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#82: The way that her enthusiastic "Happy Birthday Daddy" seemed to make someone smile all day long.
#83: Going to bed at 8:20 pm on Friday night and not waking up until 5:30 am on Saturday morning. The fullest night of sleep she's ever had!
So, we're moving back to Calgary soon, and you'd think that I'd be worrying about packing, figuring out where to donate nearly brand-new crib, and the 3.5 hour time change, but I'm not (not yet, anyways). I've been going a little crazy about whether we should see if any preschools might accept a new student (that student being Madeline) in January. Yes. That's what has been keeping me up at night.
But you know what? She's two. She won't start kindergarten for until she's five. I am quite aware of how much she enjoys interacting with other toddlers, and know how valuable the socialization is for her. It's probably okay if she doesn't start preschool just yet. If I could find something like Early Achievers in Calgary, I'm sure that both Chris and I would be all for signing her up for a morning a week. But I can't find anything similar, the great majority of the preschools will only accept kids who've already turned three, and frankly, we could enroll her in a plethora of those Gymboree-type classes AND swimming AND Kindermusik* and it would cost us less each month :) I think we'll be okay if I skip placing somewhat-panicky long-distance calls to Calgary preschools.
This week's fun links:
* Not that we would sign my toddler up for that many things at the same time. We've found that 2-3 scheduled activities in seven-day period is just the right amount.
I've noticed that in the last month, Madeline has been playing pretend like she's never played pretend before. My first memories of her engaging in imaginative play are go back to about March, when she'd pretend to put her (one and only) doll or a stuffed animal down for a nap. Sometimes she'd offer her little stuffed pals a drink from her sippy cup, and I do remember one night before bedtime where she figured that Mr. Bear, who was happily cuddled in her arms, needed some breastmilk as well (I was torn between thinking "how cute!" and "how weird!").
A few months later, Madeline started playing what Chris and I call the "night-night game". At any given time of the day, Madeline will climb up on our bed, or the spare bed in her room, crawl under the covers, say "night-night", close her eyes, and pretend to sleep, complete with simulated snoring sounds. It still cracks me up!
Act III brought us to "playing baby". Madeline will bring me a blanket (well, to be honest it's a spare fitted crib sheet!) and ask to be swaddled. Over and over again.
Madeline's imagination has had her pretending something completely different this week. When we are getting ready to go outside, she'll put a pair of shoes on her hands as well as her feet, declare herself a doggie, and walk on all fours outside (hence, the extra footwear on her hands, I guess). I have no experience with dogs. Luckily, neither does she, so I can lure her to the car with promises of "doggie snacks" (raisins) while I buckle her up or by saying that doggies don't like to get wet, so I'm able to pick her up and pop her in the truck. She was a sad little doggie this morning on the way to Chris's office as I didn't have any doggie snacks on me, and we couldn't convince her that the Baby Mum-Mum that I did have packed was really a Doggie Mum-Mum ...
Madeline's been in her pre-preschool program for a month now, and each class seems to start off with an art project. Madeline normally is excited to sit at the table with her classmates, a piece of paper and tub of crayons and markers in front of her, but she's over that in about two minutes. A few splashes of colour may be made on her paper, and then she's off to play with the lacing beads, flip through books, or play with the alphabet magnets. There just seems to be so many things to do in the classrooms and all of them are more exciting than sitting down with crayons and glue. Until yesterday.
Madeline came home from from school with a veritable bounty of artsy stuff. Yesterday's theme was "shapes" and she painted on various shapes cut out of construction paper, and glued shapes onto a diamond to make a kite. She also enjoyed making dots on a piece of paper with crayons, and gluing foam cut-outs and yarn on another piece of construction paper. I'm amazed, and really excited to put everything up on the fridge!
Fabulous Friday Links:
I decided today that I'd write about the playgroup options for parents of toddlers (and infants and preschoolers) in St. John's, but I feel oddly hypocritical doing so as we rarely attend. That being said, I met one of my mama-friends at the playgroup at Wedgewood Park, and I'm happy that we found that one right away after we moved here because hanging around our house 24/7 was getting kind of boring for Madeline.
Without further ado, and in no particular order:
One of the things that I've been meaning to do with Madeline for months is visit the MUN Botanical Gardens. One of my friends assures me that the pathways are good for running and that there are ducks, two of Madeline's criteria for having a good time. What I think is actually neat about the Botanical Gardens is that they have a variety of registered programs for toddlers and preschoolers, though the toddler "Nature Tot" program has been "fully booked for 2006", according to the website, ever since I found out about it in April. I wonder if they're taking registrations for 2007 already (not that it would make a difference to us)?
