Leaps

Hannah has made some HUGE leaps here recently in both her large motor skills and her academic skills. She's now a pro at riding her big girl bike and her stamina is increasing each time she rides. We took her to ride on the bike trail at our local park and I bet she went at least a half mile and that is WAY further than she's ever gone before. She was so much more confident too. There was no more staring at the ground or having a hard time getting on because she was afraid the bike would fall over. Now she just hops on and goes. She even had her first "fall" going down one of the bigger hills on the path. She didn't hit the ground because Kyle caught her, but the bike definitely tipped over as she got going quickly and she panicked when it was time to turn. Still, she got back on with some coaxing and rode on like a champ. I was so proud of her. Maybe it won't be long before we can all three ride on the bike paths together. That would be awesome. The problem is that just as she's getting comfortable with this new bike, she's outgrowing it! She towers over the handlebars and the seat is basically all the way up as high as it will go and her legs are still pretty bent. I'm not sure how she'd do on a bigger bike that would sit her higher up from the ground. For now I think we'll just stick with the Dora bike. It's working and I don't want to rock the boat.

Academically she's reading more and more chapter books and just this past week she started writing sentences independently! A few nights ago she stood at her easel and pounded out two sentences just because she wanted to write them. As her vocabulary of words that she can spell without sounding them out grows, it has become much easier for her to compose because she doesn't lose her train of thought while she's trying to spell a word. One of her favorite things to do recently is to dictate stories for me to copy down. They can get quite elaborate, but really she does a pretty good job of keeping them cohesive. I've been quite impressed. I'll have to put one of them on here someday for your reading pleasure!

Just so we don't get too complacent, she's also kept us on our toes with a steady stream of undesirable behaviors. Her venue of choice this past week has been the bathroom. She's started fishing around in the toilet bowl and pulling out poop and smearing it on the walls, dipping towels in the toilet, and just generally splashing around in pee water. UGH! At four years old I thought she'd be past that, but apparently not. We're back to having closely monitored bathroom breaks and that definitely puts a cramp in our style. Having to drop everything every time she needs to go to the bathroom really cuts down on the time I have to do things around the house.

It's taken me well over a week to write this post and it seems like a lot has happened since I started writing it. Yesterday I took Hannah to see Toy Story 3. The place where she has OT sponsored a sensory friendly showing at our local theatre and it was one of the most relaxed outings to a movie I've ever had. They kept the lights turned up (it was dark, but not like at a normal movie) and the volume turned down. They had fidgets and a break area available. They allowed you to bring in your own snacks and roaming and vocal stimming (as well as all manner of chatter and questioning) was totally allowed. No one got upset or freaked out about anything. It was so nice. Hannah and I really enjoyed the movie and look forward to them offering more sensory friendly showings.

Hannah had a field trip to the zoo and once again I was not impressed by her teacher. I won't go into all the details since you've all heard me whine about her many times, but this is just one more confirmation that getting Hannah out of there for next year is the right thing to do. In fact, if we wouldn't lose all the money we put in our flexible spending account to pay for preschool that we have left I'd pull her out now, but unfortunately the only way to get that money back is to spend it on preschool or daycare. Oh, and one more thing, I know I promised I wouldn't whine about her teacher, but this really upset me. The other day Hannah came home and told me that "Miss Nicole almost had to write me a note," but that she promised her that she wouldn't tell us what had happened. When I pressed Hannah about why Miss Nicole needed to write us a note, I found out that during nap time Hannah had went to the bathroom, but instead of going to the bathroom she went into another empty classroom (one they use for indoor large motor play on yucky days) and played in there by herself. That room has a door that opens up to the rest of the school and Hannah could have easily have just left the room and gone right on out and left the building. The teacher obviously thought her behavior was serious enough to threaten her with not allowing her to go on the field trip, but yet she did not inform us of this infraction. They lost her for pete's sake, and what she did was really manipulative. She's eloped from home before so the fact that she tried it at school is something I think we deserved to know. When I questioned the teacher about it she said it wasn't a big deal and she didn't want to write us about it and make it bigger than it was. UGH!

After the whole recommendation of a partial hospital program by the psychologist at our last appointment I had intended to give him the boot after speaking with Kyle, but we didn't make our final decision until the night before her next scheduled appointment and the late cancellation penalty costs more than my copay (doesn't seem right to me that it would cost me more NOT to see the doctor than to see him) so I took Hannah in to see him one more time and let them know we were done. While there, instead of giving us suggestions on how to better manage Hannah's behavior at home, or even doing an evaluation on her, he suggested that we should try stimulant medication. Are you kidding me! He hasn't even bothered to do an evaluation on her or diagnose her with anything that medication would be necessary or beneficial for! For that matter, he still hadn't watched the DVD of Hannah's meltdowns that I had given him over a month ago! Needless to say we gave him the boot and I've been doing a lot of research about where to go from here. I got many helpful suggestions in the comments to my last post and I'm very grateful for them. I'll keep you all posted on what direction we decide to go next.

