The only thing that poured was rain...not tears!

It has been an interesting past two weeks. While Lily trotted off to Kindergarten, I have had some precious solo time with Jade. It was quickly apparent though, that little sis is a bit lost without big sis around. Lily directs her play, picks the roles, assigns the barbies, suggests meal choices, etc. The list goes on and on. And Jade is quite happy to leave all the decision making up to big sis.

So, when it came time last Thursday to go meet Jade's new preschool teacher, I was not surprised when it didn't go over so well. Jade has always attended the same school as Lily. Though in different classes, Lily and I would usually drop Jade off first and then Lily would go to her class. Walking into school without big sis in stride was difficult.

"Meet the Teacher" day was a rainy one. But rain wasn't the only thing coming down. The tears were just a flowing. After that experience I wasn't quite sure how the official first drop off would go this morning. It was yet another rainy day...



But even amid the chaos of parents, siblings, umbrellas, lunch bags, backpacks, cameras and napmats, Jade remained confident. Cheerful. Smiley!

She walked right in and never looked back.
So thankful the only puddles to dodge on my way out were those of rain, not tears!

Lily's First Day of Explorers

Explorers = 2 day Kindergarten Program





A little nervous excitement. How can I tell she is nervous? She can't keep her tongue in her mouth!



Shots with our carpool buddy...and possibly current love of her life. His mommy and I are secretly saving these pics for their wedding video. ;)




And another sweet pic with a MWF buddy after opening chapel.


These two are exactly one month apart, we'll look forward to hanging out with them more in first grade!

Her sweet teacher...Mrs. Barth. (Not BARF, as the video may have led you to believe! ;)










No tears shed on any account...only a little hesitation noted when this last shot was taken as we left the room.

A short, non-rotated, post school video clip...cut short by the carpool lady flipping the sign to "GO!".



Here is a look at their week:
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Bible: The Garden of Eden
Cain and Abel
Memory Verse: “The Lord’s Prayer”

Language Letter Recognition: A – O
Arts: Parts of a Sentence
Oral Language - Apples

Math: Matching and Sorting

Tales: “Jack and the Bean Stalk”

Spanish: Sra. Adams

History: Biblical Times

Geography: Measuring Distance

Poetry: My Dog, Marchette Gaylord

Art: A King Charles Spaniel, Charles Manet

Music: Raindrop Prelude, Chopin

Notes: We had a great first week! Thank you all so much for your prayers and encouragement. I am falling in love with your precious children.

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We are going to love this place!

The afternoon concluded with a quick park playdate...cut way short by an attack of crazy bees. Our kids must be sweeter than we thought!



The two little sisters will start PK3 together next week.

Oh, and I can't forget the celebratory spaghetti and meatballs dinner.



Note to self: white uniform shirt + spaghetti dinner = not a good idea.

I am thankful for many sweet things...schools, friends, and teachers. I am hopeful for a wonderful year.

Praying for that attitude to continue as soccer, tap, ballet, carol choir, indian princess, seminary, and bible studies begin next week. *sigh*

Kindergarten letters

Lily starts kindergarten next week. I am excited. Not really feeling blue at all.

I am sure that is partly due to it only being two days a week. And partly because I am so excited about her school and teachers and classmates, etc.

We received a precious letter from her teacher last week. Knowing that she is praying for us as we start this new endeavor is definitely comforting.

Here is Lily's response letter:

Hopefully her teacher isn't baffled by Lily's love for 3 legged earless cats.

If you don't like "random", don't read this post!

I can't believe it is already Monday evening. Where does the weekend go? I'm guessing this one seemed particularly short seeing that our last "weekend" lasted 10 days. Coming back from vacation is rough.

Do you ever have those weekends when you actually look forward to doing nothing on Monday...and getting some rest? This was one of those for me. Then I had insanely crazy and realistic dreams last night that left me even more worn out. Ugh!

Anyway it was a fun filled weekend to say the least.

Lily got to experience her first real Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus on Saturday...in box seats no less. Someone had donated them to the ministry that my husband works for and there were two left, so Lily and I got to go hang out with some of the kids he serves.

Wow, the circus has changed a tad in the 25 years or so since I'd seen it last. Never mind all the technology, story plot, opera singer, and the motorcycle cage not leaving us deaf nor smelling fumes...the prices...oh my word...the prices. A circus program? $14. Sno-cones? $12. And I heard from a friend that cotton candy was also $12.

I saw a lady carrying 4 sno-cones and thought to myself...wow, you are carrying $50 worth of sugary ice in your hands. I can feed my family for three nights with that...insanity!

