Maxwell's last day of Preschool

Cute boy is ready for summer to be here

Look at that head of sweet curls.  We were all feeling sick after Memorial Day so I stayed home and got lots of cuddles in with Emmalyn.  

Here's her napping.  I can't get enough of the cuddles.

Hanging around watching TV because when she was awake, she didn't have much energy.

Later that evening she started playing a little.  She "read" me some books.

But a little bit of play and she was tired again.  :(

While it's sad she didn't feel well, it's not often you get a day filled with cuddles from a 2 year old.

Last day of preschool!!

He added in a drawing of himself on the chalkboard (top right hand corner.  Sort of hard to see)

I got to go to the end of school party in Maxwell's class.  I will miss these kids.  It's been fun being able to be a part of reading to them regularly, helping with their class parties, and seeing them at parties.

Clockwise from bottom:

Avis, Joshua V, Preston, Hailey, Joshua K, Maxwell, Jacek

Maxwell says that Joshua (Maxwell also calls him JK) is his "BFF" and says they are going to get married.  I told him they don't have to be married to be friends forever.

Group picture but Max and JK hadn't finished their snacks yet

I'm so sad that Maxwell isn't going to see all his buddies every day anymore.  None of them are going to the same school and live across the city.  :(

Helpful big guy helping clean up after the party

Our favorite - Ms. Cynthia.  We had no idea what a smart decision we made when we chose to be in her class 2 years ago.  Maxwell has thrived and progressed so much.  Maxwell loves learning and being challenged.  She has continued to foster that.  We are so grateful for her!

I couldn't bear to fully cut him off from school so I am going to keep him in school about every 2 weeks 

We wrapped up the day by splashing in rain puddles.

It was a splashing success

Maxwell's Last Parent Teacher Conference in Preschool

I had Maxwell's last Parent/teacher Conference with Ms. Cynthia at his preschool.  It was a big departure from the first one we had a year and a half ago where I wondered if she even knew my son at all.  She had much to say about him and I left feeling so appreciative of everything she has taught him.  It made me a little sad to think that the end of his time with her is coming before I know it.  I may have had my doubts when we started but it has turned out even better than I could have hoped for.

Some of the notes I took during our conversation...
Maxwell still can't hop on one foot (I'm not sure why but he's just not able to!).
He is getting better at problem solving.  He doesn't cry and will take a deep breath.
He still doesn't want to participate in P.E.  Specifically when they are playing games that involved being "tagged".  He is afraid to be "tagged" and be out so he just would prefer not to play.
He needs to work on tying his shoes.
He loves performing and loves to sing and use the exact words in the song.
He's doing much better at resolving conflict and interacting with peers. (I think the play dates with his classmates have been a great idea!)
He is doing really well at his skip counting and chains which are the prep for learning multiplication.

We spent a lot of time talking about my uncertainty about putting Maxwell into Kindergarten.  I am concerned that he is going to be really little.  I wonder if he's mature enough to go to Kindergarten.  My concerns isn't for his educational ability - in fact I think he will be far ahead of most of the kids in his class already.  (In Texas, some parents hold their kids back that turn 5 in early May/June before school starts.  So there are going to be 6 year olds in there with him and he will only have turned 5 a few days before school starts.  Plus, he's already on the small side for his age...)

Ms. Cynthia felt like he's ready for it and that it would only put him even further ahead of his peers to send him to Kindergarten in a year and then he would get bored and potentially get in trouble.

She suggested that we try to get Maxwell in the lead Kindergarten teacher's class because that teacher will probably be the best equipped to deal with his abilities.  She also suggested that I ask the principle about they separate the high performers.  She said that Maxwell is reading at about a 2nd grade reading level.  When I asked about Maxwell's maturity level, she talked about the fact that when he cries, it's because he's afraid.  She said to watch the first 6 weeks of school and watch for the tears.  If he cries a bunch, then he might not be ready and we may want to pull him out and wait for the next year.

It was really helpful talking to her and I appreciated her experience and insight.

The Primary Program Skills Inventory goes into a lot of detail, here's a broad recap.
Maxwell's gross motor skills are age appropriate except for his inability to hop on one foot.  His Fine Motor Skills, Writing Skills, and Health/Nutrition are all age appropriate.

Oral Language:  He exceeds age expectation with his Expressive Language and Receptive Language

Personal Development: He exceeds age expectation in his Attitude Toward Work (he has grown his ability to apply a variety of strategies to solve problems to an age appropriate level),  Independence, Concentration, and self control (except handling transition well with his age appropriate).  In Maxwell's ability to take care of one's self he is great at some things, good at others, and then needs to work on tying his shoes which makes sense because he doesn't have any shoes that have laces. His personal expression through music, paint, story telling, clay, and drawing is all age appropriate.

Social Development: All Age appropriate

Refinement of the Senses: He has Mastered understanding size, color, differentiation with sound, and touch/weight.  For his 2 and 3 Dimensional shapes, he's got the standard shapes down plus all the polygons, curved line figures (I may not know what a quatrefoil is, but he does!), and quadrilaterals.

