I recently attended my first Parent-Teacher conference at TLE’s preschool. I’ve been to other Parent-Teacher conferences at TLE’s other school so this isn’t a new experience. Neither, it seems, is the report. Gross motor and fine motor skills are either age appropriate or above though she still only scribbles and doesn’t really draw anything recognizable yet. And her self-help skills and math skills seem to be age appropriate as well.

Speech continues to be an issue. She talks a lot but her speech is hard for others to understand and she is prone to meltdowns if she thinks no one can understand her. The director of the school asked if I was okay with bringing in a school district observer, which I am. I am hoping that the school district may have some suggestions but for now, keeping her in a typical preschool seems to be helping her a lot.

She’s continuing to develop socially. She tends to play alone and still doesn’t initiate play with other children though she will join in on invitation. Her teachers mentioned that she’s shown a lot of progress from when she initially started school in the summer to when she started going again full-time in December after that partial hiatus.

Overall, the conference was what I expected, including the same issues of attention and willfulness that her other school observed over a year ago. She’s better about it now than she used to be but still won’t do things like sit still for story time and directing her to do something can take some time. Hopefully we’ll find some ways wrangle her to be more compliant in the coming months.

All smiles

It’s alarming to realize how is easy it is to lose sight of what’s important. Try as I might to balance motherhood and building my writing business, I can’t help but feel that I am failing in both. More than once, I have entertained the idea of returning to the corporate world, trying to convince myself that this was for the better.With more money, we’ll be less stressed out. We can take her on vacations, buy her more toys.

And then, TLE will do something. She’ll smile. Or laugh. Or tell me how much she loves the playdough I just made for her. Or we’ll nap together on a whim after preschool. Or I’ll look at a photo I took of her just a few months ago, how different she looks now, and wonder to myself, Where did the time go?

And all at once I’m reminded about what’s important, all the things that I swore that I’d never take for granted.

Christmas 2012

Every year since we purchased our home, I promised myself that I would do our house up big for the holidays. Three years later, I dragged our tree and assorted decor out of garage storage sometime around mid-December but actually didn’t decorate it (or the house). In the end, it was our housemate who ended up putting up the decor the day before she left to spend the holidays with her family in the South Bay.

While being sick certainly had something to do with it — down with bronchitis pretty much the entirety of December — it just didn’t feel like Christmas this year. Every year, I tell myself that I’ll do more for Christmas and somehow, I end up doing less. I know part of it is economic circumstances which doesn’t help my holiday mood any. It makes me feel bad, especially since I want to make the holidays as magical for TLE as they were for me. And I feel like I’m failing her because I just can’t deliver.

There weren’t a lot of presents under the tree this year. But then I look at photos like this, her excitement as she climbed into her “big girl” car for the first time, and am reminded, not for the first time, that the presents — neither quality nor quantity of them — really mattered.

All that she really cared about on Christmas morning, as she  cuddled the stuffed cat that was all that she had really asked Santa for, was that she had Mommy and Daddy to cuddle her on our laps while she was watched Christmas cartoons and ate candy canes.

There may come a time when she’s older, when TV and the Internet will tell her about the fancy decorated houses and the mounds of Christmas gifts that define the holidays in other households. And I harbor a hope to deliver that to her, someday. But my deepest wish is that she remembers — and will continue to remind me — the best Christmas gift of all for her when she was three years old: to be loved and warm and cuddled by Mommy and Daddy.

Her sentences are becoming ever more complex and she’s able to really get her point across. I love listening to her as she narrates little stories while playing with her toys. So cute!!

A downside with her talking more is that we’re getting a lot of back talk these days. There’s a lot of “I don’t want to” and boy, she does NOT hesitate to lay on the guilt trip when I put her in time out for being sassy. After time out, I always make it a point to give her a hug and a kiss, and we talk about why she got a time out.

“Mommy,” she pleaded with me this afternoon, hanging her head and looking up at me through that impossibly long fringe of eyelash. (This child will NEVER need mascara as an adult. I am so jealous.) “I don’t like it when you put me in time out. It makes me so sad.”

Ouch. Heartstrings. Pulling. I’m trying to find a non-punitive discipline solution that doesn’t involve time outs but redirection just does. not. work. with her. *sigh* So much of trying to wrangle TLE is to channel her boundless energy and enthusiasm into positives but sometimes, it feels like trying to control a hurricane.

Since our friend Rainbow Dash now lives with us (RD’s kind of like our benign version of Jason Mewes) TLE has several adults to ping-pong off of but I know she does crave peer interaction. Otherwise, she’s very dependent on us for her socialization and now with her going to school less, she’s become even clingier when she’s at home.

We have our reasons for being a one child family but I do get sad thinking about TLE being lonely, especially when I read about other moms talking about how their kids have built in playmates in their siblings. On bad days, TLE come to me and cry that she wants someone to play with.

It’s been a period of readjusting here at home since TLE’s school was cut down from 5 days a week to 2 days a week. Our eventual hope is to up it back up to 3 days a week but with the holidays coming up, it seems sort of silly to pay for 3 days a week when we won’t really be getting our money’s worth.

It was a pretty drastic change to our routine and neither TLE nor I do very well with routine changes. She cried and whined a lot during the first week, saying she was bored and that she wanted to go to preschool. At one point, she even told me she hated me (!!) which earned her a time out while I quietly lost my shit in another room. The battle of the wills continued until it got so bad that I reviewed my resume and posted it online, convinced that I’m just a failure as a stay at home mom.