Hannah also had her 4 year well child check up. She checked out just fine and weighed in at 38 lbs and was 42 inches tall. That puts her in the 74th percentile for weight for her age and the 90th for height. She also had to get 3 vaccinations while she was there. We had prepped extensively for this possibility and the doctor confirmed it was so. When she expressed concern he told her that they would give her the shots in her arm and that she could sit on my lap while they did it. However, when the nurses came in to administer the shots they decided to tag team her and give her two at once and all three of them in the leg, not the arm like the doctor told her. They also would not let her sit on my lap like the doctor had told her she could. I tried to tell them that this was not going to go well with them changing the plan on her and that we had it worked out so that we would have cooperation if they would just do it like the doctor had told Hannah, but they refused. Obviously they knew best. I also warned them that it would be much easier for me to control her if she fought if she was on my lap instead of on the table, but still they wouldn't listen. Well, for their stubbornness, Hannah threw a HUGE fit. She thrashed around like a crazy woman. I couldn't hold her down at all. She was moving so much they could only give one shot at a time. AND Hannah kicked one of the nurses in the chest so hard (she was even laying down too!) that I'm surprised it didn't break her ribs. All this because they wouldn't listen to mom who really did know best about this scenario and how it would go. Instead of apologizing afterwards for their stubbornness and saying they were wrong not to listen to me (I know, wishful thinking on my part) , the nurse that got kicked simply eeked out, "She sure is strong for a four year old isn't she?" Yeah no kidding! I tried to warn them.

Photo Notes: Except for the first photo which is of Hannah getting the tank reading for Evan the fish and that last 3 which are of Hannah at the zoo and playing in the sprinkler, all of the photos were taken when our good friends the Bowes visited us from Indiana. We went on a chartered harbor and lighthouse tour. It was a blast.

4 Years Old

It's hard to believe, but my baby girl turned 4 years old on the 6th. The time has simply flew by more quickly than I could have ever imagined. As I say every year, it seems like just yesterday we were talking with Tiffany and praying that maybe just maybe this would be our baby girl and now here we are 4 years later, parents of a high energy, super smart, opinionated, and beautiful girl. When I think back over the past year I am filled with wonder over all she has accomplished. She started preschool and learned how to successfully become part of a classroom. She made friends who not only wanted to see her, but who she wanted to see too! She learned to pedal her tricycle and then moved on to a big girl bike with training wheels. She learned to swing on a swing by herself, starting off from completely still to pumping herself so high the chains on the swing set chink! She climbs, runs, and jumps with reckless abandon. Her vocabulary is ever increasing and she's begun to ponder some of the deeper questions in life such as "Why can't we see the Earth spin?" And the reading, oh the reading. She's gone from level 1 readers to independently reading an entire chapter out of the chapter book The Boxcar Children. She devours every book she can get her hands on and can read just about any book you put in front of her. Of course, there have been some less than stellar developments over the past year such as increased levels of defiance and screaming, learning to use hateful and hurtful words, and increased aggression. Still on a whole this year has been full of accomplishments to celebrate. And celebrate we did. We rocked it out at Chuck -E-Cheese and Hannah actually gave the big mouse a high five and stood right next to him for a picture. For her actual birthday dinner she requested we go out to dinner at On the Border and she was delighted when the servers sang her happy birthday and brought her a brownie and ice cream.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl! Though they've sometimes been hard, you've given me the best four years of my life so far!

Photo Notes: These were taken at Hannah's preschool "Graduation" (though she and several other of the students aren't actually graduating and moving on to kindergarten!)

Parent Teacher Conference

Today was Hannah's second round of parent teacher conferences at Crayons, but the first one with her new teacher. This was the second time I'd met with her teacher as well as sending her a VERY long and detailed letter about my concerns. Once again I really wasn't pleased about how things went at the conference. The teacher seemed eager to try to tell me the things I wanted to hear about how she was challenging Hannah and about how if there were incidents of hitting and kicking between Hannah and other students she would have been letting us know, but her words just don't match up to what we are actually experiencing. Hannah reports daily physical spats with her best buddy Elisa (those two have a definte love/hate relationship) which her teacher denies. She says they argue, but other than the one time they informed us about, it never gets physical. Hannah reports otherwise and I emailed Elisa's mom and apparently Elisa reports otherwise as well. Something seems amiss here to me. Then there's the issue of what academics Hannah is actually participating in. The teacher reports that Hannah is producing all sorts of products of learning, but yet I can count on my fingers the number of times ANY sort of paper or project has come home in the 3 months Hannah's been in that class and at least two of those times occured when her current teacher was on vacation and a sub was in charge! It just doesn't jive to me. All of this really serves to confirm to me that we're making the right choice to homeschool Hannah next fall. We still haven't decided if we are going to have her continue to attend her current class one day a week or not. I'm still on the fence about that. I would hate for her to lose those relationships she's formed with the kids in her class, but at the same time I don't want to be paying for something that's really not benefitting Hannah as much as something else I could be doing. You know what I mean?