Another cool thing that I discovered on the MUN Botanical Gardens website was that they run family-oriented programs every Sunday. There's supposed to be a nature hikes, storytimes with a crafts, and visits to the ducks running throughout the day. I've suggested to Chris that we check this out on a couple of occasions, but we're still working on getting there. Hopefully I'll be able to post an actual review one of these days :)
Today, Lester's Farm in Mount Pearl held it's annual Pumpkin Fest. Madeline liked the corn maze, looking at the huge piles of pumpkins and gourds, but seemed to be the most impressed by the pumpkin-flinging festivities over by the trebuchet.
Has anyone ever paused, mid-thought, to wonder, "What would Mick Jagger do?"
Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but Chris and I have a groupie problem. I'm not sure if it's one that Mick and Keith could relate to, but it's causing some degree of strife in our household. Madeline, as it turns out, is a one-person groupie, and the object of her devotion is me. Only I am worthy of reading her stories, tending to her bath, accepting the half-eaten Mum-Mum wafer that she's offering from the back seat of the car, getting her snack, wiping her hands, unbuckling her carseat ...
... hmm. As a re-read what I've typed, I realize that maybe I have it all wrong. Perhaps she's not my groupie - maybe I'm her indentured servant! Ugh! But I digress, really ...
This preferential treatment is annoying. Madeline has a dad who would love to cuddle her on his lap and read Franklin. Instead she insists "Mommy read!" as if I haven't read her a book in months when it's the 23rd picture book of the day and the dishes that I'm in the middle of washing aren't at all important. The result of this is that Chris feels slighted and I feel like I have more responsibilities than I can manage. Ironically, the old issue of Today's Parent that I brought to the gym earlier this week had an article on this topic. The folks there had a few insights, speculating that the reason why Madeline wants me to read Story #23 is because I read Story #22 - it's what she's used to. They don't suggest that the other parent merely toss in the towel, but rather acknowledge their child's feelings first and talk about that a bit. I laughed when I read that, imagining Chris saying, "Madeline, I can see that you're feeling upset that I'm going to read the story when you want mommy to read it" while Madeline has turned into a sputtering purple creature trying to drag me to the sofa by my back pocket ...
The good stuff for this Friday:
This morning I was flipping through my October issue of Today's Parent while Madeline sat beside me, eating her blueberry waffle, and noticed an advertisement for Nestle Quik. The ad caught my eye because the entire thing seemed to be trying to make the case that adding sugary, chocolaty stuff to regular milk is still nutritious, at least compared to soft drinks and juice. Well, maybe, but I still take umbrage that some people out there are trying to urge parents and their kids to take an otherwise nutritious glass of milk and adulterate it with empty calories. I know that some children probably won't drink any milk at all if it wasn't flavoured, but I doubt those families need to be marketed to at this point.
I still shake my head whenever I see the tv commercial from the Dairy Farmers of Canada that specifically advertised chocolate milk! I love chocolate milk, but I can't understand why this product needs to be set apart for an advertising campaign. Does it make a difference to dairy farmers if I buy two litres of skim or two litres of chocolate milk?
... and that ends my Thursday rant.
I believe that we were finishing up with breakfast yesterday when Chris directed my attention to the nifty article Hotel sleepovers take creativity in the Telegram. I read this article about travelling with young children with interest; it was timely because we had rented a heritage house in Burin for a weekend (Canadian) Thanksgiving holiday, and I had become really reluctant to stay in hotels with Madeline because she insists on going to be at the same time as we do - whether that's 10pm (cramps her style) or 7pm (cramps ours).
We thought that we had dodged that particular bullet with our current accomodations - Madeline had an entire room all to herself in the heritage home. We brought her night-night light and her little CD player for her night-night lullabies. Neither of us expected her to wake up at 2:30 in the morning on Saturday, and refuse to go back to sleep. She wanted to go downstairs and play and read. I feel like I wasted an hour with my futile attempted to coax her back into a slumber. Downstairs, she was happy and w-i-d-e a-w-a-k-e. Neither of those words described Chris and I as we each took a wee-hour shift.
I began to wonder if the summer of crappy sleeping she'd experienced wasn't so much caused by sleeping in different surroundings (our room when we had guests, my parents' house) but by the trusty Pack 'n Play. She's somewhere between 35-36" in height, and the PnP height limit is 35", so it's getting kind of cramped for her even when she does sleep curled up in a ball. Who knows? Worried about a repeat performance in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday, Chris and I agreed that we'd go home early instead of subjecting the three of us to three nights of crappy sleep. Sure enough, Madeline met the day at 3am. I hung out with her solo until Chris was up for the day (and well-rested enough for the 3.5 drive home). I'm posting this from our rental house in St. John's, where I think I shall retire early tonight.
