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.

Day of Firsts

Today was a day of firsts. I took my first trip to IKEA and I was amazed. Unfortunately the snowstorm that was supposed to hit New England tomorrow arrived early and we had to leave before fully exploring all the store had to offer. Hannah loved the awesome kid's play area and was doing cannon balls into the HUGE ball pit they have. She apparently even played with some kids that she met while she was in there. When we picked her up she said, "Daddy, there was a boy with an orange shirt in the play place and he was my friend and we played." Later at the restaurant (I can't believe they have a restaurant too!) she pointed him out to us while we were in line. Way to go Hannah! Preschool has been SOOOOOO good for her. I'm totally going back there again with her someday to explore the store some more since she was so willing to hang out in the kid's area.

When we got home there was quite a bit of snow on the ground (it took us 3 hours to drive 40 miles because of a huge traffic back up that we were never able to deduce what the root cause of was) so Kyle and Hannah bundled up to go outside to play (well Kyle was technically shoveling). Hannah caught sight of the neighbor girls who were outside playing in their yard and had to go over to see them. They invited us to go sledding in their backyard since they have a really steep hill. So, Hannah was able to sled for the first time. She loved it. She even went down on her own several times. I took pictures, but it was getting so dark (since it is dark around 4pm these days!) that the shutter speed had to be too slow to get enough light for me to be able to get any good shots handholding the camera. :( Too bad, I would have loved to have some shots of her first experience sledding. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised when I upload them.

Then, before bedtime Hannah was working on her Christmas thank you cards. I usually write out the phrases "Thank You" and "Love, Hannah" for her to copy in the appropriate places on the cards so that I don't have to spell each word aloud for every single card and she can just move at her own pace independently. Today when I went to set the phrase card out of her to copy she said, "No Mommy! I can do it on my own." I tried to get her to take the example card, but she was not having it. Eventually I consented and boy did she show me. She wrote from memory "Thank You" and "Love Hannah" legibly, spelled correctly, and in the right place on all 12 cards! I had no idea she knew how to spell "thank you." "Love," I could believe since it was one of the first words she learned to read as a sight word after her own name, but "thank you" just blew me away. I knew she could read those words, but it's a much bigger deal in my opinion to pull the spelling out of your head and put it down on paper. That's my girl! She's such a smarty.

Thanksgiving Trip

Ok, so I know it's almost Christmas and I'm just now writing about our Thanksgiving Trip back to the Midwest, but we've been busy and December just kinda got away from me. The trip out was awful .We had rain and fog the whole way and Hannah barely slept at all. We had a HUGE meltdown at a gas station in the middle of the night that lasted almost a half hour which seemed like an eternity closed up in the van. Once arriving at our first destination, Pap and Mindy's house, things got much better. Kyle and I slept and Hannah hung out with Pap playing, raking leaves, and carrying pumpkins all over the yard. Can you say heavy work!?! Hannah did well the whole time we were in Ohio although she was definitely overtired most of the time because of bedtimes stretched hours past normal. Our next stop was Mamaw and Papaw's house. Hannah was in heaven. She got to feed the horses, play with our dog Ella, climb on the swing set Papaw made, and get spoiled rotten with candy by Mamaw. While in Indiana we also visited with Hannah's birthmother, Tiffany, and her twins. We spent the day with them at the Children's Museum and had a blast. Hannah loved hanging out with her sister Kayla and Kayla and Chase really got into their roles as a big sister and brother. Hannah also finally warmed up to Donna, Tiffany's mom, and that was awesome to see. Up until now, Hannah has refused to really go near Donna for some reason. I think it broke Donna's heart although she'd never say that. This visit was different for some reason. When we prompted Hannah to give Grandma Donna a hug she practically threw herself onto her lap. The look of shock on Donna's face was priceless. After staying at Mamaw and Papaw's house, we headed back to West Lafayette to visit with friends. We stayed with Hannah's bestest friend Evelyn. The two of them were so cute together. It was so awesome to see Hannah finally playing independently with her and returning some of the affection Evelyn has always lavished on her. Those two still really know how to push each other's buttons. Even after not seeing each other for 6 months they were still able to do it instantly and push away they did! It was just like they were sisters! After Evelyn's house we headed to my sister's for a few days before starting the drive back to Rhode Island. We got to hang out and meet her new (to us) boyfriend, have dinner with Grandpa, and pick up Abby our other dog. We left bright and early Saturday morning and planned on driving straight through, but the weather again had it in for us and we ran into a snowstorm in the mountains of Pennsylvania and we decided to stop for the night after seeing several cars off in the ditch. It was an ordeal to find a hotel with rooms available that was also willing to take in a geriatric beagle pup. We eventually found a place to stay after I gave my sob story and a hotel that doesn't allow pets decided to make an exception for us. We got a good night's sleep and made it home in one piece the next day. How's that for the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of our two week trip?

