It feels like Abigail is getting so big so fast I want to try to keep up with updates to remember what was happening when.
At the beginning of May, Abigail moved up to the next classroom at school, so now she is a Purple Dragon. She is very excited about the move and seems to be enjoying the new class and routine so far. They have new and different toys, are able to go swimming during water days in the summer, and are working on letters. Every two weeks the kids are sent home with a bag with a letter of the alphabet on it and their "homework" is to bring the bag back with something that starts with that letter. The kids then take turns sharing what they brought in during circle time. Abigail has been very enthusiastic about this project and has been eager to share her items, according to her teachers. The teachers also organize the activities by the letter of the week, so they talked about tornadoes during "T" and got to play with earthworms during "W". Abigail can tell you lots of things about tornadoes now! They have done some work on writing their names too and Abigail is getting good at writing her "A" after a lot of practice.
It has been an eventful few months for us as we sold our old house, bought a new house, moved after staying in a hotel a few nights while all our things were in the moving truck and our storage unit, went to Phoenix briefly and to Mexico over Memorial Day. Plus there is the impending arrival of her baby brother to add to the mix in case there was not enough going on. Overall, Abigail has handled all these changes very well although she has had her moments with behavior and sleep issues.
Eating:
Abigail continues to be a fairly good eater and has her routines and preferences very clear. For breakfast she likes to have cereal, eggs, or "hot toast" or "cold toast" (aka bread) with butter or peanut butter. She takes her time eating but usually finishes most of her food. For lunch she usually has leftover macaroni and cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some kind of fruit, and a squeezy yogurt. Dinner is a little more unpredictable but she usually will eat most of what we cook. We have gotten into a bad habit of bribing her to eat with the promise of treats so we have stepped back on that and have had less eating battles as a result. We try to make sure she needs to try things but not push too much to finish everything. There is one meal in our regular rotation which is too spicy for her. When I tell her that is what we are having for dinner, she makes sure to remind me that it is the one she doesn't like and that she does not have to try it again. On those nights she can have macaroni or a sandwich instead.
Abigail still loves to eat fruits and sweets and enjoys baking with me. Now that she is bigger, I let her lick the beaters after we make cookies and she seems to like that part especially!
Abigail continues to do well in her big girl bed and was able to go with the flow while we put her mattress in our room for a few days after the move, both when we first arrived at the house and the night we had no air conditioning while we waited for the new unit to finish being installed. She transitioned back to her own room pretty well even though I was a little worried. In the new house, she is sleeping downstairs while we are upstairs. We got a video monitor with two way communication and that has helped us all feel better about the distance. She does just get up and come right upstairs to see us as soon as she gets up though.
The other big development is that in April Abigail finally learned to fall asleep on her own and earned the movie "Frozen" as a result. She is continuing to fall asleep on her own the vast majority of the time although she needed a little help from me a few nights at the beginning. I am proud of how well she adjusted to the new location and routine.
In terms of napping, Abigail does not nap for us at home unless she is sick. She naps at school some of the time. The first week in her new class, one of the teachers asked me if Abigail napped at home. I responded by laughing and she replied, "say no more". I then explained that she has done better at school and they were able to get her back on track. We still see a difference in her behavior (for the worse) on the days when she did not nap at school.
Playing:
Abigail is so imaginative now and loves to play pretend and dress up. Dress up is one of her favorite activities at school and when we ask her what she did at school, she often shares about playing "Anna and Elsa" (from Frozen) dress up. She is able to watch one movie over the weekend so we have been watching Frozen weekly. She has learned the words to several of the songs and will sing them enthusiastically at the top of her lungs when she feels like it. She is also enjoying playing with her play kitchen and tea set which were in storage from February to May while the house was being shown and we were moving. As we set up the baby's room, Abigail is also showing a renewed interest in toys that she outgrew, likely due to the novelty factor.
Abigail loves to go swimming and she and JP have been swimming almost daily in the community pool right by our house in the new neighborhood. There are several kids around her age who live nearby and we often see them at the pool. Abigail has been enjoying getting to try out new pool toys and getting to know the neighbors too.
Abigail is very excited about being a big sister and sometimes shows this by having us play "baby": we take turns being the mom and the baby and the mom takes the baby to school and leaves her with her bottles and then comes back to pick her up. She also tells me that she has a baby in her belly just like me, but hers is a girl and due in June (before me).
Growth:
Abigail continues to grow and grow and people often comment to me on how tall she is and how she looks older than 3 due to her height. She was sick the last weekend in May with a fever and we went to urgent care, so we found out that she was 42 inches tall and 33 pounds. I checked her three year old update and realized that she has gained one pound and 3 1/2 inches in the last six months, which supports my feeling that she just keeps sprouting!
Abigail is learning a lot about the alphabet and spelling and has some interest in practicing her letters at times. She is more interested in coloring lately and is able to tell us stories about her pictures now, which I love. Her artwork at school is coming home with explanations too. Abigail can count pretty high and is beginning to be able to do some mental math, looking at a set of items and telling us there are four grapes, for example, without counting them one by one. What a smart cookie!
Communication:
Abigail is so articulate and can tell us long and complicated stories. She has a great memory and will ask us about little things we have said or want us to tell her the detailed version of a minor incident from several months ago. She likes hearing stories about when a bird pooped on my car, for example, when I flew to England and threw up on the plane as a little kid, when I got a sunburn, or stories about Sam the dog from when JP was little. She also likes it when I tell her fairy tales with some editing when she is brushing her teeth or when we are trying to get the chlorine tangles out of her hair. We are working on using her words when she is mad, which is difficult, and she sometimes clams up when we talk about a bad choice she made, but we are working on emphasizing how to "turn it around' when she is having a rough time.
