The Graduate

On Monday, May 18, we experienced the first of many formal milestones - Ava's graduation from preschool! She has gone to the same preschool for the past 2 years and they have now declard that she is officially ready for kindegarten.

We invited the local family - Julie, Todd & Marilyn - over for dinner and then headed off to the church for the big event.

The preschoolers had prepared EIGHT songs for the program. After the songs, it was diploma time. Each student's name was called, and they were given a diploma and a cross necklace and their head was donned with a graduation cap.

And so another occasion goes by which prompts my famous question, "Where did my baby go?"

Mother's Day

Very tardy post...but something I still wanted to get down. Of the 6 Mother's Days I've experienced AS a mother, 2011 took the cake I think. But let's see...2006 was pretty fantastic, as that was my very FIRST Mother's Day. And 2009 was right up there - my first Mother's Day with Reese and mother to two. But 2007 and 2010...those didn't rank nearly as high because Scot was deployed and thus I didn't have my favorite father to share them with.

What does a perfect Mother's Day look like? I think it's a balance between being pampered a little and spending good quality time with the family. And that was how the day went. I rolled over to look at the clock in the morning and it was 8:15! And then I looked down and the Sunday paper was on the floor next to the bed. Wow. Wow. Wow. I opened the blinds, let the sunlight in, turned on some music and read the paper. UNINTERRUPTED. For about an hour. Then I heard some commotion coming down the hallway and two bursts of energy blew open the door with repeated chants of "Happy Mother's Day!" And with them they had a plate of monkey bread! I opted to join them all down in the kitchen for our breakfast feast.

Then it was present time! Scot got me a great gift - a Camelback water backpack, which will come in handy on my big bikeride in a few weeks. Ava made me some notecards at preschool that are adorable...and Reese, well she just flashed me lots of smiles with those cute dimples of hers. Later in the morning, Scot took the girls to the park and came home with an Edible Arrangements fruit basket. Yum! We spent the rest of the day hanging out at home and Scot and I made lasagna for supper. It was such a great day.

And because I'm a little bit spoiled/selfish, I was feeling a little pouty towards the end of the night because I had asked for a mother's necklace - I had sent Scot the link and everything to make it super easy for him to get me exactly what I wanted ;-) I finally asked him about it while we were curled up on the couch and watching TV. He jumped off the couch, ran upstairs, and came racing back with a little yellow mailing envelope. And lo and behold, there was my necklace! He had gotten it about a month ago and had completely forgotten about it - it was sitting on his dresser the whole time.



And my two little monkeys who make me such a proud, happy mom!

Ava - 5 1/2!

Almost 5 1/2 anyway. Thought I'd throw a few things down about the things Ava is doing now.

A few weeks ago, Scot attended her preschool conference with Ms. Terri. She got high marks across the board and the teacher noted especially how advanced she is at art. She LOVES to draw, color and do crafts. They have been doing "journal" time all year and her drawings are all quite a bit more detailed than most of the other kids in her class. The teacher also noted that she focuses on the process and not necessarily the product - meaning she is very meticulous about the steps that she thinks are required to get what she wants out of the project.

Here is a recent drawing that she did that I especially love.


Other things that the teacher wrote down in various categories:
• Enjoys word games (emergent reading)
• Likes to make connections with story to self (attitude towards literacy)
• Helps other if they need it (Fine motor - cutting, coloring, buttoning/zipping)
• Loves to be creative
• Curious and excited about new things (New learning/risk taking)
• Overall comments: Ava is such a bright and enthusiastic little girl. She always has good questions and comments. An area she does continue to struggle with is voice and body control: knowing the rules and following them, following directions and working at the group pace. Knowing that she isn't always going to be able to share her thoughts and be ok with that.

This last bit of feedback is not surprising - obviously she struggles with these things at home too! Hopefully she will mature more over the summer and be a more respectful participant in the fall when she is in kindegarten. I'm glad she is so enthusiastic about school and learning - she is a such a different kid than I was. While I loved school, I was so painfully shy that I rarely wanted to participate. I just hope she can find a good balance and tone it down a little. Ah, I can hope.

The teacher shared with Scot a bunch of things that Ava has done over the past few months - a sample where she colored in the lines very well, recognition tests of numbers, shapes and letters. She also completed this survey:

My favorite thing at school this year is ..... the large muscle room.
I am good at .... the monkey bars, making a sand castle, putting on my stuff.
These are my friends at school .... everybody!
My friends think I am .... pretty when I come to school.

So, I think it's safe to say she doesn't lack any confidence at this point.

At home we've been working on tying - she can now tie shoelaces! It only took a day or two of coaching and she nailed it. I still haven't bought her any lace up shoes but she is always offering to tie my coat and my tennis shoes.

She is also really beginning to read! This is so exciting to watch. It just seems like it has really started to click in the last week. She can read many of her shorter books and it's noticeably different that when she would just have books memorized. She is very excited to read to me and it is just so neat to see her finally make the connections.

We're still trying to figure out our daycare situation. I think we have decided on a New Horizon center near our house - it seems like a really nice place, the teachers have all been there for several years, and they have a summer camp program that I think Ava will love - they take a field trip almost every day. It will be hard to leave Vicki's, but I'm also looking forward to the girls having more stimulation and more friends their own ages to play with during the day. I think Ava will still get on the big yellow school bus near our house and then the daycare center will pick her up from school in the afternoon. She will go to full day kindegarten every day, which runs from about 8:10 to 2:30. It's hard to believe she is really going to be in school!

Oh, and this past Sunday we took the girls to the Mall of America for rides at Nickelodeon Universe. Ava has NO FEAR. She went on some of the bigger rollercoasters - she barely passed the height limit but could still go on with one of us. She loved them! It's fun to see that she shares our love of rides - it will be even better when she grows a few more inches! Reese liked the rides a lot too!

Here is my big 5 1/2 year old. LOVE HER.

Easter

On Christmas Eve, we beat it into Ava's head that she HAD to stay in her bedroom until at least 6:00 so we could be sure Santa had enough time to make his visit to our house. And she complied. Apparently, we didn't make enough of a stink on Easter "Eve", because we heard some rustling downstairs at around 3:15 A.M. Scot went down to investigate and found Ava sitting at the kitchen table, coloring, with 4 of her eggs that she had already found. Scot immediatley ushered her back to bed. Sigh...

Despite the early morning wakeup, we had a nice Easter weekend - my parents came over on Saturday and then Julie, Todd and Marilyn joined us for an Easter lunch on Sunday - we had to eat relatively early because Scot flew out to Atlanta later that afternoon for a week of sim training. The girls had a ball, first looking for the plastic eggs we hid around the house with goodies in them. They both needed a little bit of coaching to find the last few and were happy to find M&Ms, jelly beans and quarters in the eggs. The Easter bunny also dropped off some baskets filled with goodies. Ava's favorite present was a kite. She's been wanting one FOREVER and had it on her Christmas list, but Santa thought it mkight have been cruel to give it to her then...hopefully we'll be able to get out and use it soon. Reese really enjoyed all of the candy - you could barely catch a glimpse of her that morning without some sort of chocolate or jelly bean oozing out of her mouth. The girls got more baskets from Chuck and Sandy, the Wenzels and the Bagbys. They were very lucky! I picked through a bunch of the chocolate and candy and took about 75% of their loot to work a few days later. My coworkers were especially happy to see the Easter bunny leave treats for them and it was all gone by about 11 am.