Approximately 40+ hours in the car during our trip did have one perk. We were able to hear some awfully funny things come out of Hannah's mouth, all totally unexpected and unprompted. Here they are for your reading pleasure.

On the way out we stopped at a McDonalds for breakfast very early in the morning in the heart of Amish Country in PA. Though I grew up in a community known for a fairly large Amish population, Hannah had never met or even seen someone dressed in traditional Amish attire. Throughout the month of November Hannah and I had been reading books about the first Thanksgiving and been looking at pictures of Pilgrims and Native Americans. When Hannah caught sight of the large group of Amish in the restaurant (the only other customers in the restaurant besides us mind you) she pointed straight at the nearest group of young women in bonnets and shouted, "Mom! Look! Native Americans!" She was so proud of herself and I about died. I immediately knew what she meant and that fact didn't make me any less embarrassed. Poor Hannah had confused Pilgrims and Native Americans and she was quite certain that she was staring at a real live Pilgrim even if she had her terms incorrect! I quietly tried to shush her and explain that no, they weren't Native Americans, that she meant Pilgrims, but they weren't Pilgrims either, they were Amish and they were dressed that way because of the church they belonged to. UGH! I never saw that coming and had no prepared answer for reminding my daughter not to shout "Look Ma! Indians!" at poor unsuspecting Amish just out enjoying their Micky D's! I guess 3 year olds don't care much about political correctness!

A second McDonald's story occurred somewhere in CT. Because Rhode Island seems to have something against the indoor playplace in fast food restaurants, we happen to know the location of every one of them within a 30 minute drive from our house. Through trial and error (and a badly in need of updating McDonald's website) Hannah has learned how to tell if a McDonald's once had an outdoor playground that has now been converted into an outdoor dining area. The reason for getting rid of the playground we've explained to Hannah is that it was old and unsafe and they had to take it out. When pulling into the above mentioned McDonald's in CT Hannah immediately spotted the tell-tale "astro turf" and fence around the front of the restaurant and matter-of-factly informed me, "That playplace was old so they took it out just like Grandpa's teeth." I about peed my pants I laughed so hard. Someone's gotta teach that girl not to do that to a person badly in need of a bathroom break after many hours on the road!

Now for 3 completely random statements that we heard from the backseat of the van, in no particular order.

"Mom! When I grow up I'm going to be a truck driver." Do truck drivers wear tutus? What do you think?

"Don't call me baby (Kyle had just referred to her as baby). I don't like it. (at least she can use her words to tell us what she does and doesn't like!) Call me walnut. Mommy, you can call me acorn. Wait! I'll give you choices. You can pick acorn, apple, or pear." Seriously, where DOES she come up with these things? At least I got choices. Did you notice how Kyle didn't even get choices!?!

"When I grow up, I hope I get a baby in my tummy." How's that for a line that's sure to give a daddy a heart attack?

And then later the same day, "When I grow up I want to be a mommy and have six babies in my tummy and have a husband." Not an impossible goal I suppose in this day and age with reproductive technology and all, but I would have liked for the statement about a husband to come BEFORE the proclamation about the babies in her tummy!

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.

