Preschool

As of last week, Penelope is officially a preschooler. I was expecting to spend the day with her last Tuesday, but she settled in well and after an hour, I thought I could try to leave for a little while. When I told her I was going to go, she asked where I was going. I told her I was going to get groceries and sign some papers. She thought for just a moment, then said, "Okay," and returned to the puzzle she was working on. I asked if I could have a kiss goodbye and she leaned over and gave me a little kiss, then carried on with her puzzle. So I left! The teacher had been standing there waiting to intervene if she got upset, I had fully expected she would have a harder time, but she was completely fine! And I got to spend a quiet day by myself. I did a little cleaning, I did a fair amount of party prep, just taking stock of what I needed to do.

It's amazing how kids grow. At each stage it seems like we expect that we know how they're going to react and they surprise us every time. Penelope has become so calm, so understanding, so mature. I miss having a baby, I miss having someone who will just bend to my will and follow me wherever I go, but watching her become an independent little person is pretty incredible.

Seven

This was the first year that Micah really had a vision for his birthday. We planned a Harry Potter birthday party, invited 9 kids and 12 showed up, and he had a great time. He started out by sorting all of his friends into houses using a crochet sorting hat that I made and an origami fortune teller. Then we distributed wands and made a whole bunch of potions. Baking soda and vinegar was an enjoyable mess, but the kids quieted down when mixing the two into purple cabbage water and experimenting with making the color change. Micah and I worked together to design a cake with a dragon wrapped around the side, looking at photos on google to figure out how each of the features should look, and I decorated the cake by painting it with gel food coloring. After almost everyone left, we did one last potion with the two friends who were staying a little longer. After one more friend left and Penelope went to bed, Micah and Cece broke the pinata and split the candy. After Cece left, Grandma and Grandpa came over and we made pizza. Micah and Penelope were so well behaved all day, they were patient amid the chaos, they shared when it came time to open gifts. The day was a blur, but I think it was a good blur for Micah.

Terrible Threes

Penelope is clearly learning and growing just like Micah is these days, but at three years old the growth is so much more painful. When things aren't going her way, she angrily hits, spits, and kicks me. When she wants to get a rise out of Micah, she giddily pulls his hair as hard as she can. When she isn't getting the attention she desires, she smiles while spitting her food on the floor, spilling a glass of water, or destroying a game/tower/creation of Micah's.

And on top of all this, she refuses to go to sleep. Last night she only got out of bed 6 times. Once because "her hands were cold." It was 75 degrees outside at 8pm and we don't have air conditioning. The night before she was up so many times I couldn't count. It took over an hour and a half from the time I first left her room to the time she was asleep, and my best guess is that she got up about 30 times in that span. "I want another song." "I'm hungry." "I'm thirsty." "I have to poop." "I want Dada." "I want Mama." "I need a hug."

Despite all of that, she is learning and growing every day. She learned to ride a tricycle, not a small feat. She often seems to be our head dog trainer, shouting commands to Thalia all day long. She tells excellent jokes and makes clever rhymes. She consistently enjoys Micah's potty humor. She's learning to assemble puzzles independently. She tells everyone she loves that she loves them. She thinks everything is "so cute," including chickens and snakes as well as babies and dogs.

She's a lover and I love her, but man is the 3-year old hump a tough one!

Learning & Growing

Micah is changing by leaps and bounds these days. We've taken several long car trips this summer, driving to Chicago, New Jersey, and to Presque Isle. He reads comic books for hours on end. I believe he read for over four hours in the car on multiple occasions. On our way to New Jersey last week, he started reading when we got into the car at 7pm, read by the light of a little LED light after it got dark, and finally stopped when I forced him to turn the light off at 10pm. When he comes home from the library, he sits down with his books and is quiet for hours. The other night we finished a chapter of a novel I'm reading with him and he wanted to read more, so he read a few more (very complex) pages after I said goodnight.