Hannah's birthday party is coming up this weekend and she's very excited about it. This year she will actually have quite a few kids there. I think there are 11 kids already that have RSVP that they are coming. I have to hand it to them, the kids in Hannah's old class are super great about birthday parties. They almost always attend. We've had less luck getting any RSVPs one way or the other with the kids in her new class, but I guess that is to be expected since those parents don't know Hannah and I don't even really know those kids. Many of them I can't even pick out of the room and I sure as certain wouldn't know their parents if I saw them. Since Hannah has such an early drop off and late pick up time I just don't cross paths with a lot of other parents. We'll see if the next few days bring any more RSVPs, but if not Hannah's got a full house already and it should be fun. I've got the goody bags all ready to go (no fish included!) and hopefully they will be a big hit. I'm a bit fanatical about giving children gifts. I ALWAYS give a book. A kid can never have too many good quality children's books in my opinion and most kids don't have nearly enough exposure to good literature as I'd like. So, I do my part and I hand out books. I bet you can't guess what's in the goody bags? It was my goal to make these useful. If I was going to spend money to give out goody bags then I wanted it to be stuff that wasn't just going to end up in the trash or give the kids a sugar high. So, I bought cheap sand buckets at Walmart to use as the "bag", after all we do live on the coast and filled them with books I found at one of our local bargain stores and like new ones from my favorite second hand store. I didn't pay more than $0.99 for any of the things in the goody bags, but I think the pads of note paper, crayons, markers, stencils, and of course books should be so much nicer than the stuff you normally see and I doubt it was much more expensive either (especially not the way I shop!) . Maybe it'll even keep them bus on a car trip this summer!

School Options for the Fall

Since moving up to the 4 year old room at her preschool, we have been less than thrilled with Hannah's new teacher. It's hard to put a definite finger on what bothers us, but it's definitely not been as positive of an experience as Hannah had in her 3 year old classroom. She doesn't seem to connect with her current teachers at all. In fact, in the mornings I usually drop her off before her teachers arrive so she goes into the 3 year old room until they get there. On those days she separates fairly easily and is welcomed warmly. When we arrive slightly later and the assistant teacher is already at school Hannah has a much harder time with me leaving. She clings to my leg, says she doesn't want to stay at school, and doesn't get noticed much by the teacher. There's not even a mention of anything like, "Do you want to run an errand with me Hannah?" or "Why don't we read this book together," to distract her from my leaving. She's left completely on her own to work it out. In her old room I got the sense that the teachers truly loved Hannah. They were concerned about her best interests. I just don't get that sense in her new room. I'm sure the teachers care about doing a good job and are kind to the children, but I don't get the sense that they really care about Hannah as an individual child. She's just another kid in the class to them is the feeling I get. I spoke with the teacher about our concerns for Hannah and our hopes for how her school experience would continue to go. I even sent her a LONG follow up email with more detailed information about Hannah and some tips about what works best for us at home with Hannah. We pretty much received the standard, "yeah, yeah I know what I'm doing and I don't need to do anything differently for your child." response. She was polite, but was pretty clear that she knew how to deal with kids with SPD and that she did not feel any need to adjust the difficulty of some of her activities to appropriately challenge Hannah because her lesson plans are all open ended enough for her to get the challenge she needs. The problem is that she's not getting the challenge that she needs. She never brings anything tangible home at all. There are no products of her learning. No art projects, writing attempts, cut and paste activities, etc. She still hasn't read anything at all in the classroom that the teacher is aware of and she will not encourage her to do so. Though I know that she does occasionally read to herself and other children during free play time in the afternoons after her teacher has left. It's all just very frustrating. As Hannah's academic abilities continue to progress at lightning speed and as we learn more about the kindergarten curriculum and environment at the public school we have become very worried about what we should do with Hannah when she turns five as far as schooling options. We've actually struggled pretty mightily about what to do for her this coming fall, but I think we've finally made our decision. We've decided to home school Hannah (using a kindergarten curriculum since she's more than ready already) this fall as a trial run to see if this is even a feasible option for kindergarten when she's five. If things go well we'll home school her for kindergarten (her five year old year) as well and then reevaluate where to go from there once she's old enough for first grade. If homeschooling is an epic fail then we really won't have lost anything since she technically doesn't have to be in any kind of school yet and she could already breeze through the academic portions of kindergarten so she won't be behind in that respect. To keep her social skills progressing we plan to enroll her in several classes at the local YMCA and let her join the local youth soccer program. She might even continue to go to her current preschool one day a week so that she can keep up the relationships she has already formed with the kids there, but I'm not sure if we'll go that route or not. Of course we'll continue to do all the fun stuff we like to do like go to the beach, the museum and the zoo, library story time, etc and look for as many play dates as we can get. I really think the social aspects of homeschooling will be Hannah's biggest challenge, but I'm hopeful that we can circumvent them with some good planning and a consistent routine as far as classes, standing play dates, story times, etc. I'm both excited and nervous at the same time about starting up homeschooling. I'm excited about all I can teach Hannah now that she's ripe for learning and happy about the extra time we'll have to do fun stuff, but I'm also worried that I won't be able to replicate the institutional structure that traditional preschool/elementary school provides. I guess we'll see how it goes. Like I said before, this is why we're doing a trial run now.

