Happy 3rd Birthday Maddy!

Can you believe it? Maddy has graduated from toddler to preschooler. Wow! It sure has flown by. I'm really loving this stage and it's sad to think that in two years she'll be heading off to school for full days. Must hang on to every moment we can right now. Here's an update of what life is like for our dear, sweet girl:

Preschool is getting much better. There are days where she says that she really wants to go to preschool. I think it helped a lot when I pointed out that many of the other kids were nervous about going too. There are still some kids who spend most of the time in tears and so I think it helps her feel a little more confident. Every time I go to pick her up, there are huge smiles and she seems to be fine at the carpet. One funny story that I want to remember is that once she told us, "This is what we do before snack time. We fold our hands, like this... and then we say 'Raymen'." (If this doesn't make sense, perhaps it will help to know that it is a Christian preschool and so they say grace before eating!) :)

At home Maddy has dropped her nap. I still feel that she could use the afternoon nap and if I put her bed at her usual time, she'd probably sleep for a bit. The problem is that Ethan now naps earlier and so it turns out that just as he's getting up from his nap, she would go down. That kind of makes us 'nap prisoners'. Instead we don't nap her and have her go to bed early. The plus side to this is that she goes to bed earlier and thus wakes earlier (on the old schedule she tends to sleep in, making it hard to get out the door in time for school). The downside, she's a tad on the grumpy side by dinner time. Nothing too bad, just a lot of tears. I'm hoping her body will just get used to it.

Maddy and I usually do some sort of craft or coloring while Ethan is napping. It's great because the girl loves to do crafts and the house is nice and quiet for Ethan to sleep. I also love to do crafts and I can't wait to do some card making/scrapbooking with her.

In the evenings we spend our potty time learning the letter names and sounds. She's been doing really well and we just finished all the capital letters along with their sounds. Next, we'll move on to how to write the letters. She's really proud of herself and now she spends a lot of time pointing out different letters she sees in everyday life. After her bath, we've been doing 'schoolwork'. We desparately needed to separate the kids closer to bedtime. We found that after playing altogether in the playroom, Ethan would be too riled and wound up and not go down for bed. So in an effort to separate them and keep things calm, I've started working with Maddy at the kitchen table. So far, it's been great. We've started numbers, tracing, patterning and general coloring skills. I bought a portfolio style notepad and kept everything in order. I can see a small improvement already and she is so proud of her 'school work book'. Let's hope this love of learning will continue to grow.

At home we've been concentrating on listening skills. Her preschool really asks the kids to make eye contact with adults when they are spoken to and so we're trying to do the same at home. The bigger one we're working on is 'listening the first time'. Lately Maddy has been stalling and making excuses when asked to do simple things. Often it's, "I'm just (fill in the stalling tactic here)." Or if she's taken something away from Ethan, she'll play and play until she's done with it, and then claim that she did listen and give it back. So the there's a lot of, "Maddy, how many times should mama have to ask you to _______." and "Listening means doing it the first time I ask you". We'll have to see how it goes.

Maddy's Birthday Party

In the past, we've always had 'family only' parties to celebrate her birthday. This year, we decided to have a larger party and invite some of her friends over. Since Maddy has been really interested in pretend play and dress up, we thought a dress up party with doctors, nurses, police and fire fighters would be fun. I bought tensor bandages and band-aids for the kids to play with and envisioned the adults sitting around while the kids dressed up and tended to our wounds. Things don't always work out the way you plan them because no one really wanted to put the costumes on and were a little too young to wrap the tensor bandages. They did however have a great time peeling all the band-aids and sticking them on me!

The band-aids kept the girls busy for quite a while!

Maddy asked for a ladybug cake and thank goodness for the internet. You can basically find step by step instructions on YouTube and I'm happy with the way it turned out. The best was seeing Maddy's face light up when we showed her the cake the morning of her party. Priceless.

This was taken before the party, just after we showed her the cake. Yes, she was man-handling the cake!

It's been well over a week since her party and she still talks about how I forgot to light the candle before everyone started singing Happy Birthday to her. It's funny the kinds of details they remember! After the guests left, Maddy got to open her presents and it was especially nice to see her let Ethan play with them as well. They both had a great time.



Happy birthday Maddy. We love you with all our hearts.
xoxo love Mama, Papa and Ethan