Selena Turns Four

Selena had been anxiously awaiting her fourth birthday for a long time.  On her birthday she was very surprised that her clothes still fit, and she couldn't reach the toilet paper in the bathroom without getting off the toilet (maybe when she's five), but she was a much better twirler.  She was also overheard telling a boy at the children's museum that she was almost five as well.

We went roller skating for her party.  It was a lot of fun, but it was way too long.  Most young children cannot skate for 2 hours (my niece and nephew were the exception).  We made chocolate cupcakes and blue Jello cake for the party, so her friends could choose what they wanted.  She used candy to "draw" a picture of herself on the cake.  She said that when she blew out the candle she wished for summer to come soon.

She has finally throughly memorized every Bob the Builder episode and thus rarely requests them.  However she once again enjoys Curious George even though she remembers all the episodes "from when she was two."  Dora and Diego have also joined the mix, and now she is speaking Spanish to me, but I do not understand until she translates for me.

She continues to amaze me with her writing and reading skills. She enjoys writing letters to people and is constantly pestering me to spell words out for her.  She really enjoys writing to her baby cousin Issac, who is so cute.  She did manage to sound out his name the other day as Isic.

She and her sister continue to frustrate me with their fighting.  Selena is constantly calling Allie names.  Allie hits her, she hits Allie back.  They don't want to share toys.  They always want to snatch the toy from the other person.  It is very frustrating.  But then they have their moments of sweetness where one will say please and they will take turns.  Or they will kiss each other's bonks.  Or Selena will hold Allie's hand in parking lots (and Allie refuses to hold mine).  One morning Selena woke up and made up a song about how cute Allie was.  Or they play hide and seek together.  It is just amazing how they go from sweet to sour and back to sweet so quickly.

Preschool is going well.  It is a mystery to Floyd and I what goes on there.  Every day we ask and she says she doesn't remember, but then slowly details come out over time.  Today she played super hero's with a little girl, and they traded costumes when she said her cape was too long.  She has identified kids who are close and play together often, but she says she just plays with whoever asks her.  Her teacher tells then, "You get what you get and you don't throw a fit."  Floyd asked her if they just spend all their time licking each other (because of all the sickness she brings home) and she says, "No, there is no licking at preschool."  Surprised Floyd asked if this was a rule the teacher's actually specified, and she says, "No, but there's no kissing at preschool, so there isn't licking either."

Bedtimes seem to be going a bit easier.  She seems to fall asleep faster which makes things much less frustrating.  She comes up with the best conversations and questions at night.  One night she asked me, "How does the earth spin all on its own?"  I honestly have never even thought to ask such a question.  She decided there must be an earth spinning machine.

Excited for Halloween

I think Halloween is Selena's favorite holiday.  She seems to remember prior years fairly well and she gets really excited about it.  She keeps changing her mind on what she wants to be, but at the moment she wants to be a monster again.  I was planning on making her a costume, but dealing with the seizure medication has been hard for me and I might just have to go and buy one.  We carved some pumpkins at Nana and Papa's and this year she actually helped scoop out seeds.  She also tried to get in the pumpkin to see if she would fit because apparently we have a tradition of putting kids in pumpkins.

She likes requesting food in clues.  I want something round and juicy-- an apple.  I want something that reminds me of Halloween -- candy.  I want something oval and juicy -- grapes.  We didn't have any grapes so I tried to give her a pear, but she wouldn't go for it.

She is also big into making last minute plans and keeping them a secret.  She will wake up in the morning and declare that she has a scooter race.  Then she draws a map so her dad can find it.  The map includes shortcuts.  Unfortunately she gets very upset if she is unable to execute her last minute plans.  Her and Mi (Do, Re, Mi) were supposed to have a rollerskating contest yesterday, but obviously we can't just drop everything and go roller skating, and the rink was closed, so she was upset and crying.

She loves preschool, but she has been so grumpy since she's started.  She will sleep till 10 on the mornings without preschool and then I have to get her up at 8:15 on the days with preschool.  Trying to get her to go to bed earlier is impossible.  Usually she'll either take a nap, so then she won't go to bed early, or she will hang on and still stay up late, then sleep in the next day and take a nap.  Floyd keeps lobbying to keep her up and make her go to bed early, but I feel like we just get a super grumpy kid who still won't go to bed, and everyone is miserable.