Mathematics: He has mastered Numeration from 1 - 1,000.  He has mastered place value and units, tens, hundreds, and thousands.  He has mastered addition and has made steady progress with subtraction and multiplication.  He has memorized addition facts and is starting to memorize his multiplication facts.

Science: Max has mastered the days/months and can tell time by the hour with steady progress on telling time by the half hour, and quarters.

Geography: He's made steady progress (the level right below "Mastered") with the continents, oceans, countries of North America and state of the United States.  He knows the flags of the US and Texas.  He has made steady progress on his knowledge of landforms like lakes/islands/bays, etc.

Botany: He has mastered the leaf shapes and can name the parts of a leaf, flower, and tree.

Zoology: He's mastered the parts of a horse, frog, turtle, bird, and fish.

The notes Ms Cynthia wrote about Maxwell, "Maxwell is such a great student, he's always willing to volunteer in class.  During Math time we will be working on multiplication and skip counting.  In Language we will be working on identifying nouns, verbs, and improving writing skills,"

How awesome is all the stuff that Maxwell has learned??!?!  I am so incredibly grateful for all that he has learned at Montessori and the fun that he's had too.  The Montessori method has been a great fit for Maxwell and he has thrived!

September Third Week - Tennis practice and School Picnics

This girl is now fully in love with the iPad.  She's watched her brother and sort of figured it out (I'm sure in her mind she totally has it figured out.)

Video - Emmalyn on the iPad.  It's crazy to watch her navigate and change her mind on what she wants to do.

Sharing.  What a nice thing.

Emmalyn playing with the baby doll at Brittany's

Suckers after swimming lessons

Boxes are the best toys ever

After the fun we had playing tennis on vacation, I thought we should do that some more so we all got tennis rackets and finally made it to a court!

Maxwell had a fun but I wish I knew how to coach him how to really hit the ball.  He struggles with the hand/eye coordination required to hit the ball.  He really really really wanted to hit it over the net but couldn't get the hang of it.

Max had to fill out a paper about him and his family.  He wrote the few things that he knew how to.

My cute son, happily sitting on the rug at school.  He's definitely happy to be back in school.  He goes 5 days a week this time instead of the 3 days a week he went last year.

Max's school put on a picnic for students and families to celebrate being back in school.

Never give toddlers cheetos - what a mess!!!

Max and his teacher Ms. Cynthia (we stayed in the same class as last year - Groundhogs)

Maxwell and his new asst. teacher - Ms. Patty

Max didn't want to go down the slide but Emmalyn sure did!

coming down - wheeee

Made it to the bottom!  She loves slides!

Emmalyn's independence is really growing.  She's good eating thing like yogurt with her spoon.  She walks so fast!  AND (yuck) she has started throwing fits that are more fitting for a 2 year old than a toddler who is not even 18 months old yet.  She is sneaky and will slyly grab remote or cereal and then sneak away. Giggles with joy when she's going to nurse, which I love - she's currently nursing in the morning and at night.

Emmalyn is so drooly and now it seems to be causing a rash on her face.  It just drips off of her.  Gross! She loves the books "bubbles bubbles", "snuggle puppy", and "hickory dickey dock".  She can climb up the steps and get into Maxwell's bed,no problem.  She can also climb onto the couch by herself.  This girl goes everywhere now!

She says new words all the time like "back pack". She has the cutest voice especially in the morning... When having a conversation she talks really quietly in a low voice.  If you say "one" she will say "two".  She says "thank you Momma" all the time and will say "bless you" when you sneeze.  She sings, a lot!

She likes to sit in chairs by herself and loves to be outside.  She's great at taking directions.

Maxwell has said some things that just MUST be documented.  :)

• He said to Peter, "why is your hair so small?"  
• When I was trying to get him to hurry up on the potty and poop faster he said, "my poop goes slow, did you know that?" 
•  "Emmalyn wants the hair out of her eyes" 
• "When I'm an adult, I'm going to have a beard like you" (said to Peter)

Maxwell loves making notes for peter and I with drawing pictures of stick figures.
He can count to 29 but then gets stuck.  He knows how to count by 10s to 100 but doesn't yet know how to do it by 1s.  :)

A sad thing happened this week.  Maxwell said he was too big to lay across bed (too long) so he switched his pillow and put it at the head of his bed and laid normally on his bed.  :(  Big kid.

Another week full of adventures

September 20 - 26, 2014

Emmalyn came with me to my friend (we work together at CROSSMARK) Sarah's baby shower.  We are excited to have two baby girls that can be friends!

Daddy was getting some giggles out of her

Walking around with Momma in the baby bjorn 

Out to dinner - we tried a new place and got some mediocre food and then went next door to a place where they make you ice cream by freezing it in front of you with, (I can't remember) some cold gas.  It was cool to watch but again just mediocre on flavor.

Going on a walk - trying to get Maxwell to love his balance bike

My fix it man finally showed up to work

I took the kids on a picnic while daddy was playing paintball

Love spending time with these two even though it's a lot of work!

We took Maxwell (and Emmalyn) to see Footloose put on by a children's theater. 