18 Months Old

Hannah is officially a year and a half old! Last weekend someone asked me how old Hannah was and I was taken aback when I had to say 18 months. That just seems so old for my little girl! Some good things are coming with her new age and maturity. Some of her stranger anxiety is lessening-FINALLY! We went to a family Christmas on Saturday to see family Hannah hasn't seen since last Christmas and she did great. After 15 minutes or so to warm up she was running around like she owned the place. That made me so happy. She's also been using 3 and 4 word sentences a lot to express herself which is really nice. For example she will say, "Mommy do it please," when she wants me to do something she is pretending to do like be a cow and "eat" the "grass" on her play mat. Or "Daddy's chair move it," when she wants me to pull out Kyle's chair so she can stand on it to look out the window. Every day I am amazed by something she says. Lately it seems like she has a one track mind. If I try to distract her from something she wants or wants to do and I think that once I get her down for a nap or interested in something else she will forget about it, it almost never works. If I tell her we will do something after her nap it is ALWAYS the first thing she asks about when she wakes up, even before I get her out of her crib! One day I told her we would be going to the bookmobile after her nap and I heard her saying on the monitor when she woke up (I wasn't even in the room yet!) "more new books please." She even surprised Sarah when she was asking for a cracker and Sarah told her she would have to ask me about it when I came back into the house. The moment I stepped through the door Hannah asked, "Mommy, cracker?" Sarah was shocked. Her memory is always cause for my amazement. She seems to just know so much that I don't even intend to teach her. For example, one day she was in her crib and supposed to be taking a nap. Well, she wasn't sleeping and hadn't been for 40 minutes. She was alternately crying and just randomly talking and then all of a sudden she started asking every person, animal, and object she could think of to get her down. She went through mommy down, daddy down, Abby down, Ella down, Sadie down, Penny down, Pap down, Kevin down, Grandpa down, Mamaw down, Papaw down, Zeke down, Toby down, Sarah down, Evelyn down, Jason down, Sidney down, Heather down, Kristie down, Jake down and on and on using duck, zebra, lion, elephant, etc. The crazy thing was that she naturally grouped all the things/people who went together into family groups or equivalents. For example she did Kyle and I and all of our pets together, she did Kyle's family together, she did Sarah and her family and dog together, etc. She even put all the random animal names together and furniture together!

It's been interesting lately to see her learning from other people. For example, her friend Evelyn says "upy" when she wants picked up. Hannah has always just used the word up and then up please to indicate she wants picked up, but all of a sudden she started using upy after spending a day with Evelyn. It was funny because we knew she knew that wasn't the right word to say because if we pretended not to hear her she would completely change her tactic and say "Up, please!" :) Another example is sneezing. When Hannah sneezes or when someone else sneezes we always say bless you, but we had never instructed Hannah to say it. Now she ALWAYS says bless you to anyone who sneezes or coughs. It's very cute. She has also learned how to say excuse me properly. Instead of just saying, "excUse" she says, "Excuse Meeeeee". It sounds a little snotty at the moment like she's back talking, but I'm pretty sure she's not doing that yet! We'll work on the delivery after she gets the idea of it a little better!

Lately she's been much more affectionate and has been giving spontaneous hugs and kisses and I love yous. She's even started asking Kyle to turn his head from side to side so that she can kiss each cheek over and over again. It makes me smile when she asks for kisses!

She's really getting into being a "Big Girl" and doing absolutely everything for herself. She can now feed herself exclusively, even soup or other liquids such as cheerios with milk. This actually makes things difficult sometimes because when I try to stop her from dumping something when she's not paying attention she gets really angry and throws a tantrum. Speaking of eating, she has two more new teeth that finally came in. Now she has pretty much all of her teeth except for her last set of molars. I will be so happy for teething to be completely over. She's not been a good teether and it will be nice to be rid of at least one more thing that can potentially make her cranky!

Hannah spends a lot of time talking about Jesus. She's been praying a lot on her own and reminds me to pray at meals sometimes. We've been working on bowing our heads and closing our eyes (along with folding her hands which she's mastered) when we pray and the other day she just climbed up on the couch and said "Pray Jesus" and folded her hands, closed her eyes, and bowed her head and then sat silently for a brief moment and then said "Amen" I was so proud of her.

We finally took the rocker off of her bike and have been letting Hannah push it around the house with her feet. She can almost reach the pedals now, but can't quite extend her leg all the way to actually pedal. I'm sure this spring she'll be able to reach them and will be rearing to go!