Abigail also likes to talk about what will happen when she is bigger. She is very aware of who is older than who and is curious about the things that bigger kids can do and babies cannot do. So we have conversations about why that big kid can walk in the parking lot without holding a grown up's hand, how old she must be, and how old Abigail will have to be in order to do such a dangerous thing. After lots of conversations about lots of different topics, Abigail will now guess an age herself, like saying, "I will wear lipstick (chapstick) when I am bigger, like maybe 10". If I say, "yes, probably 9 or 10," she will respond by agreeing to my lower estimate. We have also spent a lot of time talking about why people are older and younger than each other and finally settled on the person who is older "came out first". So she is older than her baby brother because she came out first.
Abigail is able to tell many stories and has a great memory, and doesn't have a lot of quirks to her conversations. One minor thing that I really like and thus don't correct is that she still says "mines" instead of "mine", which makes sense in a way as a corollary to "yours". She has also decided that when she grows up she is going to be a doctor and work in the same hospital as Daddy with the same sick babies and kids but that she will drive the car to the hospital!
It has been a whirlwind of a last few months but in the midst of everything, Abigail is doing great! I can't wait to see how she handles the arrival of her baby brother and more changes in her little life so we will see how it unfolds.
The other big development is that in April Abigail finally learned to fall asleep on her own and earned the movie "Frozen" as a result. She is continuing to fall asleep on her own the vast majority of the time although she needed a little help from me a few nights at the beginning. I am proud of how well she adjusted to the new location and routine.
In terms of napping, Abigail does not nap for us at home unless she is sick. She naps at school some of the time. The first week in her new class, one of the teachers asked me if Abigail napped at home. I responded by laughing and she replied, "say no more". I then explained that she has done better at school and they were able to get her back on track. We still see a difference in her behavior (for the worse) on the days when she did not nap at school.
Playing:
Abigail is so imaginative now and loves to play pretend and dress up. Dress up is one of her favorite activities at school and when we ask her what she did at school, she often shares about playing "Anna and Elsa" (from Frozen) dress up. She is able to watch one movie over the weekend so we have been watching Frozen weekly. She has learned the words to several of the songs and will sing them enthusiastically at the top of her lungs when she feels like it. She is also enjoying playing with her play kitchen and tea set which were in storage from February to May while the house was being shown and we were moving. As we set up the baby's room, Abigail is also showing a renewed interest in toys that she outgrew, likely due to the novelty factor.
Abigail loves to go swimming and she and JP have been swimming almost daily in the community pool right by our house in the new neighborhood. There are several kids around her age who live nearby and we often see them at the pool. Abigail has been enjoying getting to try out new pool toys and getting to know the neighbors too.
Abigail is very excited about being a big sister and sometimes shows this by having us play "baby": we take turns being the mom and the baby and the mom takes the baby to school and leaves her with her bottles and then comes back to pick her up. She also tells me that she has a baby in her belly just like me, but hers is a girl and due in June (before me).
Growth:
Abigail continues to grow and grow and people often comment to me on how tall she is and how she looks older than 3 due to her height. She was sick the last weekend in May with a fever and we went to urgent care, so we found out that she was 42 inches tall and 33 pounds. I checked her three year old update and realized that she has gained one pound and 3 1/2 inches in the last six months, which supports my feeling that she just keeps sprouting!
Abigail is learning a lot about the alphabet and spelling and has some interest in practicing her letters at times. She is more interested in coloring lately and is able to tell us stories about her pictures now, which I love. Her artwork at school is coming home with explanations too. Abigail can count pretty high and is beginning to be able to do some mental math, looking at a set of items and telling us there are four grapes, for example, without counting them one by one. What a smart cookie!
Communication:
Abigail is so articulate and can tell us long and complicated stories. She has a great memory and will ask us about little things we have said or want us to tell her the detailed version of a minor incident from several months ago. She likes hearing stories about when a bird pooped on my car, for example, when I flew to England and threw up on the plane as a little kid, when I got a sunburn, or stories about Sam the dog from when JP was little. She also likes it when I tell her fairy tales with some editing when she is brushing her teeth or when we are trying to get the chlorine tangles out of her hair. We are working on using her words when she is mad, which is difficult, and she sometimes clams up when we talk about a bad choice she made, but we are working on emphasizing how to "turn it around' when she is having a rough time.
Abigail also likes to talk about what will happen when she is bigger. She is very aware of who is older than who and is curious about the things that bigger kids can do and babies cannot do. So we have conversations about why that big kid can walk in the parking lot without holding a grown up's hand, how old she must be, and how old Abigail will have to be in order to do such a dangerous thing. After lots of conversations about lots of different topics, Abigail will now guess an age herself, like saying, "I will wear lipstick (chapstick) when I am bigger, like maybe 10". If I say, "yes, probably 9 or 10," she will respond by agreeing to my lower estimate. We have also spent a lot of time talking about why people are older and younger than each other and finally settled on the person who is older "came out first". So she is older than her baby brother because she came out first.
Abigail is able to tell many stories and has a great memory, and doesn't have a lot of quirks to her conversations. One minor thing that I really like and thus don't correct is that she still says "mines" instead of "mine", which makes sense in a way as a corollary to "yours". She has also decided that when she grows up she is going to be a doctor and work in the same hospital as Daddy with the same sick babies and kids but that she will drive the car to the hospital!
It has been a whirlwind of a last few months but in the midst of everything, Abigail is doing great! I can't wait to see how she handles the arrival of her baby brother and more changes in her little life so we will see how it unfolds.
No comments:
Post a Comment