Thank You Duck

The simple phrase of "Thank you duck" never gets old. From day 1 of nannying with Matilda's family I have demanded manners from Mat.

On Saturday morning, when I walked into work, I was greeted by a cheerful Matilda whose first words to me were "Thank you Duck for putting up all of the beautiful Christmas decorations." The conversation that followed was a request for decorations upstairs in her room. Okay, so maybe she had an agenda behind her compliment, but regardless, the manners she led with captured my attention and respect, leading me to hear her out on any continuing requests.

It has been difficult to get Mat back on a routine following her trip to Miami. She's less eager to work on letter tracing and more interested in this magic wand that she believes Santa is bringing her. Not sure how she is going to handle the disappointment when the magic actually is pretend... As I have been warning her.

January starts up a whole new routine for everyone. B starts teaching courses at UoM and Mat is going to be in school, full-day, 3 days per week. In late January, Mat will begin preschool basketball through the A2 Rec and Ed department. This program provides athletic activities to Ann Arbor students in the A2 schools after hours.

Oliver is GROWING! He is 10 weeks old today and approximately 14 pounds. He's already growing out if some of his 3mo clothes. He smiles all the time now and is even gripping things...like my hair. Soon I won't be able to wear any earrings.

Vacation

Things have been either hectic or sedentary. J and B went to a conference in Boston over the weekend and then on to Miami to celebrate J's birthday.

The time before the trip was organized chaos. Packing for one kid is hard, but packing for two is harder still. I was literally switching bricks of baby wipes from one suitcase to another in order to displace some if the weight. In the end, one suitcase was 50lbs and the other was 49.5.

As Christmas draws nearer, Mat's excitement level will swell exponentially. Thankfully, I have lots of Christmas present projects for her to work on. Let the painting extravaganza begin... On Saturday... When they're back from Miami.

Below you will find some pictures of Oliver (who is nearly 9 weeks old) and Matilda from the past few weeks. Note the glamorous picture of Mat in her leopard cords at 8am... She informed me that that was not a good day for pictures.

Christmas List

Matilda has already started to make requests for Christmas. We keep telling her that she can put everything on her list and then Santa will choose what to bring to her. She's no longer desiring a cat, but rather a doll; and hundreds of items for her toy rabbit family.

This week Mat and I spent some time doing letter tracing. She was very focused and wanted to know what my expectations were for her regarding the task at hand.

I'm on a 2-day week this next week with the Thanksgiving holiday. I hope to spend my few remaining half days with her working on lower case letters before she goes to school full-day in Jan.

Back from NYC

Over the past weekend Mat went to NYC so J could compete in the New York Marathon. Although the race was cancelled, he still ran in Central Park. They also snuck in time to see The Lion King and Annie on broadway.

Mat has been battling a cold all week. She went to the dr on Thursday, but it was just viral. We did keep her home from school for two days which gave me some extra time to work with her.

Today she blazed through our "boom" game, assembled a world puzzle, and attempted to re-tell a story that I had told here (completely fictional story). I was honestly worried that the day was going to drag on but it flew by; the whole week did.

I hope you enjoy the photos.

November Goals

October was extremely busy with lots of new challenges and therefore I was not able to create or implement any learning goals. Now that I have a better sense of how my afternoons will go, I plan to implement the following three goals for the month of November:

1) naptime potty trained.
     In an effort to prepare Mat for a full day of school come January, we need her to be naptime potty trained. I will incorporate a prize system, much like we did with initial potty training. It will contain a much simpler calendar with one sticker for every day that she has a dry pull-up after nap and a prize for each of those days as well. Luckily we have lots of leftover Halloween prizes that Mat seems to be very fascinated with.

2) Cognitive Review
    Now that Mat is in school 1/2 day, it's difficult for me to track where she is at developmentally. On days where she sleeps during nap, I'm only with her 2 full hours, if that. I want to do an assessment on where she is at with her sorting, story re-telling, and following 3-part commands. This way I can determine if there is anything I need to hone in on. I also want to get back to working on lower-case letters. Her knowing these letters is the foundation to phonetics and reading.

3) Penmanship
    Matilda seems to have really developed her motor control when it comes to writing. Some of the handouts from school have her tracing over the numbers 1-31 (on an October calendar). Since she loves coloring so much, I plan to find some lower-case letter handouts where she can learn the letter, trace it, and then color a corresponding image. To accomplish all 26 letters, this goal will continue into December, but I think that she will enjoy it.

Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone. This has been a very busy week. Monday was normal and Hila (the baby nurse) was there to help.

Tuesday, on the other hand, was hectic. Mat went to school full day and I was with Oliver. When she got home from school at 3:30 the photographer was there to take family pictures. Mat, hungry and sleep deprived due to lack of sleeping during school nap, didn't want to cooperate. I was literally running, jumping, and making silly faces to try and cheer her up. I definitely made J laugh as well. Lol. When the pictures were done it was off to swimming lessons.

Wednesday was Halloween. Mat woke up as excited as if it was Christmas. She was a baby gorilla for Halloween, in spite of her initially protesting the costume suggestion and telling B to send it back before it had even arrived. She was pretty cute it it. See pictures below.

Thursday was a juggling act for me. Oliver didn't want to be put down and Matilda didn't want to be my second priority. Regardless of having my hands full, Mat was understanding overall and cooperative... Even when she knew I was at her disposal.

Today was a whirlwind. Upon arrival at 7:30am, I had exactly 1.75 hours to get them out the door and on their way to New York. It ended up taking 2 hours, one dirty 3T turtleneck, and a misunderstanding about a discovered kids North Face Fleece (that matched J's and mine) to get them out the door.

Unfortunately, after all that hustle and bustle, the New York City Marathon was cancelled... The main reason yet were traveling into the city so soon after Sandy. My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the storm. My 20-year-old brother, who is a member of the Army National Guard, is currently in Brooklyn working on disaster relief. Godspeed to them!