This winter our family has been plagued with our share of colds, sniffles, and stuffy noses. Hannah finally had her first doctor's visit with no tears and she even bravely let them take her temperature and look in her ears and mouth! Her congestion forced us to get the dreaded aspirator out again and by the end of it Hannah had actually stopped struggling while we did it. In fact it was as if she was putting up with it just so she could get to the good part which this time was twisting the cap back on the saline solution that we squirt up her nose first! She is also honing her skills at blowing her nose and is very interested in everyone else blowing their noses too! Speaking of doctors, today I had a doctor's appointment that I had to take Hannah with me to and while the doctor was entering some information into the computer she get very excited because she wanted to see the "pishurs" on it. Because we do so much digital photography, Hannah thinks computers are made for nothing but displaying pictures of her and she is very surprised anytime there is a computer somewhere else that doesn't have a picture of her on it!

Back before Christmas we went to visit Tiffany and her family and Hannah got to see Tiffany's brother Robert for the first time since May. Every time Robert has seen Hannah since she has been born she has screamed bloody murder whenever he held her. BUT for some reason this last visit was different. Hannah really warmed up to him quickly and they became fast friends. I wonder if it's the facial hair (Robert recently let his beard grow much longer) since Hannah seems to have a thing for men with facial hair. We got some great pictures of them together and when we were walking into the church to see the twins' Christmas play, Hannah wanted to hold Robert's hand! It was really cute. Ever since Hannah has been asking about Robert constantly and completely fixates on his picture in her photo album. I know it made Robert feel good and I'm happy that Hannah is developing closer bonds with all of her birthfamily.

Ever since Hannah had her last bout with pneumonia and the x-ray tech gave her a sticker, Hannah has been very intrigued by stickers. Then, she started going to gymnastics and she gets either a sticker or a stamp on her hand after each class. That pretty much sent her into full fledged sticker obsession. This is pretty much a pain in the butt since she likes to take them on and off of the various things she chooses to stick them on and then they lose their sticky and they get lost and she has a fit when she can't find her sticker, but I have managed to find a bright side to the obsession and use it for my benefit. Lately Hannah has been asserting her independence which has caused some serious obedience issues. Consequently we try to praise her like crazy whenever she does obey without a fight. So, here recently, I've been saving all those crazy stickers that charitable organizations send me (like Easter Seals for example) and using them as rewards/incentives when Hannah obeys. She is so proud of herself when she earns a sticker and sometimes even wants to call Kyle at work and tell him about it! I'm thinking that if this sticker obsession continues until she is a little bit older then I may have hit the jackpot in the discipline department because she is also devastated if she loses a sticker for being disobedient or naughty. Maybe, just maybe stickers will be the key to a quick and painless toilet training.

Hannah got several new art related supplies as gifts for Christmas and she's really been enjoying trying them out and releasing her inner Picasso! She got some Crayola first markers and paints and some new crayons from her grandpa and she LOVES to use them to color the pages she gets at gymnastics and at the bookmobile. She also got this cool little magnetic drawing lap desk from Kyle's aunt and uncle that she is crazy about. It even has these little magnet "stamps" that are animal shapes that she can stamp on the desk and then it all wipes clean with one swipe of the ladybug lever and you can start all over. It's really cool. Even I like playing with it. The best thing is that it's designed for kids 18 months and up so I don't have to worry about safety concerns like I would have to with a normal magnadoodle or the equivalent. Hannah loves to pretend she's writing her name on the screen and even pretends to spell it out. She knows several of the letters in her own name although she doesn't usually get them in the right order when she says them out loud as she pretends to write. I can't wait to try this toy out in the van the next time we need to take a road trip. We let Evelyn borrow it when they took their trip back to Minnesota for Christmas and we heard it was a lifesaver.

Hannah has always loved to be tickled from since she was really little. Once she learned the signs for more and all done and then the words more and all done she also loves to get you to start and stop tickling her on command repeatedly! For the past few weeks she's branched out in the tickling department from just being the tickled to now also being the tickler. She loves to tickle me and of course announce what she's doing by saying, "tickle, tick, tick!" as she's tickling me. She's also started trying to tickle the pets which is pretty funny to watch. I'm not so sure that the dogs or cats really get it, but they've been good sports about it so far.

