Hi
Shira,
You
turned 3 a couple weeks back and it’s time write an update about you. You’ve hit a few milestones recently that
will be worth remembering.
I
think the most important rite of passage is you beginning regular pre
school. At the start of the fall you
were only going on days that your mom was teaching ‘Tuesday Tumbling’ at your
school because it was convenient day care wise. But now you are attending regularly and even stay all day on
Thursdays. The ignition for that was
turning the corner on potty training.
The
weekend we went to the pumpkin patch we broke the ice. I took our little ‘porta potty chair’ with
us that day and set my watch to remind me every 45 minutes to have you
tinkle. It was a huge success. You had only one accident each day that
weekend and you haven’t worn a diaper during the day since. Qualified success, I should say. We still don’t have 100% compliance on
#2. At least you haven’t had any #2
accidents at school, which is curious.
Enough detail on that.
You’re
doing great in school. You seem to
really like the routines and can function very well in the group. You’re at the same school as Sidra, but in a
different room. There were some hiccups
the first few days, like refusing to shake your teacher’s hand and say “good
afternoon,” when you left one day. But
for the most part you’re adjusting well.
One
of the byproducts of your going to school is better adjustment to swimming
lessons. We tried to start you in
swimming last spring but you wouldn’t sit still and listen to the teacher,
would get out of the water, and not complete the lesson. Now, you will sit, wait for instructions,
participate in the activities and actually derive some benefit from the
class.
There
are some things I want to report that are cute and should be recorded before
you out grow them and they fade from memory.
One is that you have a phrase that I think you intend to use in lieu of
“yesterday.” You say, “last
morning.” At your age understanding of
present, past and future is sketchy at best but when you say this I think
you’re trying to refer to a day in the past.
As I said, very cute. Another is
your shoe fetish. You love plastic,
high heeled, “dress up” shoes. You
often have them on the wrong feet (partly because you don’t worry about a
matching pair) but you love prancing in the fancy shoes.
Another
milestone that recently had me feeling sad happened at JJ Jump. JJ Jump is a play place that has several air
filled “bouncy” houses/slides. I’ve
always escorted you up and down the slides and through the mazes but now you
seem ready to do it on your own. I let
you go in a few times alone and kept track of you from the outside. On one hand I was proud of your bravery but
felt the first pang of not being needed at the same time.
You
have another habit which might not fade soon.
It might become a personality trait and be expressed differently as you
mature but still be part of you. Two
examples: 1) The first is an everyday occurrence. If we put a spoon or fork on the table at your place, you object
to that because it’s something you can do yourself. So, you will take the utensil back to the drawer, put it in,
close the drawer, open the drawer, take out a utensil (maybe not the same one),
and return to the table. 2) Yesterday on a hike with the family and
grandma and grandpa, there was a difficult section of trail, steep and slick. Your mom thought she should carry you down
it. You returned back to the top of it
and then came back down. I believe you
did accept the assistance of a held hand on the second trip. Moral- you can be pretty damn stubborn
sometimes. I realize that this behavior
may have roots in my own behavior as a youngster. I recall insisting on a ‘tic-tac-toe’ style cut on my waffles and
pancakes and I’m pretty sure that I often had a particular order in which those
pieces should be eaten once cut.
Love, Aba
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| I was stunned when I first saw this photo. I've never seen you more composed and glowing. |
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| Posing with the birthday cake. |
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| mismatched shoe girl |
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