Hayley and Kate Minter

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been three months since I blogged about the girls.  But it was a busy three months, I swear!  I spent most of November writing, but not here.  Then the holidays came around.  I don’t have as much of an excuse for January…so let’s catch up with as much as I can remember about what’s been going on:

Since Kate turned two on November 1st, she has continued to make progress with her speech and with potty training.  Wade and I have noticed that Kate doesn’t really stop talking from the moment she wakes up until the time she goes to sleep.  She pretty much has a constant running commentary going on about what she’s doing or what’s going on around her.  And she’s started the “repeating-thing” that we remember from Hayley’s younger days–she gets stuck on one thought and says it over and over again or asks for something about twenty times.  We say, “Okay, Kate, we heard you.”  The great thing is that she can communicate really well with us, so we usually know what she wants or how she feels because she can tell us.  But we also expect that that gives her less excuses to be “two” by throwing tantrums and whining.  If she doesn’t get her way, sometimes she starts the water-works and drops to the floor.  We immediately say, “You’re certainly not getting what you want if you do that.”  Overall, she’s pretty well-behaved and doesn’t have too many little fits.

She says quite a lot of things that crack us up.  When she’s excited she says, “Ip Ip Er-Yay!” (translation: Hip Hip Hooray).  And yesterday when Wade asked her to say it, she said, “I said that <i>earlier</i>.”  I always think it’s cute when she sees our President’s picture somewhere and says, “Barack Obama!”  She also talks to the t.v., especially when she watches Dora or Diego.  She gets very animated when Swiper the fox comes on, actually going up to the t.v. and putting her hand over him, trying to make him go away.  “I told Swiper don’t you dare do that!”

Kate’s getting a little pickier with her eating.  She would love to eat candy all day if I would let her.  But she’s still much better than Hayley’s ever been about eating fruit.  Kate loves any kind of berries, especially blueberries.  It’s often hard to get her to eat her dinner, though part of that is because she doesn’t stop talking long enough to chew.

Recently, Kate’s really been into puzzles.  We have a number of puzzles in a little cabinet in the hall and she will open the door and get one and want someone to sit on the office floor and complete it with her.  And as soon as it’s done, she picks up all the pieces, puts them back in the box, takes it back to the cabinet, and gets another one.  I think we did seven or eight puzzles this morning, some of them with 100 pieces.

Kate’s been peeing and sometimes pooping in her potty over the last few months, but for about the last week or so, I’ve been letting her go without a diaper at home (a lot of times she takes it off herself).  She does really well when she has a naked bottom–she runs right to the potty, pees or poops, wipes herself, and throws the toilet paper into the toilet.  But if I let her wear underwear–which she likes to do–she occasionally has accidents in them.  Thankfully, the weather’s warm enough here that she can run around half-dressed and it doesn’t matter.  Twice, first thing in the morning, we have found her completely stripped, standing up in her crib, waiting to use the potty.  She’s a funny kid.

Our Hayley is growing up so fast, getting taller and learning to read.  She does a great job sounding out words and even surprised Wade one night when she read the words on his t-shirt, even the word “computer.”  She loves school and was quite upset recently when she had to miss a few days due to an ear infection.  She never had an ear infection until last November and now she’s had two in three months.  Thank you, public school system.  And poor Kate has been sick a lot this school year, catching whatever germs Hayley brings home.

After wanting one for years, Hayley finally had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese’s last month.  She invited all the kids from her class, a couple of kids from the soccer team, and a little girl on our street who rides the school bus with her.  Including a few younger siblings, we had a total of about twelve kids at the party.  And Hayley seemed to have a great time.  The kids played, ate pizza, were serenaded by Chuck E. himself, had cake and ice cream, and Hayley opened her presents.  Then they played some more.  Kate wasn’t really big enough to do much besides going up through the tunnels and down the slide, but she sure enjoyed that (that’s another cute thing she says: “I sure liked that” or “I sure want some of that”).