To update everyone on Hannah's love of numbers, she has officially mastered counting to 6 and has even counted to 10 a few times on her own too. It's been so exciting to watch her just explode with knowledge the past few weeks. She's had a color learning explosion as well. She can now accurately name red, blue, green, orange, and pink about 95% of the time. She gets yellow and purple only about 75% of the time, but I think that's pretty good for an 18 month old. It seems like her favorite thing to do these days is to count or play the "color game" which is pretty much either me pointing to something and asking her what color it is, me saying "Hannah find the (insert color) (insert object)", or her matching colors. She likes to have me pull out a green block and then ask her to put all the other blocks of the same color by it. She loves to do that sorting game. To her everything is a game and she just soaks it up and constantly asks for more. She's just so bored when she's not learning that she gets herself into all sorts of trouble.

Gymnastics

Hannah absolutely LOVES her gymnastics class. She asks to practice her moves all the time. She's really into doing forward rolls and learning how to jump. I actually have her doing both on video. Kyle took her to class today and he said they were even doing the wheelbarrow. I haven't seen her do it yet, but I can't wait to try it out after she wakes up from her nap. She also loves doing all the stretches that go with gymnastics and I like it because it gives me an incentive to stretch too.

Here's some videos of Hannah singing. They aren't her finest performances, but she seems to clam up anytime we get out the camera and then all she wants to do is listen to us sing and then maybe, just maybe she'll chime in with a key word here and there.

This first video is of her helping sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat. It's one of her favorites since we also sing it at gymnastics while we are doing stretches. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=34476017272765754&hl=en

In this video we are singing The Wheels on the Bus, but Hannah keeps wanting to sing a different verse than I'm singing! I guess only her favorite verses are worthy enough for her to sing! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5268533663290301654&hl=en

Ok, it's been a month since I started this post. Our computer crashed and we had to have it in the shop for quite awhile. I vowed to not go too long in between posts and have to write novels again, but this time it wasn't my fault!

Hannah continues to love to read her books. She will often sit by herself and read them out loud or read them to me if I ask her. She has several books that she has every single page memorized and can say at least the key words or ideas on each one! It's so neat to hear her reading and see that she's actually saying the right thing for the right page. It doesn't take her long to memorize a book either. We can check a new book out from the bookmobile and she will have it completely memorized (if she likes it of course) within 2-3 days worth of reading! It's amazing what the human brain can do. Along with her reading books, she's still doing a lot of singing on her own. She will just randomly break into song while she's playing. It's very cute.

Lately she has been extremely stubborn and has been getting lots of time outs. Her two biggest offenses for getting time outs are hitting and refusing to say excuse me. The other day she was so dead set against saying excuse me after she burped that she actually asked for her time out mat! Today she was at it again and had 4 hysterical timeouts in a row before she finally relented and said excuse me after Kyle told her that she wouldn't be allowed to leave her room until she said it. She's going to be a tough teenager I bet. It is interesting to see her personal take on discipline though. For example, she saw her friend Evelyn get in trouble one day and get her hand smacked. Now if she sees the pets or any other child misbehaving she will smack her own hand and say "BAD!"

Hannah has been really interested in counting and has now mastered counting aloud from 1-3 and can occasionally count to 4. Usually though she skips straight from 3 to 5. She doesn't really know what the numbers mean yet, but she loves to point to each thing as she counts them out and enjoys the praise she gets when she says the numbers in the correct order. Today she really made me laugh. She was playing with her Whinnie the Pooh piano and she hit the key that says, "One, 1 egg." As soon as she heard one she immediately finished the sequence by saying, "2,3. Yeah!" and clapped for herself. She cracks me up sometimes.

Even though it's not officially Christmas yet, Hannah has received a few gifts already. One of her favorites is a tea set that has characters from her favorite movie, The Backyardigans, on it. Hannah is absolutely obsessed with the teapot and all the fixings that go with it. It came with the pot, 2 cups and saucers, a sugar bowl and spoon, 4 bracelets, a tiara, a ring, and a purse. After only 2 days we managed to lose 3 of the 4 bracelets and Abby chewed up the tiara pretty good! I actually think that the bracelets are not lost, but that Abby ate them given the state of the tiara when I found it on the same day the bracelets went missing. Then, yesterday the last bracelet went missing. The missing pieces to this set really bother me because I HATE for things to go missing. I take a complete inventory of all of Hannah's toys every night and look for and always find (except for that darn cow's butt from the fridge farm! that still haunts me!) anything that isn't immediately visible. Anyway, Hannah loves this tea set and plays tea all the time. One day I caught her having a tea party with her monkey. The monkey was wearing the tiara and she was pretending to make him drink the tea. The funniest part about this whole thing is that she calls the teapot a "peapot." She can say both the word tea and the word pot, but when she puts them together she ALWAYS says "peapot." It makes me smile every single time.