I finally broke down and bought training pants for nighttime and that seems to be a good solution.  She doesn't object to them because aren't quite diapers, but if she does have an accident at night, there isn't a mess.  I slip them over her underwear so we can reuse them if they stay dry.  If she does refuse to wear them I just put them on her after she falls asleep.

She's been running some.  She'll decide she needs to go for a run and she puts on her running shoes and off we go.  She doesn't mind running in the rain either because she's hard core, but dad isn't because he doesn't like running in the rain. :)  She ran a 2k race the other day.  Floyd ran a x-country race and they had a 2k community race after.  She was very excited, but the gun startled her.  When she did start running she tripped over Floyd's foot and fell.  She was hurt and crying, but still wanted to run the race.  She managed to push through and ran the whole thing.

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.

3 years and 5 months old

We've been having a fun summer so far.  Selena has been begging to go camping for a couple months now so when we went on our annual trip to my uncle's cabin on the Washougal River we brought our tent and decided to sleep in there instead of in the bunk house.  It was good.  Both girls fell asleep sitting around the campfire, so I didn't have to miss any socializing putting them to bed.  They even managed to sleep in a bit.  We'll try a real camping trip (cooking our own food) in two weeks.

In addition to that excitement we made a few trips to the "beach" at Silver Lake.  Selena loved swimming in the lake and made us go two days in a row to get all her swimming in.  The beach is nice because she can adjust the deepness.  We did go in the pool at my brother's condo earlier this summer, but it started out at 3 feet deep so she had to be held the whole time.

We've still been doing a lot of berry picking.  One day Selena commented, "I didn't know we were going to turn into berry pickers when we moved to our new house."  We've gone and picked strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries at various local farms and we often go out among the nature trails around our house to pick wild berries.  I'm looking forward to the blackberries getting ripe.  My parents do an annual trip to Whidbey Island to pick blackberries, but we haven't gone in a long time because we lived so far away, but we will get to do it this year.

In theory I am against television for young children for a few reasons, but I have succumbed to the convenience of it giving me a few short breaks during the day and by the fact that Selena asks for it.  The habit started when I was pregnant, still working part time from home and needed a nap and Sesame Street could give me it.  So she watches a few shows a day, but no more than one at a time and we use the DVR so there aren't many commercials.  But in the last couple weeks Selena seems to have entered a new level of comprehension when it comes to watching television.  She used to watch the same episode about 5 or 6 times on our DVR before getting bored with it, and sometimes you would ask her about the show and she couldn't tell you what happened (research has shown that young children's learning is very inefficient through the television ie they have to watch something on the TV 4-6 times before they learn it, but if they are taught it in person it only takes 1 or 2 times of repetition).  She did learn a lot of things from the shows, but she did have to watch them over and over.  Now she only wants to watch a show once, and she participates in the interactive portions of the show.  So it is kind of an interesting developmental milestone.

She has been writing a lot lately.  She can now write most of her letters without me creating dots for her to trace.  It is neat because we don't work on writing or reading.  We just include it with things she does.  Like we write letters to family members or make cards for people's birthdays.  It is fun to see her progress.  It also answers my question if she knows her letters, because I'll tell her how a word is spelled and she writes it only occasionally asking me how the letter is made.

She has also been drawing a lot.  My favorite has been her series of pictures of her cousin Issac.  She's drawn Baby Issac playing golf, wearing a tutu, with an afro, in a blanket.

We still are struggling with frequent accidents, both at night and during the day.  She was dry at night for a while, but then she started having a lot of accidents so I put her back in diapers.  She kept them dry, so I put her in underwear and she wet the bed.  I really think she doesn't like peeing in a disposable diaper, but it doesn't bother her when she does it in her underwear.  She also will have accidents often when she is playing in the backyard.  I think then it is mostly laziness because she figures she is outside and it doesn't matter.  Other times she'll have them in the bathroom or on her way to the bathroom because she gets distracted and doesn't get there in time.  It is really annoying.