So, Hayley is six now, and she really loves to draw and color, she still LOVES t.v. and movies (“Kung Fu Panda” has been her current favorite for the last six months), and playing her Nintendo DS (mostly a Kung Fu Panda game).  She likes going with her Daddy when he has Comedy Sportz shows or practice.  She likes being read to and recognizing her “popcorn words” from school (short, simple words like “can” or “like” that she has learned to recognize by sight) in the books we read.

We had a nice, though brief, visit with family in Virginia over Christmas.  We flew into Raleigh on Christmas day, rented a car, and drove to Kenbridge that night.  We spent two nights with Aunt Beth, Uncle Tony, Ashley, and Blake.  The girls really liked seeing their cousins again.  Then we saw Aunt Jenny, Grandma and Granddaddy Estes, Great-Uncles Randy and Buddy, and cousin Tessa over the weekend.  We spent Monday with Grandma Queen and Bill, and Tuesday with Grandpa and Lele.  The only blemish on the trip was some sort of stomach bug that Kate got, causing her to vomit about five times on Saturday and once on Monday, and to have diarrhea off and on for several days.  It took nearly two weeks for her little digestive system to get back to normal.  She was pretty scared when she was throwing up because she didn’t remember that ever happening before and she didn’t understand what was going on.  Of course, she’s probably forgotten about it again by now…

Well, that’s all for now.  Again, I’m sorry about the long time between posts, and I will try to be better about updating here.  Thanks for reading!

Hayley played in her first “official” soccer game today.

Since she was about three, Hayley has taken soccer classes but the program she was in didn’t focus on any real skills at first.  Within the last year, they focused a little more on skills but they still never played real games.  They would divide the class up into two teams and basically just throw the ball into the middle of the group and let them have at it.  It was fun for the kids, and good exercise, but not much team-player preparation.  However, they were 3-, 4-, & 5-year olds, and I suppose the coaches did what was appropriate for those age groups.

Hayley had one soccer practice this past week where they dribbled the ball and took some shots on goal.  Then today, her team and another team (of 5- & 6-year-olds) squared off against each other in what was pretty close to a real game.  There were no goalies, but they had a referee, two goals, two teams, and they lined up four kids from each team in the center circle, then had one kid kick the ball to start play.  Each team tried to get the ball to their goal and, overall, I thought all the kids did a decent job.  Hayley’s team scored early on, but that would be the last goal for them.  Enter “Pele.”

One little boy on the opposing team was almost unstoppable.  If this kid got the ball, he would tear down the field and score.  I stopped counting after his sixth goal in just a few minutes.  Finally, the coach of his team called for substitutions because she could see where this was going.  That meant that Hayley got swapped out too, but they continued to sub the players in and out throughout the game so Hayley played about three or four times.

I happened to be sitting next to little Pele’s family (btw, this kid and his folks were white–I’m not making fun of Hispanics, I’m just referencing the famous soccer player, Edson Arantes Do Nascimento), consisting of his parents, his younger brother, and a set of grandparents.  The grandparents and the mom all were wearing red shirts and khaki shorts, in spirit of the team’s red jerseys, I can only assume.  Little Brother wasn’t really interested in Pele’s game, so Grandma had him on her lap trying to keep him entertained.  Dad was standing by with the camcorder.  Every time little Pele scored a goal, he would look toward his family and punch his fist in the air triumphantly.  The family would wave back, chuckling superciliously.

I know it’s probably difficult to make a little kid understand about being part of a team because at this age, they only DO want to score goals.  They even steal the ball from their own teammates.  Hayley was disappointed that she didn’t score a goal, but we praised her for the effort she made and for her numerous blocked shots (she kept Pele from scoring at least twice).  I hope that I can make my child understand in the future that if she is playing a team sport, she needs to be part of the team and not try to take all the glory for herself.

Was it a little bit mean of me to laugh on the inside when little Pele tripped on the ball five feet from the goal and ate some turf?  Perhaps.  His parents should be proud of him for being a good goal scorer; but I believe they have some work ahead of them in the future in helping him understand what it means to help out your team and not just yourself.

We are very proud of Hayley for playing well in her first game.  She came very close to scoring a goal and, like I mentioned previously, stopped several shots.  Hayley likes playing goalie with her Daddy at home, but they don’t appear to do that at this age.  Perhaps in another year or two she’ll have a chance to play goalie in a real game, if she still wants to.