Anyway, Lily's eyes were glued to the stage the entire 2 1/2 hours. Quite a show.

When we returned from the circus I realized my Lantana was in full bloom. These pictures don't do it justice, but it is gorgeous.

I thought (or actually my mom thought) that it wasn't getting enough sun. Apparently it just wasn't getting enough water. It rained 6 days the previous week and, Voila!

Bloom, baby, bloom.

Then we were off to a princess party Sunday where Lily also had a blast.

I can't believe she went for purple instead of her usual pink. This day it was all about the length of the dress though. Duh, mom, the purple dress goes all the way to the floor.

I may need to find my own residence during her teenage years!

We also managed to get a good workout in, go to evening church and join some friends for dinner.

It was late after dinner, but Lily was complaining that I had forgotten about her reading lesson. So there we sat at nearly 9:00 doing a lesson out of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. Have any of y'all used this?

She is loving it...I enjoy it too, but was kind of hoping for a break on the weekends...she will not let a day go by without it though.

And in between all of that, Jade pooped in the potty twice this weekend! She just turned two last month. And yes, I do have a picture with the actual evidence. I am weird like that.

The craziest thing is that she won't teetee in the potty. Strange, huh? We had the exact opposite problem with Lily...and if I had my pick, I think I'm sticking with Jade's issue.

I'm sure it is just all a fluke anyway though. I mean, this is the stuff of dreams, right?

Hopefully not tonight though.

Good night.

Impressive, but only kind of.

As we near the end of Lily's private swim lessons (which I swore I'd never do), look what my baby girl did yesterday.

Whee!

I seriously couldn't believe it. She did it 10 or 12 times in a row. Either my hand was shaking with excitement or my new cell phone takes really crappy pictures.

But before you are too impressed, the slide didn't exactly end in a deep pool of water. Not even a pool of water at all really.
More like a trough.

As the saying goes about being able to lead a horse to water but not being able to make them drink...well, the same goes for Lily about swimming.

This time I really am DONE with the formal lessons. She has gained confidence in the water but still really isn't swimming.

Surely the library or YouTube has some aides for this mama. I'm about to tackle the horse myself.

Pretty Piggies

It’s probably getting obvious that I recently skimmed through 1700+ pictures. During the process of getting 2008’s memories off of my hard drive and into Shutterfly’s care, I came across a few pictures that I remember intending to post.

I only mention it because I keep posting pictures when they were dressed for summer…because it actually was summer. Actually yesterday Lily could have totally worn this outfit. In January. When it was in the mid 70s and we hung out at the park before enjoying snow cones.

While the rest of you are able to make snow cones fresh out of your backyard, we can actually visit a permanently standing building year round and have one made for us. They even sell snowballs too. How else could we ever experience those sorts of things here in Texas?

Anyway. See these little piggies?


They belong to this freshly pampered girl.


It was actually the weekend of her potty training success. Jade was being loved on by the Gibsons a couple of hours away, while we were focusing on toilet issues with Lily for a weekend. We had taken a break for a quick haircut, when afterward she peeked into the windows of a nail salon that was next door.

What’s this place, mama? When I told her it was a place that did nails, the requests for painted fingers and toes came flowing pretty quickly. When I peeked in and saw that they weren’t busy, I decided to give it a try.

It was great. I got a pedicure while they totally pampered her.


Fingers and toes for the girl, they asked?

Sure, why not.

Flowers painted too? Just $2.00 more.

Sure.

Apparently I was a little too relaxed because I assumed that meant two bucks for flowers on her hands, feet, forehead, wherever they decided to put them.

Naivety. Really not my friend.

Thankfully they only painted them on her thumbs and big toes, because she wasn’t very patient sitting under the drying lights. I was glad I snapped these pictures before we even got in the car…within minutes she had smeared 8 bucks worth of flowers right off.

We’ve been sticking to the playroom variety of pedicures since then. The flowers I paint are cheap...because they are non-existent.

No blood was drawn.

We all survived Lily's first swimming lesson and no sharks were drawn to the area.

I believe it was near 80 degrees this past Saturday, which could actually put one in the mood for some swimming. Not so yesterday. I am not a good photographer, but here is a shot of what was left of the icicles outside the gym yesterday afternoon. Not impressive to those of you who are surrounded by drifts of snow, but to those of us who only get a couple of ice days a year, I was hoping that her first swim lesson being on one of them wasn't a bad omen.

The indoor pool area had to be warmed to at least 90 degrees. They call it temperate, I call it a furnace. And for a mom who was already literally sweating over the lesson anyway, it really prevented me from at least looking calm, cool and collected. I'll be dressing more appropriately next time.

