Month: November 2014

How much does Ruby look like Jay when he was a baby?!? They’re practically twins!!

The sweet babe is 10 months today. Ruby is happy. She still has only two teeth. She scoots and crawls around the house in her own unique and adorable way. She pulls herself up to stand and is now beginning to cruise a bit on furniture. Those little, wobbly legs are too cute.

Ruby is sleeping pretty well, and eating well. We are wondering when we might move her into sharing with Theo, but it will probably still be quite some time. She loves to explore new toys and rummage and put toys inside of baskets and other bins. Ruby is a dancer. We have some mixes that Jay has put together for Theo, and Ruby knows them by heart. She kills me when she hears familiar songs. She lights up and starts smiling and bouncing. It’s the best. She giggles and kisses and loves.

When I come in to get her after her nap, her immediate response is to lean into my face and kiss me. Melt my heart every moment of every day, Ruby. We love you so very much. So thrilled you are here.

I had the parent/teacher conference today with Theo’s pre-k teacher, Ms. Gallagher. I can’t say I learned much I didn’t already know, but it was certainly nice to hear about my kid from another person’s perspective. And to have similar challenges that we have at home be echoed at school, as well. Without additional one’s, I might add!

I guess they give each kid a card with a positive element about them. Theo’s said, “Theo loves listening to music. He is a great dancer and singer.” She said that he is doing well academically: great comprehension, vocabulary, writing letters and numbers and that it’s very apparent there is a lot of reading together at home. He loves to listen at story time and music time. Of course his most favorite thing to do is to be the helper during meeting time. He often chooses the “school center” (one of the activity areas they have to choose from during “center time”) where he pretends to be the teacher, loves to use the pointer and sounds out letter sounds, writes his name on board, etc.

Ms. Gallagher said he gets distracted by the “centers” when she tries to pull him aside for more focused learning. I guess they sit down with students at the table to focus on writing and other areas while other kids are in the different centers during center time. This is obviously understandable and she mentioned that the classroom is not set up like that next year for kindergarten so it probably won’t be an issue. She also said that he has improved with using his words and waiting his turn for activities that he wants to be involved in. They notice him pausing and thinking before he reacts.

We are proud of you Theo!

Ruby is doing all kinds of cool stuff these days! My most favorite that I simply can’t get enough of? Kissing on command! All I have to say is, “Ruby, can Mama have a kiss?”, and that sweet girl leans in for a non-puckered smooch of all smooches. It’s the best!

She’s crawling all over, pulling herself up to stand everywhere and you know what else? Ruby is saying “dada” on command. It’s too sweet. All of it.

Theo is now attending a sweet, little co-op school on Wednesday and Friday mornings. I became friendly with two other moms who are neighbors and both have daughters in the pre-k classroom next to Theo’s. We would see them at the playground before school and Theo became friends with Evelyn and June, the daughters. A couple weeks ago they invited us to join their co-op school. It’s at Evelyn’s house, and there are three other kids who attend. They have a teacher who has been working with their family for four years, as Evelyn has an older brother and they did this with him and others when they were younger. Theo is dropped off at 8:40am and then I pick him up at PS 230 at our regular time of 2:40pm. He spends the morning there, they have play time, circle time, snack time and work on some kind of project or story. The teacher then walks them to school for 12:15pm (it’s very close) and I pick up after school. It’s really great! Theo absolutely loves these girls and he was thrilled to attend and has been loving it since he began last week. It gives him two full days of school, and gives me the break to not run back and forth for the short 2 1/2 hours of his pre-k. It’s basically a win-win. I love the in-home nurturing style that is reminiscent of his pre-school last year at Play by the Park. I’ve yearned for that a bit since he began the real classroom style this year. These all seem like good steps to prepare him for five full days of school next year when he begins kindergarten.

Next week we have parent/teacher conferences at PS 230 and I look forward to hearing from his teacher how he has been doing so far this year. He seems to really like it, and he has already learned so much. He is writing more letters than before, and now numbers as well, reciting the months of the year and the days of the week regularly. He LOVES reciting the song they learned for the days of the week. It’s very sweet because every time we talk about a day to look forward to, or simply a day when something is planned, he recites the song. “Sunday, Monday… there are seven days in the week!” As he sings he counts the days on his hand. I can really see him grasping the concept of the days and when to expect what will be happening. He is very interested in counting days and counting everything. He is often using basic addition and subtraction without even being fully aware of it. He is able to calculate in his head quickly from sight and I find that pretty amazing.

We also ditched the babysitter. I didn’t want to do both the sitter and the co-op school. It was too much bouncing around for him with other people, and we also can’t really afford to do both with me only working a small amount. We chose the co-op school since that was what he really wanted. He never seemed to bond with the new sitter and that wasn’t sitting well with me at all. This now gives me zero time without both kids for working on home studies but we are making it work.

Well, we got a family portrait. There was one cranky chicken, and one tired cow. Things didn’t go exactly as planned but, hey, that’s okay. After trying to do some trick or treating we wound up back home to deal with an unruly Theo. The good news is, after using the bathroom and taking a bath, Theo went back out in great spirits with Daddy (and flashlights!) and they did some fun trick or treating together. In the end it all worked out. I could put Ruby to bed, and they had a fun time together.

We already started talking about our costume’s for next year. Theo declared himself as the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, Daddy the Tin Man, Mommy as Dorothy and, you guessed it, Ruby as Toto. Sorry, Ruby. Until next year!