She is definitely in a climbing stage.  Everything is a jungle gym, and when we are in a store, and she's using the shopping cart to climb on.  It is pretty annoying.  However when we are at the playground it is pretty impressive.  She's small for her age so I'm sure other parents think she is younger than she is and thus I've gotten many parents hovering around her at the park when she is fine.  In general I don't like to hover because I've noticed that if I hover she is more likely to give up and have me do it for her, than if I am not nearby.  If she asks for help I will help her, but I try to let her assess her own abilities to figure out what she can do and what she can't.  There is a big rope spider web at Willis Tucker Park and she is determined to climb to the top.  She's gotten almost there, but she is a little too short to get up the last two rungs.

She is also in a question phase.  Of course the inevitable "Why?" to anything and everything.  But also some more thoughtful ones.  Today we got into a discussion on how the dinosaurs died and where humans came from.  When she doesn't understand she keeps asking, "What did you say?"  Obviously my explanations were confusing and she eventually said, "Mom, I am so confused."

She still has her invisible friends Do, Re, Mi, Fa and So and the other night we were out, in the dark, with our flashlights looking for their house so she could go over there for a slumber party.  When we couldn't find their house she was very upset.  I kind of pointed out that Do, Re, Mi were pretend so they didn't really have a house, and she got very upset about that.  So I quickly covered and said I didn't mean it, and I was confused, and that they must have gotten confused and really wanted to have a slumber party at our house.

I'm a Cat

Selena has been doing great.  I'm not sure if its coincidence or not, but I've been using some gentle discipline techniques and since I've started Selena's behavior in general has been great.  She has been patient with her sister.  She has been saying sorry when she makes a mistake, and overall has been fairly helpful.   It is wonderful.  It wasn't that long ago that she would run off in the blink of an eye.  But she doesn't do that any more (well almost) and even more she attempts to keep Allie from doing it.  

Lately she's been into climbing.  We have tons of playgrounds near our new house and we've been exploring all of them.  She has also learned how to slide down poles.  Which she loves.  She has also been practicing the monkey bars and if they aren't too far apart and have a slight decline she can do them 95% on her own.  

We got a membership to the Everett Children's Museum and her favorite part was the construction room.  They have these really cool toys that you can build child size cars and houses out of.  They have special screws, bolts and wrenches to put them together.  So she strapped on her tool belt and grabs her wrench and shouts, "Righty tighty, Lefty Loosey" and starts building.  We spent at least an hour in that room the first day, and we had to go back the next day and she spent another 45 minutes.  When we left the first day I told her we needed to take apart her creation and she got excited and said, "Now I can do lefty loosey!"  

We've visited my new nephew a few times and she absolutely loves him.  She always wants to hold him and she carries on about how cute he is, and how much she loves him.  

Her and Allie have been getting along pretty well.  She carries on about how cute Allie is as well.  When Allie is upset she tries to make her happy.  Selena loves to snuggle and Allie has started snuggling with her more often and Selena likes that.  She does not like the baby slobber kisses Allie likes to plant on her however.  

I think Halloween is one of her favorite holidays because she seems to remember it well, even when she was only one.  Floyd asked her if she was going to be a cat this year and she looked at him with a puzzled expression and as if he was crazy and said, "I'm already a cat."  The fourth of July was fun.  Last year the smoke bombs were her favorite, this year she could care less about them.  This year she liked the pop-its, the sparklers, and the parachute guy.  

She got a book at the library about Arthur losing a tooth, and there was an episode in her new favorite show, Super Why, on the tooth fairy so she is very excited about her and Allie losing their teeth.  

She likes doing the "make a word" games on starfall.com and she is getting pretty good at them.   She knew all her letters at a pretty young age, before she was two, but I'm not sure if she still knows them all.  When she has to pick the letter that fills in the blank sometimes she says the letter name, but sometimes she doesn't.  

Selena Update

Selena is doing great.  She seems to be handling the idea of moving well, except for the fact that I am constantly using it as an excuse for why she can't do things.