Here is Lily's "Mom, are you sure its time for swimming lessons?" look.

Now she's ready to conquer the water. All three inches of it.


I thought I'd be heading up to the bikes for a little spin and a bird's eye view, but it became apparent that I would be needed for support. My support consisted of telling her that she needed to do everything that the coach asked her to do and that if she cooperated we would go get a hot fudge sundae with lots of whipped cream and a cherry afterward.

I thought I would get some shots of the action, but quickly realized that people will stare down their nose at you for having a camera out in a place where various aged people are in various stages of undress.

So here is a quick non-pictorial description of the half hour that seemed like six.

Within the first five minutes she came running out of the water so fast that she slipped and did a complete wipe out. Tears ensued. Great.

By the time I got her calmed down, the coach was taking the other little student toward the deep end (3 feet...an abyss in Lily's mind) where there were two benches immersed in the water, one at the edge and the other about 8 feet out.

It took everything in me to get her to stand on the bench at the wall. I really felt for her. I was thankful that I hadn't shaved my legs or else I would have just rolled up my pants and gotten in with her. The Lord's provision in the tiniest of things. Leg hair.

She got in!

While the other little boy and her took turns with the coach going back and forth between the two benches, Lily's grasp had to be sucking the air right out of the coach. I was glad I had trimmed and filed her nails. The other little boy progressed to kicks and back floating and all sorts of other maneuvers under the guiding of the coach's arm.

Lily just clung.

Until the last little pass between the benches.

Her progress?

With the encouragement of her coach, she let go. With one hand. And waved to her mama. For like half of a millisecond.

And then she clung again, but her face shone with such pride for releasing that clutch for that solitary moment. She was beaming.

And to me, that was worth the hot fudge sundae folks.

My prayers are with her swim coach

Tomorrow Lily will have a first. One of those firsts that I'm afraid we waited a wee bit too long for.

How am I preparing her for her first swim lesson? I am trimming and filing her fingernails. Just doing my part to prevent blood from being drawn. Her swim coach will thank me.

I met him the other day. Poor unsuspecting guy. Just a young cute kid. Will he be able to handle Lily and her tremendous fear of water? The fear that sends her into ear piercing screams? The fear that prevents her from going under water at all? Or even just standing in it if it is deep...you know...above 18 inches. And she applies the 18 inch rule not only to herself, but to anyone who is holding her.

I experienced being squeezed to death by the 4 legged octopus last summer when I proceeded into uncharted territory...the depths of three feet. I did the only reasonable thing that came to mind...I dunked her. I used to torture my cats with water baths as a child...but now I have kids. It’s just as fun and their claws are much easier to maintain.

I can’t wait to see what his approach will be tomorrow. If you’re in town and trying to peg where the screams are coming from around 4 PM, just turn your ears towards (or away!) from LifeTime Fitness. Or if you want a ringside seat, join me upstairs on the bikes. They overlook the pool perfectly...from behind glass windows which I hope are soundproof. If not, I’ll probably be making snide comments to whoever is around me...whose kid is that? Look at her! Man, she really has a set of lungs. Hopefully I won’t have my cover blown by a page for Lily Gibson’s mommy to return to the pool area.

The swimming lessons are a gift from my mom. Lily is soooo thankful. I should have asked for some extra money...I think it is going to take some bribing to get this guy to come back for day two. Should I slip him a twenty? Maybe just a ten. That should be enough for some Just for Men. The least I can do is help him cover the gray hairs he’ll surely be sprouting over the next few weeks.

Guess who is...

finally walking? Just a few days prior to our Disney World trip and her 17 month birthday. We're so proud of Jade!

See? We didn't just sit around and eat all day.

Don't get me wrong, we did our share of eating and lounging. We went to my in-laws in East Texas, where I am especially spoiled by the girl's "memmy"...and am not expected to do a whole lot. The key word surrounding time spent there is "relaxing".

It was extra special this Thanksgiving because my sister and niece joined us. Lily's two second cousins that live near there weren't around this holiday, so it was so fun for her and Avery to get a chance to play.

We spent a good amount of time at the elementary school's playground, where it is questionable if the kids had as much fun as the adults. I'm still sore from our monkey bar challenge...where I was clearly the loser. Way to go, Kelly! Jerry, your attempt doesn't count.

We have so many things to be thankful for, but the one thing that we'll be remembering for years to come is about our little jader-tater.

On November 27, 2008, at 16 months and 3 weeks old, Jade took her first true and independent steps. Praise the Lord! Mamma's back is rejoicing! I didn't get video or pictures, but don't think that isn't on my list of things to do today. Check back later.