Today I was hoping to kick off our three day weekend by spending time at the beach or going to the zoo, but Hannah came home from school yesterday with a fever (102.5 degrees) and it didn't break over the night. Today it's been hovering in the 103. 5 degrees range. So much for fun outings. She's pretty congested, but other than that and the fever she has no other real symptoms. It appears to just be a cold. Let's hope it clears up before the weekend is over so that we can do at least a little bit of fun stuff.

Despite feeling crummy, Hannah managed to bless me with two very interesting conversations today. The first occurred while we were getting dressed this morning. She was stalling and wallering around on the floor when all of a sudden she sat up and asked, "Mommy, do you know about silver panels?" Confused, I replied, "Do you mean panels that are the color silver?" She said, "Yes, do you know how they work?" This confused me even more. What in the heck were silver panels? So, I asked her, "Hannah where did you learn about silver panels?" "From Curious George," she replied. It was then that the light bulb immediately clicked on inside my head. I said, "Do you mean solar panels?" She brightened and practically shouted, "Yeah, solar panels!" I remembered that about a month ago we had watched an episode of Curious George where too many air conditioners caused a black out in the city, but the Professor powered a generator at the museum using solar panels. A month ago! Apparently she'd been mulling the episode around in her head and wanted to know how solar panels worked and to find out if we had any! We talked in length about what little knowledge I had about solar panels (thankfully it was more than she knew and enough to satisfy her curiosity!) and I was able to show her the solar powered calculator we had and we experimented with it by placing it in the direct light and then hiding the collection panels from the light and watching it shut off. It was really fun.

The second conversation started as a discussion about germs, spurred I'm sure by the fact that she is sick. She was asking about whether or not germs had mouths and if they were monsters (thanks to a book she has that shows a cartoon picture of a germ) and what they looked like. I explained that germs are too little for us to see with our eyes and that I don't really know what they look like, but that different germs probably each look different just like different people do. I told her that in order to see what a germ looked like you need to use a microscope. At first she didn't know what a microscope was, but after I described one she piped up with, "Oh, like at the museum. I need one of those. I wish I had a really big microscope attached to my eyes so that could see really little things really big." On and on and on she went about wanting a microscope and about how she wanted one attached to her eyes. Maybe I'll have to get her some child sized binoculars. That's not exactly the same, but it's somewhat close and probably a better choice than a microscope. I'm not sure she's quite ready for a microscope, a magnifying glass maybe, but not a microscope. I do appreciate her desire though. I had a microscope as a kid (a much OLDER kid mind you) and I loved it. I had a blast preparing my own slides and examining the premade ones that came with it.

Photo Notes: In the first picture you see Hannah proudly displaying a picture she drew of our family. Pictured are Hannah, Daddy, Grandpa and Mommy, plus a flower. I'm the person on the top left that actually has a separate head and body. Notice the baby growing in my tummy. No, I'm not pregnant. It's just wishful thinking on her part and a reaction I think to a friend who recently had a baby. There's been a lot of references to a baby in my tummy lately!

The rest of the pictures are Hannah playing in the sprinkler in our backyard.

I'm Fine With That

So Hannah totally sucked the wind right out of my sails the other day. As many of you know, she's a spirited child and we've struggled to come up with the right method to manage her discipline. "Normal" methods didn't seem to work and we were really at a loss until we discovered the Nurtured Heart method last winter. Hannah totally "gets" the system and understands that her behavior earns her her privileges and if she doesn't follow through with good behavior then she doesn't have the credits needed to purchase her privileges. Well, the other night I had reminded Hannah multiple times that she needed to hang up her coat because she had dropped it on the floor upon returning home from school and just left it laying there all afternoon for the dog to curl up on! When it was almost bedtime and I informed her that if the coat was still on the ground when we did her credit review she would not receive full points for taking care of her coat and shoes she calmly informed me, "I'm fine with that. Mommy, I'm fine with not getting all my money." I was stunned. What was I supposed to say to that? If this crops up again, and I'm sure it will, then what am I to say? What leverage do I have if she's ok with the loss of privileges for not doing her chores or displaying appropriate behavior? I relayed this story to her OT yesterday and she said, "Wow, that's the kind of snarky comment you expect out of a teenager." She's totally right. Any suggestions? I'm really at a loss here because if the Nurtured Heart credit system ceases to work then I really don't know where to turn to.

