Update on the girls

Ava's 2 month check up was on April 24th. She was 9 lbs 12 oz (10 percentile for weight) and 23 1/2 inches (50th percentile for height.) Just like big sister was, and still is - tall and skinny. Doctor said she's not worried about her weight because she was 5th percentile at her 2 week appointment, so she's slowly moving up the curve. We know she has reflux, and we know that I have slow gaining babies. And Ava is alert and meeting milestones, so we'll just continue on with breastfeeding and she'll grow at her own pace.

I've been so blessed to have two amazing doctors when the girls are babies (Raegan's pediatrician was the best, but sadly she passed away when Raegan was 4 months old). It's so wonderful to have a doctor that understands breastfeeding and how breastfed babies gain weight, and who doesn't push formula on us. It's really important to me to have exclusively breastfed babies, and it helps to have a supportive doctor.

Ava has really just come alive in the last two weeks. She's started putting her hands in her mouth a lot, with a little bit of thumb sucking. She's starting trying to swat at and kick the toys in her play mat, and she looks at and tries to reach for the toy on her carseat handle. She smiles all the time, and we're starting get a lot of little "heh heh" laughs with her smiles. It's funny because sometimes she'll be upset (either tired or upset tummy) and she'll be mid fuss and make eye contact with one of us and start smiling. She'll smile real big then start fussing again during her smile. It makes me laugh every time.

Ava loves Big Sis and watches Raegan all the time. It takes me back to when Raegan was a baby and used to watch Zane all the time. Zane is really good with Ava too. He's such a good big brother.

Raegan is doing amazing with reading. She finished all of the beginning reader books at school and is able to read simple sentence books. She's starting to write a lot more, and will try to write out words with inventive spelling. It's really cute, and I know from my job that she's making progress in her writing development. I'm excited to see how far she goes next year doing kindergarten at Montessori school. The fact that she's staying at her school for kindergarten has helped keep all my feels about her going to kindergarten at bay. It's not quite as much, "Oh my baby!" as I think it would be if we were going to kindergarten round up and enrolling her in public school.

The egress window is FINALLY in, and Luke started painting this weekend. I'm hoping that by the end of the month we have all of the kids moved to their new rooms and there can be some order in the house again. I think that we could probably put Ava in her crib for at least part of the night once that room is hers, but I'm just not ready for that yet. She's doing a fantastic job of sleeping about half the night in her cradle in our room (something Raegan never did!) and she's so little still that I like having her close to me. Plus, I kind of like listening to her little snores and wuffles before I fall asleep at night. :)

Our Weekend

Raegan got a wooden "ghoul bus" kit from school that her and Daddy put together Friday evening. She gets to use a hammer sometimes at school and she did quite well with it for this project too.

 

 

As seen on my walk on Saturday afternoon. I just love fall so much!

 

 

A very early Sunday morning art project. Because Daylight Savings Time means nothing to a four year old.

 

 

Sunday afternoon trip to the library. I've been trying to get back in the habit of taking Raegan again weekly and our weekends have been slow enough lately that we've been managing. We've found some fantastic new books to read (including "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog" and "Into the Castle") and Raegan gets to play with some different toys. She did this alphabetic order puzzle completely by herself. Which really doesn't surprise me, since she was able to do alphabetic order last year in preschool. But it's always nice to see the results of preschool, you know? :)

 

And while I'm talking about Raegan's learning, she's really starting to take off with reading and sounding out words. Yesterday while we were reading a book before supper, she sounded out and read "bed", "hug" and "bag", all of which were words that I had never had her try to sound out before. And she didn't even struggle - it was just a smooth sound out then she said the word. And last week she brought home a sheet where she had written numbers 11-19 and has shown us how she can count by 10s. Sometimes she just blows me away!

Gardening at Raegan's School

We had the opportunity right after Memorial Day to go over to Raegan's school to do some gardening with other classmates. Raegan was really enthusiastic about going, although when it came down to her teacher taking a group picture, she wanted nothing to do with that. Oy.

Raegan was especially interested in the strawberry plants, once Ms. Sherry said that she could eat any red ones she found.

Gotta wash strawberries off before you eat them.

Helping clean off her shovel at the end of the morning.

Raegan's End of the Year Program

What a difference a few months makes! Raegan was fairly shy, and didn't always sing or do actions during her Christmas program at school. At this one in May she walked in very confidently and sang and participated in the majority of the songs. I was so proud of her! :)

Here's a collage of Raegan's first day and last day of preschool. My sweet baby is growing up!

Raegan's "pretend" birthday

So since Raegan has a summer birthday, they let her do a half birthday/pretend birthday celebration at her preschool. Montessori has a really neat tradition they do for birthdays, where the child gets to travel around the sun for each year of their life, while the parent shows pictures and talks about the things the child liked at that age. It was pretty cool. And it was so wonderful to actually get to go into Raegan's school and see her in action. She has friends, one little girl in particular that she was inseparable from while I was there. And it's always interesting to me as a preschool teacher to see how other preschools run. Montessori is so organized and structured. I mean, I run a tight ship in my classroom, but it's nothing like the order and peace in a Montessori room. I wanna teach Montessori!!! :)

Discussing things with friends during clean up time

Raegan talks about the little blonde at home a lot. Turns out they are actual friends. :)

Singing the celebration song when they first came to circle. The little blonde next to Raegan was all, "Sit by me Raegan, sit by me!" My baby has friends!!! :)

Raegan getting her lesson ready. She put down the yellow circle, then turned on the flashlight. The rays that go around the sun have a name of a month on each one.

