Abby's First Ice Skating!

Abby's preschool/daycare is just so awesome. For five Fridays in January/February they go ice skating for the afternoon public session. Parents are invites, but since I left early last Friday I had decided I would pass up the trip this time and take Abby on a weekend, just us. I am so glad that my co-workers (and boss) declared that I needed to leave early and go spend some time on the ice with Abby and Anny. We had such a great time.

Abby was tentative at first and refused to let go of Anny. (I got there a little late and surprised both Abby and Anny on the ice!) We eventually coaxed her off of us and onto a bucket, all by herself. She must have done a dozen trips without us!

Here she is on her first go 'round with no help:

Big Tip 'O The Hat to whoever decided to use buckets in public skating sessions! Sure made our lives easier!

Here is Abby with her teacher, Ms Karen:

And finally, here is a short video of Abby skating without the help of us tall-folks - she really got good at this over the course of an hour!

Abby's First Skate! from Anny and Rob on Vimeo.

She will go back next week. I do not think I will join them, but I am REALLY glad that I did today!

A Square Meal

Funny thing again coming from the difference between what we do at home and school, and both sides actually being in the dark because Abby is the one with the creativity...

Yesterday morning when Abby sat down for breakfast, she asked for a good, square breakfast.  Bing the good dad that I am, I brought her two eggs (whites only), whole wheat toast, a bowl of Cheerio's and orange juice.  What, that is the way it is pictured on the box, right?

Kidding, of course.  While she does sometimes eat better than I do, I am also aware that she gets second-breakfast at school, so breakfast at home is small and simple - a granola bar, a cutie or some yogurt.  Makes life simpler for all of us, and gets something healthy in before the day starts.

Anny and I could not figure out what a "square breakfast" meant for Abby, so we kept probing.  I suggested square cut pancakes. No. I suggested the regular granola bar, cut into squares.  Nope. We realized that bread is (mostly) square, so maybe she meant PB&J!  No way to PB or J. 

After giving up on us, Abby settled for half of a yogurt and we went on our merry way.

At preschool she asked for the same thing!  I had not thought to mention it to Karen because I thought it was just Abby being Abby.  Ms Karen, having known what they regularly eat at her house was still a little stumped!  She offered the range of stuff for breakfast that they usually have, with no luck.  She had a bagel for second-breakfast.  Pretty much the furthest thing from a SQUARE meal is a ROUND bagel!

Snack time changed the game when she again asked for a square meal and that is when it clicked for Karen.  She shared with Anny at the end of the day what Abby believes is a good, square meal.

A graham cracker. 

Yes, she had all of us scratching our heads over a graham cracker for breakfast. 

We need to expand this girls vocabulary a bit more, I guess! 

End note will point out that Anny went to Target last night after dinner for other stuff and ended up getting a big box of graham crackers.  Abby was elated this morning to have that as a part of her own healthy breakfast. And we taught her the phrase "graham crackers" to ease confusion later!

Passing with Flying Colors!

Just out of one of Abby's three parent-teacher conferences for this school year.  We both go because I believe it to be important that we both get into the routine of being at these types of things, though I freely acknowledge that at the age of two, it's not a huge deal.  I refuse to be complacent now for fear that the habit will falter to the other side. 

So anyway, today was the day for our conference with Abby's lead teacher, Ms. Linda.  We got there a few minutes early and chatted with the folks in the infant room.  They're always so much fun, especially when you bring them donuts in the morning and see them in the afternoon!  (I'm sticking to the donuts for the foreseeable future.  Major brownie points without having to actually bake brownies!)  We met with Ms Linda at 2:20 ish, while all of the little ones are taking their naps so that we can have her attention, and she can have ours.  I'm glad that Abby was not running around because she would inevitably have been bouncing off of the walls while we tried to talk, and that is not helpful for anyone involved!

You know, it is a bit strange to go into a parent teacher conference.  I remember them when I was in middle and high school - lots of looks-of-disdain directed at me and profuse-how-the-hell-do-you-do-it looks cast at my teachers.  (I never applied myself.  Yup, didn't put it in quotes, I have learned that it was the truth.)  I always walked out of those meetings with the sense that I was going to have a lot of work to make up, you know, since I had been skipping it up to that point, and lots of lectures on the way home.  I swear I was a good kid, just not the schoolin' type.

I'm saying it now, I really hope that we don't have to have meetings like that for Abby.  Period.

Back to today's meeting - we were presented with a folder with Abby's name on it.  In the left pocket was a standard checklist of areas that they are looking at for Abby - language development, letter and number recognition, motor skills - you know, preschool stuff.  Abby got good marks across the board with an asterisk that led to a note that she needs to listen a bit better, but then we expected that one.  That note, though, gives us a heads up as to what they are working on with her at school, and what we should be working on at home with her. 

On the right hand side was a set of pictures and edu-specific descriptions -

"in this picture Abby is demonstrating development in math - she really likes to sort.  On this day she pulled out all of the cows, and only the cows, to play with."  (and the picture was of her with an army of cows that had to have numbered 18!)

Pretty fun to see pictures of her, but even more fun to see that the things she is doing is actually developmental and not just silliness of toddlerhood.  We told her that Abby has an affection for cows - whenever she finds one of her LittlePeople cows at home, she has to find the other two because they are a family.  They can not be separated for fear of... who knows what?! 

Behind that there were several edu-oriented projects that are designed to assess where she is so that we can assess when she is picking up new things.  One of them was "This is Me: Age 2" and it featured several blobs, but all of them had eyes, noses and mouths, and a few of them even had (more than two) legs!  Considering at Thanksgiving we were just working on making circles that were not all eggs, this is really cool.  I will scan that later and put it online, but I want to get this up now.  :o)

We did talk a bit about potty training - it's still going really well with the exception of the pooping issue.  She still hates to do it in the potty and will not do it at school.  It is fine with us if she only does it at home, but right now it's not going anywhere.  Again.  This is something that we need to be aware of because we don't want her to get sick.  Seems a silly thing to be thinking of after my day Monday, but it's reality.  Oh well.

At the end we had time to ask questions about the assessment or Abby in general.  We asked about her babbling*, which she has started recently, and told Ms Linda about our upcoming move to Saint Louis.  It does not matter a whole lot to her teachers in the long run, but we wanted to be sure they were aware so that if Abby begins to show signs of being overstressed they both have a reason and can alert us to her mood change so that we can address it at home.  (i.e. spend more intentional time together rather than focus on packing boxes.) 

All in all she's a bright, happy little girl.  We did not need an assessment to tell us that, but it is always nice when someone else says it, right?!

*About the babbling: it's really funny, actually.  Abby will call everyone to attention saying "It is my turn to talk, please listen!"  When she has everyone's ears and eyes she will start a story with real words, then launch into babbling.  She says it with a serious face most of the time.  Some of the time she also is just making rhyming sounds - not words mind you, but sounds that would rhyme if they were words.  Like I said, it's funny and she only does it in fun times, never if we're having a conversation about things that matter.  That's ma' girl!