My kids are growing up so fast, I can hardly stand it. CootieGirl will be FIVE in 10 1/2 week. That’s amazing to me. She’s such a little woman now – especially with her big girl haircut. It’s hilarious to watch her play with her brother. Their latest game is “Family” and in that game she is the mother and CootieBoy is the son. I’m the daughter. She has CootieBoy crawl around on the floor saying “goo-goo” and then take a nap under a blanket. It’s very funny and she gets very upset when I accidently call CB “CB” instead of “Baby.”
As for potty training – I don’t even want to talk about it. Let’s just say CootieGirl has yet to earn her reward for going 7 days with no messes. And CootieBoy still lives in fear that he won’t be allowed to go to Disney World. *sigh* And the laundry continues to pile up.
We’re making some changes in our routines. I don’t feel like they watch a lot of tv – they typically watch about 90 minutes on the weekdays and a few hours on the weekends. They much prefer to play or go outside. But I’ve decided to add a “Family Game Night” to our routine to reduce their weekely tv totals nonetheless. They are finally old enough that they won’t rip up or destroy games (our first game of Candyland when CG was 2 1/2 was DE-STROYED after letting her “play” with it for about 10 minutes). So tonight (if Denis is up to it) we’ll be playing Candyland as a family after dinner. I’m excited and hope this becomes a new family tradition wherein all family members refuse to make plans for Monday night lest they miss this important quality time.
As for CootieBoy’s bedtime routine, he got a lovely picture Bible from Uncle Bill this past Christmas. It’s definitely a version specifically for preschoolers. CB had pulled it off the shelf a few days ago (I had it on a high shelf since he tends to rip pages out of books). I took it back and told him we’d read it that night before bed. So as I got him into his pjs, he asked about the book, which I brought down. I proceeded to read the Adam & Eve story, the Abraham story, the Moses story. He was enthralled. I stopped reading to him at some point because he never actually paid attention and would start being disruptive about 10 seconds in. I figured he wasn’t going to be the reader in the family. But obviously, he has changed a lot in the past six months since I stopped reading because he sat quietly, listened to what I was reading, and processed my words with what was on the page. As a result, I ended up reading to him for 20 minutes!! It was great! So that will be our new nighttime routine when he goes to bed on time – when he goes to bed late, it’s merely lights out like always.
As for CootieGirl, this weekend she showed she is a girl of great compassion. A friend of hers from scho, Madison, has been sick and was out most of the week. Her mom had invited CG to go to Chuck E. Cheese after church, but we got a call on Saturday night that CG’s friend was still not feeling well. So yesterday after church, CG says to me, “Mama, can we make Madison a present to make her feel better?” I was really touched by that because it was completely out of the blue and not prompted in any way by me. I told her we could certainly think about doing that, but when I got home we realized that we couldn’t remember Madison’s last name. As Denis and I lamented our forgetful memory, CG piped up, “Her last name is *********!” We both laughed – of course she’d remember – she’s got a memory like a steel trap! We looked up the name online but the name we found didn’t match up with the first names we know the parents to have. In the end we didn’t do it. This morning at school CG was very happy when Madison walked in, and gave her a great big hug. That friendship is the ONLY reason I’d keep CG in that preschool until kindergarten starts.
Which reminds me, we’ve also pretty much decided we’re definitely going to move the kids to the other preschool as soon as we can – no need to wait if we can possibly afford it. There’s a waiting list, so we have to wait until spots open up as it is, but hopefully they’ll open up right around the time of our Disney trip. I would love for the kids to LEAVE for Disney and be done with one school and come back from Disney and begin attending the other one. That would be awesome timing. But we’ll see. I have to fill out the applications after the kids go to bed tonight and mail those off so that we get a top spot on the waiting list.
My family did the “family game night” when I was a kid and I loved it. It also meant my mom ordered pizza, too. Sometimes we also mixed it up and put together puzzles as a family. Ahh…good times, good times.
Nevis’s last blog post..Fusion Feeding Frenzy