys.

Then she took two steps from the chair to the coffee table.

Then I started playing a game with her to see just how much she would walk by herself.  I moved the chair so it was about 5-6 steps away from the coffee table.  I put a bucket of crayons on the chair (her latest favorite thing).  Then I took two crayons and put them on the coffee table.  With a little bit of coaxing from me, she would leave the chair and walk to the coffee table to pick up the crayons.  Then it would take a little more coaxing and she would walk back to the chair to put the crayons in the bucket.  This game continued for about 20 minutes until I finally made her go to bed.

The most steps I saw her take was seven.  But then she only stopped because she got to her destination.  I wonder if she would have walked even more.

We will see what happens tomorrow.  There is a part of me that thinks this will all be a fluke, and she will wake up tomorrow and revert back.  But still this is progress, and it is very exciting!!

Here are some bad quality videos without sound from her walking adventures tonight.   I had to use my phone, which doesn't record sound for some reason, and try to help her all at the same time.  So these videos are not great.  But they are evidence that she can walk!

September 3: Labor Day

Daniel took the girls to the local Labor Day parade this morning, while I went to the grocery store and worked on hemming the curtains I bought at Ikea.

I guess the Labor Day parade is not too popular around here.  Daniel said there were only a handful of people watching it, at least on the street where he was.  Because there were not many kids around, our girls got A LOT of candy.  They were sitting in the stroller, and people in the parade just kept walking up and dumping it in the stroller.  Here is the loot they came home with!

The pile on the left is the pile that Audrey gets to keep.  Whenever we got big bunches of candy like this, we give her a small pile and then she gets to eat one piece every day.  She usually lines them all up and counts how many days she will get to have candy.  She is really, really good at eating only one piece a day and never asking for more.  She does however eat her one piece as soon as she wakes up in the morning, often as early as 6 am.  I figure if she is going to eat a piece of candy, does it really matter what time she eats it?

The rest of the candy needs to go somewhere else.  Audrey wanted to mail it to some kids who might need it.  (She's a little obsessed with mailing things lately).  We brought it to a cookout tonight, but we didn't get rid of too much.  I'm thinking we will save it for Halloween maybe?

Besides candy, they were also passing out bead necklaces.  Just recently, Isla has discovered necklaces.  She loves them.  Audrey has several of these bead necklaces, and Isla just loves to put them on and take them off.  (I try to keep a close eye on her, because I'm a bit paranoid that she is going to strangle herself).  Anyway, Isla doesn't really know what candy is yet, so I don't know if she was too excited about getting candy in the parade.  But I do think she was excited to get more necklaces!  Look how many she got today, and she wanted to wear them all!

Tonight we went to a cookout with some friends.  We had smores for dessert, yummy!

Audrey got brave enough to jump on the trampoline by herself.  She even jumped with the big boys.  She jumped and jumped and jumped.  Hopefully she will sleep well (and stay out of our bed) tonight!!