Her and Allie are up to their same old tricks; constantly bothering each other.  Except if I try to take Selena to the store without Allie than Selena says that we have to bring Allie because she loves her.  When Allie is sleeping she oohs and aahs over how cute she is.  "Oooh she is such a cute little baby."  She is constantly comparing Allie to her new baby cousin Issac.  She said, "Issac wasn't wiggly like Allie.  HE liked to be held. Why isn't Issac squirmy like Allie?  Why isn't Allie nice like Issac? Why isn't our baby like baby Issac? "

She likes to talk about how old things are and how long they are, but sometimes she gets her types of measurements mixed up.  "I am 6 minutes tall."  or "My birthday is in two inches."  But other times she does get it right.  She also likes to talk ask, "When will Allie be three?  Then how old will I be?" or "When I'm 4 and Allie is three we'll...." She also is very proud of being three.  Whenever the number three comes into conversation she notes that she is three too.

She's made up the word "catty".  It is when someone is acting like a cat.  :)

It seems like she needs a nap again.  She is falling asleep often in the car or in the stroller.  But if she takes a nap, she is up till midnight.  I wish she would sleep easier and would take a short nap before lunch.

Activities this month have included lots of trips to Northwest Trek, the Olympia Children's Museum, and the Poker Player's Alliance Rally (Selena enjoyed making posters for this).

Happy Third Birthday

Selena turned three.  We had a roller skating party followed by pizza at Round Table.  It was a lot of fun.  I have to say Selena has the cutest friends.

Lately we've been drawing and writing letters to people a lot.  When we send someone a letter I've had her write the names of the recipient on the envelope by doing connect the dots.   So she was doing her thank you notes and I was cleaning up the kitchen and I come back and she had written a note to one of her friends and on the envelope was 5 out of the 7 letters of her friends name.  I had never spelled his name for her before...   We've also been doing a lot of digging and tree climbing.  The weather this spring has been great. She still enjoys cooking.  She prefers the real kitchen to her play kitchen.  Actually she doesn't really touch the play kitchen at all.  She makes interesting concoctions and tries to feed them to us. 

She's picked up some imaginary friends.  Their names are Do Re Mi.  Do is a dog, Re is a cat, and Mi is a mouse.  They live in the vacant house across the street.  Floyd made them up as part of her bed time stories but Selena invites them over often and they even go shopping with us.

She is still a cat.  When I call people on the phone she always wants to meow to them.  When we went to her well child visit she scampered up onto the exam table and when the doctor came in she meowed at him.  When he told her that he thought she looked more like a little girl than a little cat she said, "Meow, meow."   She is 34 inches tall and 26 pounds.  The doctor didn't say exactly but I think it was 5th percentile or less. 

As Allie is getting bigger they are playing more together.  I found them in the bathroom today unrolling two rolls of toilet paper.  They get along pretty well but they do have fights over toys.  Well Selena takes toys and Allie cries, or Allie takes toys and Selena shrieks.

Just a little bit left of the twos

Just a few more weeks and Selena turns three.  It truly is crazy how fast your kids grow up.  The last year has been kind of a blur.  Selena is doing great and is just full of funny things she says.  I'm trying hard not to laugh at them right when she says them, because I know she is just emulating what she sees around her and trying to be a big girl. 

Right now she enjoys painting, sending and receiving mail, cooking (ie making up her own recipes to mix together in a bowl), riding her trike, watching Curious George, acting like a cat, wrestling with Allie, swinging really high on the swings, and playing with her toy dogs.  She has mastered climbing the tree in our front yard, swinging from the branch and jumping down.

Some cute Selena moments:

- I moan as she dumps all the socks on the floor that I just put away and she says, "Mom, don't get whiny."
- She tells me, "Allie is the best baby in town."
- We've been enjoying the "Pants on the Ground" song from American Idol and she woke up in the morning and her diaper was falling off and I said that it must be uncomfortable for her and she says in all seriousness, "Maybe that's how people's pants get on the ground."
- She wanted to create a rainbow using a flashlight, paper, and a glass of water like she saw on Curious George and we were having a hard time getting it to work so I said we needed to get her Dad to help since he is the science teacher.  He was sleeping upstairs so she start's yelling, "Mr. Bangerter Dad, Mr. Bangerter Dad."
- One day she tells me, "I'm growing to be a big human and I need big human toys.  Like an Ipod, or a computer, or something else."  I respond, "An Ipod or a computer?"  and she says, "Or something else. Like maybe a big human flashlight."  I say, "I think we'll go with the big human flashlight." and she says, "Ok."