On top of all this reading, he has been swimming almost every day for the past three weeks. He couldn't even attempt to swim at the end of June, he was so panicked by the thought. We signed him up for lessons beginning the first week of July and took him to the pool for the first time this summer the night before lessons started. During his first week of lessons, all the other kids jumped into the pool while he carefully eased himself into the water, all the other kids hung onto the side practicing kicking while he draped his arms up to the elbows over the edge and kicked only while the teacher watched. Then one night during the second week of lessons, he was showing me how he could swim while his head went deeper and deeper into the water and I realized that he could hold his breath for the first time ever. I told him if he just put his head in the water, he would be swimming under water and just like that, he became a swimmer. He's still not paddling hard enough to swim with his head up, but he can swim across the pool underwater and is excited to go to swim lessons every day.

Next up, I need to teach him to ride a bike!

Moving out of Mom & Dad's Place

Penelope moved into her big kid room on Friday. We offered her crib to some friends who had a baby a month ago and they took us up on the offer, so we made it happen even though we have really enjoyed keeping her restrained in her crib in the mornings!

Michael spend several hours on Friday getting the new room ready with Penelope and Micah. They moved her furniture over, her books and clothes, put bed rails in place, and re-purposed a table that was getting discarded at the school across the street so that she could have a little art table in her room. Michael even made a bench for the table and a stool for Penelope to climb in and out of bed.

Michael put her down for a nap that afternoon and Penelope slept for 2 hours. Relatively unheard of at this point in time.

We put her to bed that night and she slept the whole night through. Also relatively unheard of in the time we've shared a wall with her!

Saturday morning, I heard Micah get up and listen outside our door, then go downstairs. Practically a miracle, that kid loves waking us up in the morning. Michael got up to investigate and it turns out that Penelope was the one who had gotten up. She climbed out of bed, listened outside our door, went into the bathroom, took off her pj's, threw away her wet diaper, used the toilet, put her pj's back on, went downstairs, let the dog out of her crate, and was standing at the bottom of the stairs trying to convince the dog not to come up when Michael came down. She's a freaking grownup.

Basically the same story yesterday. And this morning, I was getting dressed when I heard some noise, I thought Mike D. was coming home, but when I went to investigate, it was Penelope who had gotten up, gone downstairs, let the dog out, and was dragging her away from the stairs by the collar. I told her she couldn't get up until she heard Michael or Micah get up and gave her a couple books to look at in her bed. Hopefully she stayed there!

Reading

Watching Micah learn to read has been amazing and honestly, kind of surprising. I wasn't surprised that he could sound out words pretty quickly, and he does a decent job of writing things phonetically, but all of a sudden he's actually reading. It started with reading signs while we're driving, reading one or two words on the page of a book when I'm reading to him, really just reading random text that he comes across. Yesterday though, we were driving to Grandma and Grandpa's house and he actually read a Curious George book to himself in the backseat. That was the first time ever as far as I know. He's read plenty of books out loud to us or to Penelope, but this was the first time he sat down with a book and read it quietly to himself. He's been learning to read for all of four months. I don't imagine that I could learn anything remotely that complex in that time. It's sort of unbelievable.

No More Nummies

This post should have happened three weeks ago, but better late than never! Penelope is done with her pacifier. It started with a particularly rough night when I had to go into her room about four times to find her pacifier for her. I decided the next day that we were done. She went to bed without it pretty well, cried a bit, but then slept. She napped the next day without it a little less happily. The second night she went to bed and then was crying, "I'm not a big kid! I'm just a baby! I need a nummy!" It was pretty adorable and also heartbreaking.

But she made it. We spent a week in New Jersey at Christmas without the pacifier, two long car trips there and back, we've been home for a week now still with no pacifier.

Of course, she grows and changes every day, she's talking more, she's thinking more, she has commentary while we watch television shows together, she has food preferences, she's thinking about letters and numbers and colors just a little bit more. Everything has been kicked up a notch in the last month or two. I guess it was just time to move on from the pacifier.