alikander

Happy Birthday jhp64! Let us know how your kidlings feted you.

Friday: Had crazy last minute idea to put both girls in same car. Other parents concurred; car seat transfer arranged. Spent 6 hours in the car with two three-year-olds, which turned out to be much better than 5 hours with one. (Yes, the traffic was that sucky, but we expected it.)

Saturday. A day so beautiful one could barely take it in. Sunshine, mountains full of fall colors. Spent the day at Story Land. F volunteered to go on a new (for her) ride, the Pirate Ship. Har!

Sunday: Same weather as Saturday. Hiked to Zealand Hut. This time F did the whole 5.5 miles herself! (Last time, she ended up being carried because of the rain.) A made good use of the official FoL backpack.

Monday: Cooler and not so sunny. Half a day at Story Land, on its very last day until Memorial Day. Mellow and pleasant. Since the trip up had been a success, we decided to repeat the arrangement, but this time D and I got the mini vacation. Sweet!

Will post pictures anon.


Overheard at martial arts class: An older girl loaned F her pink boxing gloves and helped her put them on. F: "I have long Cinderella gloves at home!" Yes, even martial arts is all about the princess fashions.

Oh, my. This is more navel gazing about my child, and it got rather long. ( I'll hide it back here. )

Just had to record end of three major threads of our parental life in the past week.

1. The utter end of diapers. F has been diaper free for daytime since last November. But, she had a tough time going without dipes while sleeping, for naptime (on those rare occasions when she did nap) or at night. However, in her new classroom, they don't do nap diapers, so it was time to try going cold turkey again, and this time, whaddya know, she was ready. We've gone about a fortnight with no dipes and no accidents. The spares were taken to school and donated last week.

2. The utter end of nursing. F had been down to nursing just twice a day for the past, hmm... probably almost two years. I thought she would never give it, because it had become a part of her routine, and boy, does she love routine. However, over the past few months, she could be distracted from the morning session with increasing frequency. A while ago, I tried substituting a drink of water for evening nursing, but the novelty of that only lasted a couple of days. Finally, late last week, it occurred to me to substitute posset (ie warm milk with a little vanilla), which is one of her favorite "treats," and, from what I hear, rather like breast milk. So, that seems to have become her new routine. Woo hoo! My breasts are free at last! My body is my own again after 4.3 years!

3. The possible end of lullabies. Since she was about 18 mos, Fiona's bedtime routine has been: 3 (short) books, nursing, lights out, 2 lullabies, and one extemporaneous story. The posset is now consumed during the book-reading. But she has also changed this routine by skipping the lullabies to go straight to her story. Although the lullabies have varied over the past spring and summer, we spent about a year and half singing Old MacDonald (dog/cat/Mummy & Daddy) and Molly Malone every night. That's 548 renditions of each. 4,384 each of woofs, mews, and "we love you's." I'm not sure if this a permanent change to the routine, though. I wouldn't be surprised (or sad) to see lullabies return.

Baby
On Saturday, Fiona read the word "baby" on a sign at Story Land! She has recognized other words before--no, cat, dog, Fiona, dad, mummy--but they usually involved prompting. This was the first time she did it all on her own.

Solo
On Sunday, Fiona swam on her own, using a floatie, but not holding (desperately clinging) onto someone else. This is big news for someone who has a deeply rooted fear of water. She moved herself back and forth across the pool at her Grandma's again and again and again.

Big
Today, Fiona moves to the Pre-K class at her daycare. This is the last class, and is usually for 4-5-year-olds. But this year, due to some weirdness from the administration, they have a bunch of three-year-olds moving over. (Fiona's the youngest one making the jump.) It means that either she'll be in this room for two years, or we'll have to find another daycare/school for her last year before kindergarten. I'm hoping for the former, but am open to the latter in case that turns out to be the best course for Fiona. Anyway, I'm excited for her to be in the big kid classroom. She's gonna have a blast.

Which is more challenging? Camping with a three-year-old, or camping in the rain?

( Answer )

We had a wonderful, blitzkrieg trip to StoryLand this weekend: up on Friday night, home on Saturday night. More on that later, perhaps with photos.

However... after we got home Saturday night (luckily *after* we got home), I developed some kind of tummy bug. Ugh.

That caused me to cancel plans to meet glvalentine at Readercon on Sunday. Sadness!

But the very worst affliction was that our internet connection failed. Oh, agony! I pray that the FIOS gods smile upon us today with the benediction of a new router.

[Losing the internet also meant that I lost phone. It's a quirk of our neighborhood that the cell phone reception is lousy, and therefore I rely on Skype, unless I'm out and about. But, I was too ill to leave home, so I was completely cut off. I did wander out into the backyard in my PJs, and was just able to yell my apologies to G, but it was pretty pathetic.]

I am physically recovered and at work today. The final insult was that just when I thought I would be reunited with my beloved interwebs, my work computer decided to join in the fun, and refused to log me in, so I had to wait an extra couple of hours while our IS support staff negotiated a truce with the network.

Oh, sweet cybertubes, never leave me again!

D'oh! Wrong play.

Happy day, wardo68!