I never thought I’d be a grandma at 30, especially when my oldest daughter is only five.

But after more than two years of promising, we finally got Hayley the chihuahua she wanted yesterday and she wants to be its “Mama.”

The new member of our family is an 8-week-old male chihuahua, mostly white with brown markings.  He’s tiny and cute, and Hayley has named him Darwin (just like Aunt Jenny’s chihuahua).  Today was our first full day with him, and we spent a lot of it trying to make sure he peed and pooped on his potty pad and not on our carpet.  Darwin spent the majority of his day napping.  Rod-kitty seems as indifferent to Darwin as he is with everything else, which is better than Rod trying to eat him.  The girls have fought over Darwin a few times–”Kate, I’m holding him!” “No, me hold him!”–but mostly they’ve been good about sharing.

Check out pictures of our little guy on our Flickr page!

Hayley’s first week of school has passed and she seemed to adjust really well.  Daddy took her into school each morning (except the first day when we all went with her) and she rode the bus home each afternoon.  Before school, she seemed excited about riding the bus, but once she actually rode it, she realized it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.  It’s hot and noisy, and Hayley said she kept getting thrown into the seat in front of her (good thing they’re padded!).  “They don’t have any seatbelts!  Well, they have ONE seatbelt for the driver, but that’s it!”  She took her lunch each day and every day brought home at least one picture she had colored in class.  She’s already talking about some of the kids in her class, especially the ones who misbehave.  She is proud of the fact that she hasn’t gotten into trouble yet but some of the other kids (usually boys) get in trouble, even having to sit outside the classroom on occasion.  Hayley has been good, but she DOES talk about acting silly sometimes to make the other kids laugh.  Hmmm…that one sounds a lot like her father.

School is closed this Monday for Labor Day but it’s back to normal on Tuesday.  Kate and I are going to try to eat lunch with Hayley about once a month and Tuesday will be our first time.  Daddy is also going to start letting Hayley enter the school by herself after Tuesday.  Fortunately, they have a lot of fifth graders and some adults who serve as crossing guards every morning so Hayley should be safe if she has to cross the parking lot.  Still, it’s hard to think of her as big enough to walk into school all by herself…

Hayley lost her second tooth this morning.  No gushing blood or anything.  Daddy just pushed on it and it popped out.  Tonight she gets another visit from the Tooth Fairy.

We went into Sam’s Club today and they had put out some Halloween decorations.  The girls wanted to look at all the spooky stuff (which is a lot less spooky in the brightly-lit store than it would be on a dark Halloween night).  There was one almost-adult-sized zombie creature that had a motion sensor on it, so when we walked past it, it began to talk.  It’s eyes flashed and then it “took off” its mask.  The mask looked more like a normal face than what was underneath, of course.  Its eyes flashed and it laughed maniacally.

I watched Kate’s face as she watched this display and though her brow was furrowed, she didn’t seem frightened.  In fact, both girls asked to see it again.  But we left to run other errands.  Kate kept talking about the creature saying, “Take mask off.”  We named it “Ugly,” so then she would say, “Ugly take mask off.”

After a while, she didn’t talk about it anymore and I thought she had forgotten about it.  But as I was putting her down for her nap this afternoon, she mentioned Ugly again.  “Ugly not bother me?”  Poor baby was scared that Ugly was going to come into her darkened room and get her.  I assured her that Ugly was just a big toy, not real, and was stuck in that store and couldn’t walk out to get her.  She kept saying things like, “Ugly not real?  Just big toy?  Ugly stuck in store?  Can’t walk?  Kate does.  Hayley does.  Ugly can’t.”  I finally got her settled down enough to get in her bed and go to sleep.  Whew!  We may have to avoid certain aisles at Wal-mart and the Party City store all together in the coming months or Kate may never sleep again!

After wiggling around in her mouth for nearly a month, Hayley lost her first tooth this morning!

I asked her at breakfast to see her tooth, and she let me wiggle it around. I saw that the back of the tooth had completely detached, so I pushed her tooth backward with a mild amount of force, and out it popped!

