Mighty Girl

The kids and I went to Sunriver this last weekend and got to spend some time at the aquatic center. Neither of my loves is 48" so the big slides were out of the question so Little Bear turned to the next most daring activity: the log walk. A series of rubberized "log" steps spanned one section of the pool. Using only your balance and a cargo net strung above the logs, you need to make your way from one side to another. Kids were falling into the water right and left but Little Bear decided she was going to go for it anyway.

No matter that she was the shortest in line by at least 12", or that she was younger by years and not even tall enough to reach the net at both ends. She was going to do it. Now, having learned my lesson with the stroller,  I simply encouraged her to try and asked if she'd like me to spot her from below (she said yes).

Her initial strategy of standing up each time and stepping from log to log didn't work and she fell twice the first go-through. But she got back up and stood in line again. The next time she kept her center of gravity lower and did OK until the end, when she hurled herself at the pool wall and hit square in the stomach. But the third time?  The third time she used a combo of crawling, leaping, and swinging to make it the whole way (and keep in mind, she was admonishing me every time I tried to manually steady one of the floating logs for her)! Her face at the end was priceless and I could see in every bone of her body how proud she was.

And then of course, she went back and did it again. :)

Mighty Girl!

I remember a few years ago, when Bug was a wee thing, Little Bear insisted on walking to the ice cream store near our house. Except that it's a mile away. But she wouldn't back down,  even as I continued to ask her if she wanted papa to pick us up in the car.

"It's OK just to go part way," I said and, "It's still really far, do you want to drive?" Really? Total parent fail. Luckily I caught myself in time and cheered her on the rest of the way, even when she did eventually get tired... and she did it!

So tonight, at our school's track meet when she asked to push Bug's stroller, I said yes. Even though it was one of the cheap umbrella deals from Walmart that is impossible to steer. And there were a million people. And I was pretty sure there was going to be a thunderstorm.

And Little Bear pushed it almost all the way to the car. Through a dirt and gravel path, up a grassy hill, and around corners. When she had trouble steering,  she bent down and aimed the wheels in the right direction. When she struggled, she pushed harder. Again, I cheered her on and again, she surpassed my expectations.

So here's to you, Little Bear, and to mighty girls everywhere. May you keep walking and keep pushing and may your mama always cheer you on. Even when it's about to rain.

Open House 2014

Today we got the opportunity to leave Bug behind (with his grandpa, not in the parking lot) and visit Little Bear’s school. She goes to Montessori school which means that generally, parents are encouraged to stay out of the classroom space and let the children take ownership of school and their work. Or something like that. There hasn’t been a ton of communication home from school, either, so the entire thing has been a bit of a mystery to us. But Little Bear seems happy and engaged so we don’t have any complaints. Anyway, Papa and I were both so excited to go visit this evening. I don’t know about him, but it was on my mind all day. Does she have friends? Will she behave herself? Is she learning anything?

We got there and Little Bear introduced us by our first names to her teacher. We were given a card that the teacher had written earlier. The three things that Little Bear had apparently indicated to the teacher that she wanted to show us were painting, geometric solids, and “The Adoration of Jesus.”

Little Bear walked straight in and got out a mat. She unrolled it and went to get her first set of work materials. After laying them all out, she realized the story book was missing, looked for it for a bit, and then put all the materials away. She then got out a second, similar set, and set everything out in a very specific order. Papa read the story to her but obviously didn’t have to. She hid the angel until it was time for him to appear, lined all the sheep up to pay their respects, and didn’t take Jesus out of the basket until it was time. It didn’t surprise either of us because doll and pretend play is a big part of what she loves doing at home, but it was fun to see her level of concentration and the very deliberate order in which she played out the story.

And then (and here was the coolest part for me) she folded up her blanket. The whole putting away process was a long one and, despite the adults and students crowding the carpet, everything was set back in its original spot before we moved on.

Next we went to one of the small tables, where she pulled out a basket of flat cloth napkins. Little Bear knew she needed a stool for this activity and went to seek one out. She also grabbed chairs for papa and I and invited us to sit next to her. This activity involved folding the napkins on sewn in lines so that the resulting figures were different shapes. She only struggled with one and then, without being prompted, returned everything to its place on the shelf.

After that, Little Bear worked on “Open and Close” and a few puzzles. Some of the activities she spent longer on, some she breezed through and put away. The puzzle was neat to watch because it was just wooden blocks that form a square shape. She didn’t piece them together right but worked through her problem until she solved it.

Little Bear moved briefly from there to the following activity, which would have made her Boppa proud. That didn’t hold her interest long and we went briefly to the reading corner.

Finally, she landed on magnets, where she probably spent 15 minutes building. She kept asking Papa and I to guess what her creation was. Despite our valiant efforts, we never figured it out. As she started putting everything away, I finally asked her what it was she had been making. “Something from my imagination, mama.” she said. Right. Well, I could have guessed that.