This was the most interested he looked the entire time.

Within like the first two minutes there were two swear words, which I was NOT happy about.  I thought this was children's theater?  Anyway, the show quickly didn't hold Maxwell's attention so we were trying to entertain him with stuff in the diaper bag and also keep Emmalyn happy.  We quickly gave up.  We decided to leave, it just wasn't worth it.  I think we lasted 20 minutes, maybe. 

So we played on the stairs outside the theater and took some pictures.

Maxwell loves his "big brother" t-shirt.  He loves all t-shirts and would wear them every day if I let him.  Style, dude!

We are so lucky to have such a cute and happy baby!

She was gumming this toy so hard that she figured if she ripped it out of her mouth, it would squeak against her gums so she did it over and over again.

Hard to change a diaper like this...

Wahoo!  This rear end is now big enough for Size 2 diapers!

I love that it's now cool enough that we can do walks in the evening.  These two were chatting it up (love Max's hands in his pockets as he walks - ha!)

There was a chalk hopscotch on the sidewalk during our walk and Maxwell knew what to do with it.  He also saw a shape and pointed out that it was a trapezoid.  Then he wanted to play "chase me" and "freeze tag".  All of these things were things he didn't know before he went to school - guess he IS learning!

At the fall family picnic at Maxwell's school.  We knew like no one, a few teachers were familiar but that was it.  Maxwell didn't seem to know any of the kids.  Oh well, we just started, right?

Maxwell and his Teacher Miss Cynthia

Peter walked in on Maxwell pooping and found him like this. !!!

Preschool update:
At school, Maxwell has Chinese class once a week for half an hour.  When he comes home, we ask him to teach us what he learned and he says something that sounds like Chinese.  Who knows if those are real Chinese words or what they mean since neither of us knows any Chinese!  Unfortunately he doesn't only learn good things at school, the other day he threw a tantrum with stomping his feet - that was learned from someone at school.  Nice.  I'm not sure if he likes going to school.  He is really sensitive and easily upset.  For example, he cries if he has to go to another teachers classroom because his teacher isn't there yet (she is getting a new helper but the helper hasn't started yet so that means it is only his teacher in the classroom and she's been late a few times so the kids have to go to another class until she gets there.  It's super frustrating to me because I see him breakdown and wonder if we shouldn't have picked another teacher, one who was more punctual perhaps??)  He also cried when I came to read to his class and when I left.  According to his teacher he isn't crying for my during nap time anymore but he still takes forever to fall asleep.

It's hard to get any details from him about what he did all day - I wish I could just stay there for a day and watch.  He eats lunch with one of the older kids in his class, I think she's 5 or turning 5.  Anyway, part of Montessori is to let the older kids help the younger kids and apparently he was upset because he dropped his spoon and she helped him deal with it.  Nice, right?

Here's what his teacher told us.  He's good at language, reading, and his math.  He needs to work on his writing and coloring.  She says he uses both hands instead of favoring one (which we knew) so we asked her to encourage him to use his right hand when he's writing.  He doesn't want to try new things or be silly in front of others.  She said he's not quite socially engaged.  He does NOT want his fingers dirty which has caused problems when they are doing things like finger painting.  He also doesn't want to move on to new work and would rather keep doing what he's doing for long periods of time.

Max is still wearing some 18-24 months pants.  This poor kid is so short!

Emmalyn update:
Emmalyn is pivoting around on her belly.  And we get a few rolls from belly to back.  She certainly is squirmy and can get around by wriggling and rolling.  She is a TALKATIVE baby!  It doesn't seem to bother her when I have milk anymore.  She hates the process of getting swaddled but is fine once it's done.  She also doesn't like being put in the car seat. She is now reaching for toys, and switching them between her hands.  She puts her feet, toys, and everything in her mouth and is drooly but there's no sign of any teeth coming in.  Lately, it seems she always poops when Momma is holding her. If we are lucky, she only wakes up to nurse 2 times a night.

She was great when we went to the new brand of binkies and stopped using the soothie kind from the hospital.  She can now grab the binky and put it in her mouth herself.  I don't give her the binky though when she is falling asleep at night.  We use a sound machine when she sleeps but she doesn't have to have it.  It's so sweet because she coos while she is falling asleep.  During the day we get her to sleep by putting her in the swing (which I don't like but hey, it works...) I can tell she really wants to eat solids.  She is so interested whenever we are eating but I'm holding out and not giving her solids until she's 6 months - only a couple more weeks.  It's hard to get excited about giving her food because she seems to spit up so much lately.  I don't want gross solid food spit up too!  (At least breast milk spit up is all white and doesn't stain like carrots do.)

She really knows her family and just lights up when she sees me.  I love it!  She loves watching Maxwell play on the iPad.

I am already stressing about my milk supply and have seen a drop.  I have a ton of breast milk frozen so that helps a little with the stress, but I wish that I wouldn't be seeing a drop in my production already. :(

My tailbone is doing better and only hurts if I spend time sitting on a hard surface - like the floor for very long.  I can't believe it's really taking this long to heal.