Happy Half Birthday and First Day of Preschool

Selena is now 3 1/2 and she is in one of those stages where she is learning new things quickly.   Her climbing is improving daily.  There are some monkey bars at a nearby playground that have a slight downward angle and are quite high and now she can do them all by herself and even let go and land on the ground without help.  I need to get it on video because she looks pretty small doing them and it is pretty impressive.

Her hand and eye coordination has also improved a lot.  She can now catch something if you throw it to her and she can throw better as well.

She has now also figured out how to use the computer by herself.  She can use the mouse to click on stuff and drag it.  She can even use the scrolly button to scroll a web page.  She mostly plays on the starfall website or the Super Why and can do most of the games on them without help.  I'm proud of her, but am not completely sure if this is a good thing or not.

She is getting better and better at writing.  She almost knows how to spell her name without help.  I've seen her do SELE before she asks for help and the letters are getting in the right order and facing the right way more often.

We went to camping, to the Evergreen State Fair, and blackberry picking and she had a lot of fun.  Her favorite parts of camping were riding the ferry, and making smores.  She enjoyed the rides and playing in the farming maze at the fair.

She also had her first day of preschool.  She has been waiting for this moment for months.  She enjoyed it a lot and was upset when I came to pick her up.  She didn't know why it wasn't longer, she was playing on the playground and didn't want to go, and she didn't want to wait five days to come back.  The first thing she told me about was how she didn't know where Owen went during snack time.  I guess he might have gone home?  She said she had a funny teacher.  She brought home some worksheets and she didn't completely color in the sun.  She said next time she would, but she got tired so she didn't finish.  They made her walk around in a circle "for some reason" (maybe duck, duck goose or something?).  They played and played and played.  They had animal crackers for snack and water.  She took three sips of water.  They had music time, but weren't allowed to sing.  Then they did sing an America song.  They read a Clifford book, and it was one she had never read before.  It is very weird for me because its the first time she has been away and I don't get a report from an adult on what she did.

Lately she has been in a phase where she keeps asking if I love her or Allie.  It is really annoying because she asks it at least 20-30 times a day.  I keep saying I love you both or ignoring the question.  Then she'll say I have to love only one.  She'll also ask if I love her when she does bad things and I say I do.  I love her no matter what.  Well to balance all this annoyingness she was playing with Allie and Allie smacks her, so she tells Allie to not hit and then says, "Even though you hit me Allie I still love you," and my heart melted. :)  She has also been very helpful in figuring out what Allie wants when she is crying.  In the car she'll give Allie snacks, she watches for when Allie drops things in the stroller. On my sleep-in-day apparently Allie was crying and saying Mama so Selena comes in (thankfully right about when I wanted to get up) and says, "Allie is crying and calling your name."  So she's looking out for her little sister, at least some of the time.