Lessons

Somehow we've survived the last 6 weeks.  We've all be wrestling with a bad cold since Sara's birthday.  Sara and I still have a pretty bad cough but I think we're starting to get better.  We didn't let it get us down.  Part of the stress has been that she has so many activities but I don't regret her having them at all, they've been so good for her.

Today was her last swimming lesson.  She did so well, loved it so much.   I didn't sign her up again in April/May because of our trip to Alabama, so she'll get a little break.  However I am considering signing her up for lessons at the Spanish Fork outdoor pool during the summer if I can get a good time in the morning.  I think she would enjoy that, and then later this fall, put her back at the indoor pool.  I really liked her teacher there and want her to continue to take as many lessons as Dan will let me sign her up for.  Hopefully she'll be an awesome swimmer by the end of it.  Then it'll be time to start with Brennan, I guess I'll be sitting poolside a lot.  When they both go to school, then I can take lessons.

Her music class is up and down.  Some days she aces it and does everything perfect.  Other days she has such a hard time concentrating and she would rather just dance than do any of the activities.  A lot of the other kids (there's only 2, 1 dropped out) seem that way too, hit or miss.  Not sure if it's the class structure, content, or their age or what.  She also does not seem to want to do her piano homework at home as much and she's always wanting to do her pre-school homework.

 Sara's preschool teacher tells me that Sara does wonderful and pays attention and is learning.  I told her about how Sara is at music class and she said maybe it's just because it's so much more complicated of a thing to learn and also her preschool moves so fast but really, music class does too.  Anyway, the pre-school teacher reports that she's doing great and that's good.

I have seen results from pre-school, she can draw shapes and simple figures.  She can write letters and she can cut out shapes and around objects like the wind. Her teacher says they do that to work on fine motor skills because they take the longest to develop.  She says actually learning to cut a shape out along a line can help them with writing, by paying attention to the shape of lines and following them with hand/eye coordination. They do a lot of cutting and gluing things in pre-school and for homework, she always is cutting and gluing.  She loves it.  I hope she is able to get a spot there again in the fall, they are full right now for the fall term and she is on a waiting list.

She is also coming along on her bike. We've been taking walks every day this week and she has really gotten more confident on her bike, it's great to see.  She still tips over several times a ride but isn't afraid and today after she took a corner too fast and fell over, she said "Wow, that was fun!".   I'm sure it's because she fell in grass and didn't scrape up her arm or anything.  Falling would be a bunch of fun if we didn't ever get hurt!  Now that she's not wearing bulky coats I'm afraid we're in for some scraped elbows at some point.

Today I was thinking I should really write down all the things she says that I love so I can remember them.  Today she said Brennan, "slibber slobbered" on her.  Not sure what that means except he was drooling.  It cracked me up.  Also, I love the way she says orange, she says it like "warange".  There are a bunch more things like that, I'll have to keep a list of them.

On the down side, Sara also gets angry at us a lot and has been expressing her displeasure or independence a lot more.  Dan says we should let her have "small wins" so I've been thinking about that and trying to back off if it's not something important.  Also, I think she suffers a little from the divided attention although she's been really gracious about it, there are still moments.  She does require a ton of attention, she always has but it's because she's very engaged with us.

Today I took her back to the library for the first time.  She knows that's all about her and it's her time. She got to see all the friendly librarians that she had missed and it made me want to start going back to story time too now that swimming is over.  She really enjoyed that.  Also, I've been taking a lot more time to read to her at night, after Brennan goes to bed.  It is something just she and I used to do a lot and I think she misses it a lot even though she doesn't or can't voice it.  She likes that it's her special time and she loves reading, something we really haven't done as much anymore, sometimes hardly at all, when I'm too tired.  I think it's starting to make a difference with her though, today she asked me to wipe her butt on the toilet instead of Dan which almost never happens, that's progress in her book!