Things have gotten better since then, with a bit of an attitude adjustment on both of our parts. Being in school so much sort of made me forget how much interaction TLE really craves. It makes working from home pretty much impossible while she’s around so I’ve taken to working late nights to make up for it.

I’ve found that she doesn’t do well with total “free form” days as she likes routines but hates predetermined schedules. So keeping an open, predictable routine seems to have been best. For us that means lots of “free form” play time where she determines what she wants to do.

I’m the first to admit that I’m not very good at knowing how to play with her which sounds horrible but it’s the truth. It’s taking a lot of conscious effort on my part to let her lead and follow up with information rather than lead her with information, if that makes any sense.

In many ways, I have to let her lead while I support. I’m finding that I’m having to shove aside any prejudices I may have had about unschooling because this is what is really working best for her at this stage in her life and with her personality. In our case, sometimes teaching her means letting go a little.

The Doctor, Craig and Alfie

In the latest episode of Doctor Who, “Closing Time”, the 11th Doctor is on a farewell tour of sorts and pays a call to a friend of his named Craig Owens. As luck would have it, poor Craig is alone with the baby for the first time ever while Mummy’s on holiday and he isn’t handling it well. Luckily for him, the Doctor speaks baby. Of course, Craig ends up caught up in one of the Doctor’s adventures. (As if being left alone with the baby isn’t enough of an adventure, right??)

"You're far too slow when he summons you."

As they’re staking out a shop to track down a Cybermat, the Doctor pulls out a baby carrier (which he handily got on sale for 10% off) and hands it to Craig. “Alfie wants you attached to him. You’re far too slow when he summons you.”

LOL! The Doctor advocates babywearing Whovians, wear your babies!! Even The Doctor agrees!

I love it when geekery and real life interests coincide. And as a bonus, the Doctor holding baby Alfie. Pretty awesome scene if you ask me. The Doctor gets along well with kiddies

The Doctor and Alfie

But wait, there’s more! Here’s a clip from Doctor Who Confidential — a behind the scenes look with Matt Smith (in full costume) singing to one of the babies between takes. ADORABLE! (Dude, seriously, I would totally hire him as a baby sitter. Matt Smith, if you ever read this, I’d pay you in badgers!!)

The Little Empress

(If you’re wondering what in the world TLE is doing, she’s impersonating a Weeping Angel who, according to her, are the scariest baddies in Doctor Who. I’m just sort of amazed that I’ve managed to turn her into a Whovian at the age of three. This has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this entry, of course.)

Thanks to an eleventh hour deal, The Little Empress’s full-time preschool is still covered until the end of the month which gives us some breathing room. Unfortunately, we’ve been having some behavioral problems at school lately.

I now live in constant fear that TLE will spark a naptime uprising at school. She’s never been a great napper at home but has generally been good about napping at school until a week or two ago. There have been days were she will not nap at all and she’s had to go spend some “quiet time” in the office with the preschool administrator to keep from disturbing the other children.

The teachers are remarkably understanding about it at first, figuring that it is just a phase, but it has been getting worse. She either doesn’t nap or her naps have been getting shorter. I’m worried that she’s going to lead a naptime revolt, which of course NO ONE wants.

*sigh* Someday, I may be able to convince TLE that sleep is GOOD and that she should get more of it but I guess to her, there are far more interesting things to do.

The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

I’m sure this will be a highly unpopular opinion but I hate reading Dr. Seuss out loud.

This has nothing to do with the subject matter of the books themselves. I think every Dr. Seuss book have great, solid messagse for children. I just hate reading the damn things out loud.

While I know reading to your kids is Super Important ™ and I do read to TLE daily, I’m the first to admit that I’m not the best person at reading aloud. But reading aloud has always been difficult for me, even when I was in school. I stumble over words, put words where there aren’t any. TLE is pretty observant and easily memorizes her books so she knows when/if I’ve added or forgotten words and will often point it out. (Oddly enough, I’m a decent public speaker but that’s because I refer to bullet points rather than read prepared speeches.)

I can read most children’s books aloud fairly decently but Dr. Seuss is a particular challenge due to the meter, alliteration and nonsense words he uses. The alliteration in particular really trips me up because I just can’t seem to wrap my tongue around the damned words sometimes.

I’ve considered getting a Nook or an iPad so I can get some interactive books for TLE. The expense makes me hesitate as does the idea that I’m not the one reading to TLE. I can soldier on reading Dr. Seuss books since that’s what makes TLE happiest. I just wish my tongue and brain would cooperate while reading them.

Hanging Out

When I went to sign out The Little Empress from school the other, the Director of the school happened to be standing nearby and told me an interesting story about TLE and how she plays.

The girls in her class were “having a dress up party” and TLE had joined in. Rather than dressing up with the other girls, TLE decided that she would be a kitty cat. She crawled around on the ground, mewing and rolling onto her back and playing with her friends as they played dress-up party. When the Director came in, TLE mewed and nuzzled her leg.

TLE’s quite the imaginative little thing! I love the fact that she’s not afraid to be original in a crowd. I can only hope that she will continue to not be afraid to be exactly who she wants to be.