Speaking of Nurtured Heart, Hannah did the sweetest thing yesterday and I just have to tell you about it. When she woke up from her nap she knocked on her door like always to be let out and when I opened the door she was there waiting for me with her fist tightly clenched. Before I could even say "Good Morning!" (I know it's not morning, but that's just what we say when someone wakes up around here. It works for us!) she immediately launched into a flurry of words. "I have money in my hand and it's 10 cents and I want to go to the museum and it costs 10 cents so lets go to the museum." I was once again stunned. Before knocking to get out of her room she decided what she wanted to do, checked her list of privileges to see how expensive it was, checked her piggy bank to see if she had enough money to do it, counted out the correct amount and then informed me of her choice. This girl can totally plan! Unfortunately, she had taken her nap MUCH, MUCH later than usual and by the time she finally woke up it was nearing 5pm. The museum is in Providence and takes about 15 minutes to get there. It closes at 5pm. No museum for Hannah. :( The poor thing was devastated. Huge crocodile tears welled up in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks. She pushed her head into my stomach and sobbed. I felt so bad for her. I really wanted to be able to take her to the museum, but we just couldn't. We worked out a plan though. She will save that 10 cents. She won't spend it on anything else and on Thursday (tomorrow) we will go to the museum for our Mommy-Daughter Day. She's pretty stoked about it and I'm so proud of her that she was able to recover relatively quickly from this disappointment. That's my big girl.

Today at lunch time I'm meeting with Hannah's new preschool teacher just to touch base and try to learn how things are run in her new classroom. This new teacher isn't very good about communicating what happens in the room on a daily basis so I guess I'm going to have to step up my end and do some detective work. Adding to the problem is that I drop Hannah off at school before the "preschool" portion of the day actually starts and pick her up after the academic day has technically ended so I don't even see her teacher. In fact, I've NEVER seen her teacher. This will be my first time ever laying eyes on her. Hannah adjusts much better to the transition of going to school if she is one of the first ones to arrive and can slowly adjust to the social situation one child at a time rather than being dropped off into a group of kids that are already engaged in something. We've learned that the hard way, hence the before care drop off even though it's not needed for our schedule since I don't work out of the home. She also has a difficult time with the transition from school back to home so I have to time her pick up so that she is one of the last students leaving and there is not much going on so that she doesn't think she's missing out on anything and feels a sense of closure. She can't be the last one there though or she begins to panic. Pick up can be tricky, but I've mostly got it timed well these days and we can extract her from the building without too much pain. Fridays are another story though because they get to watch movies on Friday afternoons and there is never enough time (even if she was the last one to leave) to watch the entire movie in the time period allotted so that means she has to leave mid movie and that is not easy for her. She's a finisher. She HAS to finish the things she's started before she can move on to something else and every Friday it's a given that she's not going to be able to finish that movie. We deal with it, but it's not a pretty sight. So, wish me luck that this meeting will go well. I will be interested to see if they have noticed any of Hannah's academic strengths in the new classroom. I know they were giving her extra stuff to do in her old classroom since she was so far ahead of her peers, but I don't know if that's happening in the new room or not. I'm sure she's academically ahead of the curriculum and hopefully that was shared by her previous teacher, but who knows. I haven't been able to speak to the teacher and of course I get nothing from Hannah. According to her they play on the playground-period. I'm lucky if I get that out of her. For a girl that loves to talk, she's very closed mouth about what goes on at school. That's why teacher communication is so important for me. I like to be able to talk with her about her day and if I know a little bit about what they did I can prompt her into telling me a bit. If I have nothing to go on I'm pretty much dead in the water.

Updates

Here are a few Hannah updates relating to previous posts that I never followed up on. We've finished the initial protocol for the therapeutic listening and have deemed it a fail. Hannah was compliant and we faithful about following all the rules, but it really didn't make any difference at all. The only thing we noticed was that whatever Hannah was working on WHILE she was doing the headphones, she was HYPER focused on, but that benefit ended once she stopped listening to the headphones so it didn't really benefit her if there wasn't any carry over. We saw no improvements on regulation, either sensory or emotional. We tried, but it just didn't work for us. We didn't really have anything to loose though. Our only costs were $40 to rent the equipment and buying a discman player which we can use for other things and our time. It was worth a shot.

Hannah went to the allergist last night to follow up on that suspected latex reaction she had after her dentist appointment. Apparently there is no official skin test that can be done for latex allergies so the offices make their own preparation. Hannah survived the scratch test and showed no allergies to any of the things they tested for. The doctor said that doesn't necessarily means she is NOT allergic to latex so he is sending her to have a blood test done to find out since they are apparently more accurate. I wonder why they couldn't have just done that test first, but then what do I know. In the mean time he wrote her a script for an Epi-pen as a precaution should we ever need it. That is pretty scary to me, but then I guess I'd rather be safe that sorry. She does have a lot of birthday parties coming up to attend. Apparently balloons are big culprits in latex reactions in kids.

Hannah appears to be doing well in her new classroom although I'm not as impressed by the new teacher's communication about what's going on in the classroom. Maybe I'm just one of "those" mom's, but I still like to be in the loop and know how she's doing, what they did each day, if she ate her lunch, etc. Is that too much to ask?