Hayley looked a little shocked for a second, and seemed like she might cry, but after Holly and I started gushing over what a big girl she was and how neat this was, she started grinning. She spent quite a bit of time playing with the new hole in her smile.

I took her downtown for a celebratory lunch at Casa Rio, then with her to improv practice, and she wasn’t shy about telling everyone in either place about how she’d lost her first tooth. Then, at bedtime, we tucked her tooth into the pocket of the special Tooth Fairy Pillow that Holly made for her while in Virginia. So we’ll see what the Tooth Fairy brings our big girl tonight.

Now, we’ll see if it takes a month for her second loose tooth to pop out as well.

Tonight at dinner, Hayley bit into a piece of spaghetti and said, “Mama, my tooth hurts.”  She pointed out which one–front lower right–and I tried to wiggle it with my finger.  And it moved!

Our baby has a loose tooth!

Wade and I both looked at each other, knowing that our girl is really growing up.

We knew this was coming but I didn’t expect it to happen before she started school.

So we spent the rest of dinner chatting with Hayley about losing teeth.  She’s such a big girl!

Hayley’s preschool closed to students yesterday and this coming Thursday for parent/teacher conferences. I signed up for one of the early slots yesterday morning, and went by on my way to work.

Since Hayley’s only been in the school about a month and a half, I didn’t expect there to be too much “progress” to report. I met with her teachers, Ms. Meena and Ms. Gretel, and they said “We can’t say anything negative about Hayley – she’s a wonderful student!”

They said that she’s always finding ways to keep herself busy – they never have to tell her “Hayley, go find some work to do.” They said that she’s very eager to learn new things, but also will work on repetition to practice her skills. They also reported that her interpersonal skills were excellent, as she plays well with both boys and girls, and even took a new 3-year-old student “under her wing” and made sure the new kid was happy and had a friend at the school.

She apparently knows all of the continents, and will be moving on to North American geography. She understands her numbers 1-10, and is working on the teens. She is working on sandpaper letters, which is a precursor to writing.

There were no negative comments about her, the teachers said that they were glad that she was enrolled in the school, and that Hayley was doing extremely well in the Montessori program.

It was a great progress report, and seems to match the reality we see with Hayley’s learning and eagerness to go to school. So for a first progress report in a new school, we couldn’t ask for anything better from our big girl!

Our big girl turned four today! I think she was excited by a weekend of celebrations.

Saturday was the family party. All three sets of grandparents, Great-Grandma Nana, Aunt Beth, Tony, and five assorted kids made for a full house. After the cake and presents, we all went to the Factory Ice House for some skating. Hayley had a good time skating, though she spent most of the time with me holding both of her hands and gliding her around.

Sunday was the kids’ party. Three other little girls from the neighborhood (Claire, Amanda, and Emma) came over for a “Happy Feet” themed party. Holly had some crafts set up, making penguins out of pipe cleaners. The girls played for a bit, then had cake and gift boxes. We had a “Happy Feet” pinata for them, and then they did presents. The kids were over for about two hours, and I think they had a good time. Two of the three had their parent stay as well, so we adults had a nice visit in-between helping kids.

And today was her actual birthday. We did presents from us when she got up, then she went to school and (I assume) did something birthday-related there. Tonight was one last session of cake and ice cream.

Pictures should be online after I finish going through them, and deleting the ones that were too dark due to me forgetting to have the flash on. It’s hard to believe that she’s four already.

Happy Birthday, big girl!

Hayley had her first day of preschool on Tuesday. So far, she seems to like it. Whenever we ask her what she did, she says, “I don’t remember,” but that’s a typical response for a kid her age. At least she doesn’t say she hates it and never wants to go back there. Although I’d wager that the outside play time is her favorite part of the day.

Katherine went for her two-month checkup today. The doctor said she’s perfectly healthy and growing well. But the poor baby had to get four shots today and she did NOT like that. I’ve never seen her little face so red. Even the doctor commented on it. But after a few minutes, some “real” tears, and a little nursing, she calmed down and went to sleep. She doesn’t have to go back to the doctor until 4 months, when she will need another four shots. Good thing they don’t remember these doctor visits.