3 years old

How did this happen? How did my tiny little baby become this… well, this child? This tall, thin, adventurous, creative, brilliant, and a little bit crazy child? It is so amazing to think that just a few years ago, she was barely anything in this world and now look at her. She’s going to go places, I just know it! I just hope she comes back home, occasionally, and hugs me like she did, well, when she was just three.

 

Looking back….

Happy birthday Little Bear!

And just like that, you are three.

We have been talking about your birthday for months. Ever since Mama’s in January, birthdays have been a BIG THING around these parts. We practice singing, we have a pretend cake, and there’s even an iPhone app for blowing out candles. Early on, we settled on a Fancy Nancy party. I say “we” because, while you love Fancy Nancy (and, certainly, all things fancy), I’m sure you would have picked a princess theme if I gave you complete choice over it. But Fancy Nancy was good enough and we set out to prepare a soiree.

Of course, the best laid plans, as you know, often fall through. But your uncles were kind enough to let me use their apartment (which is WAY fancier than our suburban home) and we made sure to write “black tie” on the invitation. You spent days deciding which dress to wear and whether to go with the silver tiara or the pink one (both, in the end). I even let you help decorate the cake!

And the party was wonderful. It was a gorgeous sunny day but even without air conditioning, the apartment was at a comfortable temperature. You were thrilled as each set of guests showed up and you entertained everyone by twirling, dancing around, and singing “You are my Sunshine.” The dress up box was a big hit, too, though our “photo booth” area didn’t get used as much as I would have liked. 6 other friends showed up, between the ages of 3 and 6. It was a perfect amount, as all of the other 25-or-so guests were adults. And I got a few pictures, despite only having one working camera.

But it’s hard, my love, because some of the qualities that I love about you, that you are determined and headstrong, make it really hard to take pictures of you. You have such a shining personality. Ever since you were born, people have commented that looking at you makes them happier; that there is something in your eyes that lights up a room. It is so frustrating not to be able to capture that on film and looking at these pictures made me sad for a moment.

And then, I saw this picture:

and I remembered how carefully you studied the snacks that papa bought before you chose some. You paid close attention to what was offered (all your favorites) before making your choices. I can almost see your little brain working sometimes and this expression perfectly captures that.

And this one:

and I remember how for the week or so before your party, you asked every morning if today was the day the children were coming to celebrate. You were so thrilled to see your best friends there to celebrate you and they were equally excited to be a part of your big day.

And this picture? Well this picture:

this is your smile. This is the smile that we see so often in real life and so rarely on the camera. You love to laugh. More than anything else you love everything silly, surprising, ticklish, or goofy. When you play hide-and-seek, you can barely contain your joyful laughter long enough for anyone to find you and you positively shriek if anyone comes close to nuzzling your neck.

I am so, so proud to be your mama, my little Bear. You are so smart and amaze us every day with your vocabulary and thinking. You are loving, empathetic, creative, determined, courageous, and thoughtful. I am so happy you enjoyed your party, even though it fell short of the one in my head and I hope that you remember, every year, how many people are so thankful that you are in their lives.

I know I am.

Adventures in Sewing

Generally when I want to make something, I go to Etsy first. There are plenty of talented people out there who have taken the time to make all sorts of beautiful PDF patterns that I can just download and use. But when Little Bear started collecting all sorts of small animals and people, the site was uncharacteristically unhelpful. Some of my crafty friends have made little crayon and car rolls lately so I turned to pictures of those to try and brainstorm an idea of my own.

Of course, it’s worth mentioning that I got this idea at 8pm and didn’t make it to my local fabric store until 8:30, so my fabric selection was a bit hurried. Also, I then stayed up until 3:45 in the morning working on this. And that is important because visualizing how I was going to piece this together was probably much hampered by my lack of sleep. However, it would have been more hampered by two awake children so I did what I could.

Originally the pockets were going to be much more elaborate and actually look like little dresses. Well, first of all, that was going to be too hard. And second, I wanted this to be of use beyond her (hopefully short-lived) interest in Disney Princesses. The fabric does sort of coordinate with their dresses, though, which makes me unreasonably happy!

So, I didn’t make a fancy PDF pattern, but for those of you who are interested, here’s what I did.

After figuring out how big I wanted my pockets (this was sort of trial and error), I pieced them together like quilt squares. I then sewed some coordinating fabric on the back.

Then I figured how long I wanted the entire roll to be, did some fancy math, and decided how much each pocket would have to be gathered at the bottom to fit. This also involved a lot of pinning, seeing if a princess would fit, and adjusting. I used a disappearing ink pen (so cool!) to mark where each pocket should end. Plus I left about 2 inches of blue on each side.

I then pinned the pockets, hand gathered them and ironed the gathers in place. I did pin them at first but I got lazy.

You can see how much longer the pockets started out than when they were finished.

I sewed the gathers, then put iron on fleece backing on the purple (outside) fabric to give it a little bit of weight.

After that (I’m making this sound much easier than it was), I set the top and bottom pieces together and rolled it up to see where to sew tabs and Velcro. A lot of the rolls on Etsy have ribbon tying them up but I was hoping Little Bear would be able to do this without much assistance! (More disappearing ink in the picture below).