Lately she's been playing quite well with other children. I worried that I'd never get to say that, but it's happening! She has even on occasion joined up with random kids out in public to play. The other child always has to make the first move, but at least Hannah has agreed to play several times and not just ran and hid behind me. The other night at the doctor's office while we were waiting for her allergy testing a sweet little 6 (almost 7) year old girl started playing with Hannah. She wanted to read her a story out of a magazine, but was occasionally having trouble with some of the words. My little girl actually HELPED a first grader with reading! Together the two of them worked through the story and when they were done the other girl turned to Hannah and said, "You're a really good reader." and Hannah actually said "Thank you," unprompted. I was proud of her on so many levels for that interaction.

Hannah's imagination has really taken off lately. She likes to play with her friends when they aren't here so she turns them into imaginary friends basically. It's pretty funny. Then there's her pretending to be someone else that is equally as funny and heaven forbid if you forget to address her as whoever she is pretending to be because she just won't respond. Today while getting ready for school she was Super Girl Grape Banana Spontak and I was to address her as such if I wanted to accomplish anything and get out the door! Usually our pretend characters are Mommy __________(insert animal) , Baby_________, Grandma _________. This morning was different. She had a very specific name and by golly she was only answering to that. I couldn't even simply omit all mention of a name and just say, "It's time to brush your teeth." I had to say, "It's time to brush your teeth Super Girl Grape Banana Spontak" Eventually she was so kind as to let me leave off the Spontak part, but I still had to get the Super Girl Grape Banana! Parenting a 3 year old is a riot sometimes!

I've still been busy with the new business, but things seem to be going quite well. We are actually making some sales already and recovering a bit of our start up costs which is nice. So far I've covered 2 horse shows and my sister has done one thoroughbred race and we've sold quite a few prints from them. Now if we could just start making some sales on some of the fine art photography that is up on the website we'd be golden! If anyone's planning on redecorating a room please stop by the site and take a look. You might find something there you absolutely HAVE TO HAVE. We offer framing and matting too if you choose so are a one stop shop! http://candidcaptures.zenfolio.com/ Check us out!

Well, that's all the updates I have for now. Enjoy your weekend!

Photo Notes:

The pictures are from back in March when Hannah had her ear tube surgery. They even had portable DVD players and a selection of family movies for the kids to watch!

Lip Glossary

Sorry I've been remiss about posting again. I'm still learning how to manage being a mom, wife, and get a business off the ground and still have time for myself! Hannah's feeling better after her surgery and respiratory issues. In fact she's through that and a 24 hour stomach bug since I last posted! Thanks for all the well wishes and prayers. We appreciated them.

But enough apologizing, on to the fun stuff. Hannah's come up with some real winners here lately and I just had to share some of them with you. Today Hannah was putting on some Starburst chapstick she got in her stocking for Christmas. She was reading the name of the flavor she had chosen and then continued to read the rest of the words on the tube, "candy flavored lip gloss." I explained that lip gloss was just chapstick that would make her lips look shiny (as long as she didn't lick it off!). She applied her chapstick and went about her business and then all of a sudden she shouted, "Look Mommy! I didn't lick my lips and now they are all shiny because I'm wearing lip glossary." I about peed my pants laughing. It's pretty evident we've been reading too much non fiction lately!

Earlier in the week when I asked her why she was throwing a fit she told me, "It's complicated." Obviously!

Hannah's been doing quite well in preschool and making some great social connections with some of her classmates. She's doing so well in fact that her teacher has recommended that she move up into the 4 year old class now instead of waiting until July. Apparently there are several new students coming soon that are newly turned 3 year olds and they worry that she'll be uncomfortable with the younger children. I must say that I agree with them and think this move will be good for Hannah. The classroom she's moving too requires more independence and is more academic than the class she's leaving and I think the challenge will be good for her.

Speaking of academics, Hannah's turned into a reading machine lately. Anything she sees, she tries to read it-words flashed on TV, cereal boxes, mail, you name it. She has so many sight words that she's reading level 2 easy readers and many non leveled children's picture books fluently and with pretty decent comprehension. As evident by the "lip glossary" comment above, we've been reading a lot of non fiction books recently and she's been soaking up that knowledge like a little sponge. In fact she's been reading those animal fact books alone in her room and then randomly surprising me with various animal facts throughout the day. When I ask her how she knows that information she says she just knows, but later when I look at the books in her room or we read one of the books together I realize she's learned it from the book and when I ask her if she's read that book before she'll tell me yes. Amazing!

Defiance of late has been through the roof. I know 3 year olds are defiant, but Hannah is SO INTENSE. She's had me seriously doubting my skill at parenting. In fact I've been looking up local parenting classes and reading every book I can get ahold of to try to figure out how to deal with her defiance. She's pretty much oblivious to consequences and all forms of discipline. I've gone so far as to look up oppositional defiance disorder online to see if any of their techniques might work with Hannah or even if maybe that's what I'm dealing with although I'm not sure if a 3 year old could even be considered to have ODD since defiance is pretty much par for the course with a 3 year old. UGH. Sorry about that. Just had to vent.