They sang the song about the months of the year, then Raegan went and stood by August. For every year I talked about, she held the globe and traveled around the sun. (No pictures of that part because I was busy reading her story and passing around pictures.)

Singing happy birthday to Raegan

She was a little bashful but loved every minute of it.

Posing for Mama with her lesson

My big girl

A pic from out on the playground. I love this little girl so very very much.

Raegan's Parent Teacher Conference

We had Raegan's conference earlier this week, and she is doing awesome in school. She recognizes numbers 1-10 consistently (and is starting to name 11 and 12, just confuses the two sometimes). She counts to 39, and can pattern and count objects. She recognizes and produces rhyming words, and is starting to do sound boxes (where she gets a box filled with objects that start with one of three letter sounds - she has to match the objects to the letter they start with). Her teacher expects her to be done with those by the end of this school year. She said that she is very bright and inquisitive and she loves the practical life activities (pouring, fine motor with tongs and tweezers, cracking nuts, etc) and folding towels. :) She's made friends, especially some of the boys her age, and Ms. Sherry said she likes to pick a different boy to follow around every day. She watches him do an activity (because there's only one of each activity in Montessori rooms) and as soon as he's done, she chooses it next. :) I'm not surprised, because of how much she adores her big brother.

And she's still not even 3 1/2! She might be the youngest one when she finally goes to kindergarten, but I'm fairly certain she will be the smartest! :)

Quick update

Raegan has adjusted very well to preschool. She was rather hesitant the first two weeks at drop off in the morning, but now we have no problems. We're starting to hear a variety of different songs that they sing there, and we're seeing that she is learning so much. She went in knowing almost every uppercase letter, and now we're seeing an explosion of learning lowercase letters too. She's picking up the sounds of the letters through the curriculum that they use, and is now counting to 20. She knows the days of the week and has the order of the months up to May. :) The last two weeks she's been on a rhyming word kick - she can come up with a rhyming word for any word you tell her. A lot of times her fallback sound is "h" - What rhymes with bat? "hat" What rhymes with cow? "how" and sometimes she'll even make up words to rhyme with what we say. Just another super important skill that sets the stage for her learning how to read.

The biggest thing that we are struggling with right now is getting her to dress herself in the morning. Raegan is NOT a morning person, and never really has been. On the weekends she is pretty happy, but that's because she gets to get up on her own time, which is usually at least an hour later than when I wake her up for school. I obviously am not expecting her to do everything perfectly yet, but I have the basic expectation that she can take her clothes off and put on her own underwear and pants and socks. Sometimes she needs help getting the shirt over her head. But honestly, you would think she had no arms the way she flails around like she can't do anything for herself. I refuse to give in though, so we've had some rough mornings for about two weeks now, but we are slowly getting there. Mommy just needs lots of prayers for patience. :)

First Day of Preschool

It just seems surreal that Raegan is in preschool. Like, wasn't it just yesterday that I was holding her for the first time? Granted, she is a very young preschooler, so it is a little sooner for her than for most children, but still.

Raegan has been talking about going to school for MONTHS now. And when Zane went back to school last month she was super bummed that it wasn't her turn yet. It seems like the closer the day came the more she asked about it. The week before school started she had orientation, which was her time to go into the classroom by herself and spend time with her teacher. Raegan was very excited to FINALLY get to wear her bookbag and go to her school, as you can see from the first picture. :)

Once we got there, she started getting a little nervous about the whole thing (as you can see from the second picture!) and as soon as we got downstairs her shoulder went up in front of her face (her classic "I'm feeling shy" move). Her teacher was really kind and got down on her level and gave her a couple minutes to warm up before she firmly (but still nicely) led her into the classroom. I didn't go in the classroom with her at all, which is a Montessori thing (it's all about the children and their learning experiences) but she did really well. And me not going in with her for orientation really helped on the first day of school because she kind of knew that Luke and I wouldn't be going any further than the hallway.

Ready to go on the first day of school

How did my baby turn into this grown up girl?

Hanging up her bookbag

Hug for her teacher

I think she kind of surprised herself with the hug, because she immediately got kind of stand-offish :)

Raegan lingered in the hallway/doorway to the classroom for a minute, until Ms. Sherry steered her in the direction of Ms. Molly. Luke and I hung out for another minute, before we decided we better GO while she was still thinking everything was okay. The north side of the classroom has a long wall of windows that face the sidewalk outside, so we stood out there and watched her for a few minutes. Raegan kind of stood there for awhile until Ms. Molly got her started on an activity, and she seemed happy, so off we went.

When I picked Raegan up, she said that she got to use TAPE AND SCISSORS!!! (said all in caps, btw) and that their garden has "pumpkin pies" growing in it. She was equally happy to go to school on Thursday and my mother in law said she just walked right in. Actually, Raegan was a little disappointed that she couldn't go on Friday, but once she realized she would get to spend more time at her daycare provider's she cheered up.

So far so good for an excellent start to school. :)