We were pretty worried about putting a Christmas tree up this year because we thought that Hannah would be really crazy about it and pull ornaments off and break them or knock the whole thing over, but we shouldn't have been worried at all. She has been awesome about it. She is VERY interested in it, but she mostly just looks or touches the ornaments gently. To be safe we only put non breakable ornaments that we weren't worried about her tearing up where she could reach and any breakable ones that we just couldn't bear to go without at the top. We left off all of our glass bulbs :( and any ornaments that need hooks instead of string. One of Hannah's current favorite pastimes is to point to each and every ornament on the tree and tell me what it is. She calls this "Ooking" AKA "looking." She also loves to have us ask her where a certain ornament is and then she'll point it out. It didn't take her long to have pretty much the entire tree memorized! Once again, there's that amazing human brain at work. Another funny thing that has come up this Christmas season is that Hannah thinks that Santa Claus is Noah (from Noah's Ark). In Evelyn's Noah's Ark the Noah has a long white beard and Santa has a long white beard, so I can see her confusion, but it's still pretty funny. She gave her gymnastics teacher a good laugh over that one!

Lately Hannah has been really interested in peeing in the potty. She loves to come to the bathroom with us and say, "Pee in potty." She is quite intrigued by flushing and really wants to give it a try, but so far I've been telling her that only big girls and boys and mommies and daddies that pee in the potty get to flush. Hopefully this will give her some incentive to go once it's finally time to start toilet training. Other than a keen interest in the potty, Hannah doesn't show any of the other signs of toilet training readiness so I'm definitely not going to push it. She's so stubborn that I could see things going horribly wrong and her holding it for a week or something if we tried to teach her before she was really ready!
Over the past few weeks Hannah has developed a bit of a crush on Evelyn's daddy, Jason. Whenever he's around Hannah wants to be near him and when he's not around she asks about him. She says his name in such swoony voice and then sighs longingly afterwords that it sounds like a schoolgirl with a HUGE crush. She stretches out the "A" sound and gives the first syllable a really funny inflection. If she doesn't get over this soon it's going to give Kyle a complex I think!

Hannah is getting really good at recognizing people from their photos even if they are older photos and people have different hairstyles, wearing glasses versus contacts, etc. She has her very own photo album that she loves to flip through and name each and every person she sees in the pictures. I have several people who aren't in the book yet that I need to take some current pictures of so don't be surprised if you see me coming at you with my camera the next time I see you!
A couple of weeks ago we had a really big snowstorm come through that dumped about 10 inches of snow on us. Kyle was so excited to take Hannah out and go sledding or at the very least play in the snow. We got Hannah all bundled up in her snow pants, mittens, parka, hat, and snow boots and then took her outside only for her to decide that she wasn't quite sure about that stuff called snow. She liked the look of it, but really didn't want to touch it or walk in it. In the end she came around a little bit, but it still took longer to get her all dressed up to play than she actually spent outside playing in the snow!
One of Hannah's favorite jobs at the moment is giving the dogs treats when we put them in their crates. She loves to yell for them and then close the door and give them a treat once they are inside. When she calls for them she says, "Abby! Pum! Ella! Crate!" That "pum" is come in case you don't speak toddlerese! She hears us giving orders to the dogs so much that the other day when Kyle was watching her and she wanted me she called, "Mommy, Pum!" :) Here second favorite job is helping Kyle give the Christmas tree water. She knows where we keep the cup and will go get it, take it over to the sink for Kyle to fill it up, and then run back over the to tree and lay down and look underneath as Kyle pours the water into the tree stand. Then she puts the cup back where it belongs and waits impatiently for the next day when she can do it all over again!
Ok, I have lots more updates, but I'm going to go ahead and post this one and then make the rest of the updates a second post so people don't get too bored reading this all at once!