We had some nice weather on and off the past two weeks and Hannah had a chance to get back on her tricycle. It seems that her physical strength and coordination increased dramatically over the winter because now she can pedal and steer her bike at the same time with only minimal frustration! Her stamina is pretty good too so we've been making lots of trips up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. She looks so proud when she's pedaling along on her bike. She's been tooling along down to the neighbors house and collecting all the leftover acorns that have fallen over the winter from their oak tree. She loads them up in the basket on her bike and carts them back home to "plant" them in the yard. It's so cute to watch her. She's so focused on her job. She'll have that "I'm on a mission" look on her face.

It's Okay Mommy

We've been hearing, "It's Okay, Mommy/Daddy" a lot lately whenever we tell Hannah to either do something or stop doing something and she doesn't want to obey. We've really cracked down on the "NO!" so she's been censoring herself a bit and has switched it up to "It's ok" AKA I'm not going to do what you want me to do. I plan on doing whatever I want to do. Though it's pretty creative and it does make me want to laugh sometimes it's driving me crazy. I keep having to take deep breaths to stop from going off the deep end.

To top things off, it's getting really frustrating (for both Kyle and I and Hannah) that Hannah can't hear. We are only 1 week into our 4 week wait before we head back to the ENT and I find myself constantly wondering how on earth we are going to make it that long if her hearing doesn't start improving on its own before then. It's to the point that we basically have to shout everything we say to Hannah VERY slowly and 3-4 times before she comprehends what we've said. I listened to her talk to my mom on the phone today and it was all I could do to not laugh as I heard Hannah saying, "Huh?" over and over and over again. I lost count while trying to keep track of the number of times she said, "I can't hear you." My poor girl. :(

On a happy note, we had Hannah's first parent teacher conference at her new preschool last week and we came away from it feeling very pleased. They do assessments on the children every 3 months using a skills inventory based on their age in months. When Hannah started she was 2 standard deviations below the norm in the social and emotional areas. Now, 6 months later, she's scoring completely at grade/age level in both of those areas! YAHOO! Now I know we aren't out of the woods yet and that some of her deficits will become more apparent as the social demands grow, but this assessment confirmed what I was already observing which is Hannah is making great strides in her social skills under the guidance of her teachers. I am so proud of my little girl. And to boast a little bit more, she also maxed out her scores on all the verbal, academic, fine motor, and gross motor skills on the assessment as well. :) The only "bad" thing the teacher had to tell us was that Hannah often "questions authority" AKA she's stubborn as all get out! and has a hard time listening to her teachers when she doesn't want to do something. The good news is that even though she often balks at what she's told to do, they aren't seeing any meltdowns when they push the issue and make her do it anyway. She saves that for us! When Miss Karyl was explaining about the gross motor portion of the assessment, one of the skills listed was throwing a ball overhand. I asked if they needed to have any aim at this point or just be able to chuck it wherever it will go. Karyl assured me that chucking it was just fine at this point and then told us a little story. She said that Hannah is actually developing quite good aim from playing with one of the other little boys in the class. Because of the extremely cold weather the kids haven't been able to go out on the playground very often so they've been spending a lot of time in the gross motor/sensory room. They have a kid's basketball net in there and Karyl pointed it out and said that Hannah plays with the hoop a lot because "Antonio is a big fan of playing basketball and Hannah is a big fan of Antonio!" I had to laugh about that one because it's true. Hannah is definitely a big fan of Antonio. Those two are like two peas in a pod. My girl really does like her boys. Practically all of her "friends" are boys and sadly this has always been the case. Even as an infant, she's always preferred men over women. I'm looking for this boy crazy trait to diminish a bit soon, but I won't hold my breath. As a side note, I had a note about this little story written down on some scrap paper to remind me to put in on the blog and Hannah found it and read perfectly and without any help, "Antonio is a big fan of basketball and Hannah is a big fan of Antonio!" and then laughed like crazy! UGH! Now I not only can't spell words out loud that I don't want her to know, but I have to be careful what I write down and where I leave it. I may just have to start writing anything I don't want her to read in cursive! Seriously, I shouldn't be having this problem with a 3 year old!

This past weekend the full moon wreaked havoc in our house. Hannah was WIRED to the max. She was running around and shrieking and jumping, and singing at the top of her lungs and grabbing everything she could touch. I thought I was going to go crazy. At one point I was trying to get her to try on some summer clothes from last year to see if any of them still fit (so far only a few do!) and I could not get her to stay near me long enough to get one article of clothing off and another one on before she was off and running all over the place. I found myself becoming almost hysterical and grabbed her by the waist and gave her a little shake and said quite manically "Hannah! CALM DOWN!" Kyle came into the room at that point and said, "Natalie, don't shake the child." It was then that I realized I was over the edge and I needed to pass her off for a little bit or I was going to lose it. I think things are back to normal now, but really it remains to be seen. She had a rough morning getting ready for school, but that's not unusual. We'll see how she is when she gets back from school. It's not too terribly cold outside (in the 20s as opposed to the single digits before the windchill) so maybe they'll get some extra playtime outside to run the crazies out of her.