I added some ribbons and embroidery to the purple piece for embellishment. The words didn’t turn out as bold as I wanted but whatever.

This was all rolling/unrolling, trial and error. Finally, I sewed the purple to the blue and it was done! I can’t wait to show it to her!

(A final note, for those of you with sharp eyes… We do have two Aurora’s. One has the soft dress and one has the MagiClip dress. I imagine if she keeps liking them we’ll transition fully to MagiClip so I made the pockets big enough to compensate. Also, we don’t have Mulan or Jasmine, hence the light pink and teal pockets. And finally, yes, Rapunzel’s hair is too long and the wrong color to be in her wedding dress. Talk to Disney about it.)

Stubborn

Strong-willed, spirited, precocious… all of those describe my Little Bear. I guess it worked for me in the case of potty training (no accidents today!) but boy does she have a mind of her own. Maybe it’s because her daddy is a lawyer. Anyway, tonight, before dinner, she wanted me to help her take the tops off of her markers. Of course, it had to be in a specific order and they had to be set “right there” (a new favorite phrase).

On second thought, she does sound like my kid…

Potty trained(?)

Before winter vacation started, I told myself that I’d give potty training two good weeks and if it didn’t work, I’d try again during the summer. Teaching gives me these built in times to change behavior, see, and I figured I was ready to give it my best shot. Little Bear was showing some signs of “readiness” like understanding when her diaper needed to be changed, waking up dry from naps, and understanding what a <strikethrough>bribe</strikethrough> incentive means. Other “signs,” like being able to pull up her own pants, not quite.

Monday (12/19) rolled around and we took off the diapers for good. We bought several kinds of panties. Target brand definitely fit her little bottom best (Wal-Mart, while cheaper, were quite saggy) but we ended up liking the good old Gerber trainers the most. They are padded, which made me feel better, but since her accidents were… all or nothing, as it were, I don’t know if the extra material made any actual difference.

My first plan of attack (and this was basically based on my intuition and no internet reading, which is totally out of character for me) was to get her on the potty as much as possible. We bought two Baby Bjorn potty chairs off Craigslist mostly because I liked the look of them and they didn’t play any tunes when she peed. That’s creepy, in my opinion.

As a side note, I’m not sure what’s different about a potty that plays tunes and me jumping around and singing inane potty songs whenever she peed so I’ll get back to you on that.

Getting her to sit took a combination of me reading lots of books in a very animated manner; feeding her chocolate chips, mini cookies, and All Natural fruit snacks (see how I put “All Natural” in there to make myself feel better. I mean, they were all natural, but I probably didn’t need to add that here); dancing and singing all of her favorite songs, including Happy Birthday to everyone and everything we could name such as Mama, Papa, Elmo, bear, monkey, cat, toes, and panties; getting out the iPhone, and watching movies on Netflix streaming. In all seriousness, I did feel a little bad about the last one. We really try to limit TV around here and it killed me to have her watch hours of movies just to try and trick her into forgetting long enough to actually pee in the right spot. Friends did suggest loading her up on juice but, while I gave in on the movies, I wasn’t willing to go there. She hasn’t had any (juice) yet at all and I wanted to wait until as late as possible for that. In short, I bribed her to sit there and then, when something happened, threw a giant freaking party.

But, like any aspect of parenting, there are grey areas here. Do you reward for “trying,” or only when something comes out? Does #2 net more of a treat than #1? Do you turn the movie off as soon as she goes or let her watch a little more so she doesn’t start holding it in? I, in the worst parenting form possible, basically did a combination of everything and wasn’t consistent at all.

The first week was pretty touch and go. There ratio of accidents to successes was high. That is, she missed the potty a lot. I felt a bit defeated but had resolved to give it the full two weeks so we kept on trucking. I had also resolved to spend the first week at home and not running errands. Well, that didn’t work for two reasons. A) It was the week before Christmas and I had last minute stuff to pick up, and B) I was going stir crazy. But we picked up an Elmo potty seat (just in case) and some plastic pants and… much to my surprise, she was able to travel out and about and stay dry the whole time! I have to add here that she was only peeing, like, 3 times a day which freaked me out enough (toddler with a uti!) to call my ped who assured me that it was normal.

Long story short, thanks to lots and lots of Gnomeo and Juliet and the never ending patience of Papa and our entire family over the Christmas holidays, something seemed to click. She started “going” more during the day, #1 turned into #s 1 and 2, and the accidents were fewer and farther between. I feel like we should have a sign up in our house: “__ days without an accident” because that’s how it feels.

So I go back to school tomorrow. It will basically be LB’s first day without me in two weeks. Part of me is afraid that she’s going to revert back to the diapers in protest of the change. But she acts like such a pro now. Even sits on the adult potty, sans seat, and just… goes.

Either way, I’m proud of what she’s accomplished. Even if it means I have to sing Happy Birthday to her panties.