Whoop! There it Is!

I apologize for the recent quietness on the blog, but we've been under the weather here at the Spontak house-for about six weeks. It started with Hannah and a moderate cold, or so we thought, that turned into pneumonia. Surprise, surprise! Then I became sick with a cold and then a nasty cough that increased in severity and never let up. Then Kyle got sick and ended up with a cough too. Of course Hannah had a cough too. We were a fine bunch to listen to-still are in fact since we still haven't stopped hacking and barking away. Turns out what we thought was just a cold was not an innocent cold virus, but instead Pertussis or better known as Whooping Cough. Leave it to us to come down with another archaic disease straight out of Oregon Trail. Last year was Scarlet Fever. This year Whooping Cough. Now all we need is Typhoid Fever and we'll have survived the Oregon Trail trifecta! For those of you not familiar with the computer game Oregon Trail. It became popular back in the 80's. I used to play it back in the day on the old Apple IIe's with the black and green screens. It was loads of fun. Those of you who grew up in the 80s or who had children who did probably know this game intimately! Apparently Whooping Cough is making a come back due to under vaccination and since your protection from the vaccine wanes after 10 years or so after your last dose (around 4 years old) you become susceptible again to anyone infected with the disease. So, Hannah who hasn't had her full round of vaccinations for it yet caught it and then passed it on to Kyle and I with our diminished protection since we're a bit past 14 years old. Fortunately since we all have at least some protection the disease is milder than it might otherwise have been for all 3 of us, but it's still mighty uncomfortable and definitely annoying. According to the doctor it could take up to 3 months for us to fully recover. I'm praying it doesn't take that long. I could certainly use a good night's sleep well before then.


Hannah continues to thrive at preschool and is permanently going full day now. I feel so blessed that we were able to find this preschool that is so sensitive to her needs and also doesn't put up with any crap from her either. They seem to know exactly how much to push and when to lay low. Hannah is making friends and has several little boys that she is particularly fond of. She always was one to prefer men! She also has one little girl who seems to be her partner in crime. It's so good to walk into the classroom and see her interacting without adult prompting or facilitation with her peers. Unfortunately her new found social skills at school don't seem to be transferring to other places. In fact, I would venture to say that she's become even more fearful and reluctant to play with or interact with other kids outside of school. It's to the point at the play place that she won't even go up into the play structure and play by herself if there are other kids around. That's quite frustrating, but at least I know she's getting social practice at school. I just wish we could find some way to generalize those skills to other situations.

We are preparing for a two week trip, starting next week, back home to Indiana and Ohio for Thanksgiving and Hannah is seriously pumped. She can't wait to go back to Indiana. She's especially excited to see her friend Evelyn and meet Evelyn's new baby sister Vivian. It should be a whirlwind trip with little time for relaxation so I pray we all handle it well. We plan to visit with all the grandparents and some of the great grandparents, aunts and uncles, Hannah's birth family, and some friends. I hope we can squeeze it all in there. People have a tendency to get mad if they get left out, but we can't be two places at once and we only have so much time. Really we will probably be over extending ourselves as it is, but we still won't be able to make everyone happy. :(

The other day Hannah surprised me by demonstrating that she knows her ordinal numbers (at least up to the fifth place). She told me she was going to tell me five stories and then as she told me each one she said things like, "The first one is about. . . Here is the second story. . . Next is the third story. . ." and so on. I had no idea she knew those. I've never explicitly taught her them. It must either be something they learned at school or that she just picked up. She's always amazing me by the things that she just absorbs when we aren't looking. I'm sure it helps that she's got a mind like a steel trap and NEVER forgets anything. I can't remember exactly what it was, but just the other day she recounted for me with pin point accuracy something that happened last February that I'm pretty sure we hadn't discussed since it happened (or at least not recently)! I was completely shocked of course.

Night time potty training is finally going well. We had a few months of accidents almost every other day and I was starting to regret my decision to ditch the pull ups at bedtime, but all of a sudden she seems to be doing ok and we've had 20 days with only 1 accident! It's been so nice to not be washing urine soaked bedding every single day. That was getting really old. We are still getting her up when we go to bed to potty one last time for the night, but that's not too bad. I can handle that if it means no more diapers and no more (or at least very few) accidents.

Hannah seems to be adjusting well to her braces. She doesn't seem to mind wearing them at all (at least no more than she minds wearing socks in general.) The one thing she doesn't particularly care for about them is walking long distances in them. She will start saying her feet hurt. I can't really say that I blame her. After all her foot isn't on a cushy insole anymore, but instead on hard plastic. The orthotic technician that made her brace was able to trim it down significantly so that it's very unobtrusive. He cut it so her toes can hang over the end and was able to trim the top down so that it ends just above her ankle bones instead of mid shin. I am extremely grateful for that. I think that makes them much more comfortable for Hannah and she doesn't stand out wearing them. In fact you really don't notice them at all unless you look for them because they sit mostly inside her shoes.