Nanna is here!

Sara has had quite a summer as a 4 year old so far.  It's been very busy and she has grown a lot.

She has taken dance lessons and swimming lessons and we have made it our goal to go to the library at least once a week.

She has made huge progress at swimming.  She can swim without any floats and dive for objects on the bottom. When she first started she would choke on lots of water, but now she puts her head under and holds her breath.  She loves her swim teacher and we just signed her up for fall lessons.

Her dance class is over now but I know she loved it and I hope I can get her in another dance class before long.  I wish I had my camera when she did her "pinwheel" dance, it was amazing.  Dance really captivated her and I can't wait to see if we can get her in another class.

The folks at the Spanish Fork library are so good to Sara.   She loves going and everyone knows her there.  We do story and music time and she loves singing songs like "Sticky Sticky Bubble Gum" and "Finger Families" and "Akin Drum".  They sing tons of songs I've never heard of so I take her just so she'll know them and maybe she can teach them to her kids.   She also is selecting her own books to check out now.  We have really been working with her on reading words this summer too.

Sara goes back to pre-school in September.  This year she'll be in the big kids class on M,W,F for three hours in the afternoon.  It'll be a huge change for her.  I think she will really pick up on a lot of stuff and I'm excited to see what she is able to learn before kindergarten.  Mostly 'll be excited for her if she learns to read to herself because she loves books so much (and maybe we need a break too :)

I think Sara has really struggled with having a little brother.  She has had moments of jealousy and she wishes all his toys were hers.  I'm sure she's feeling like the attention is split more too, it's been a bit of an adjustment for her and for us.  Hopefully we'll all pull through this and it will get better as they both age.

She is our sweet little girl still and we love spending time with her.  She can be so thoughtful and she says the funniest things. 

Sara is thrilled that her Nanna is here for so long this summer!

Nanna got her a great play-doh dentistry set that they had fun playing with.

Sara can be really funny.  She wanted to be a scarecrow in the corn.  She really likes scarecrows.

I accidentally took a close up of her but I actually rather like to see her pretty brown eyes.

She likes pushing Brennan in his new car.

She won this crown at the fair and she has been wearing it non-stop.

I hope someday the kids read these blogs and really get a kick out of everything they were doing and hopefully they will see and know that they are well loved by Mom and Dad and all their family.

Summer fun

Sara has been begging to go to the splash pad here in SF but they've been doing maintenance on it or else it has been really crowded, so I haven't taken her.  This morning we decided to head down there so we put everyone in their swim suits.  We got there and Sara was so disappointed the water was not turned on.  So we played at the park for a little while and then at 10 a.m. they turned the water on!  She ran as fast as she could over to the water spouts and was the first kid in the water.

I tried to get there early because it gets hot and really crowded so I brought Brennan's breakfast with us and his little portable kid chair.  I fed him breakfast while we watched Sara playing in the water.  She was having a blast.

After he had breakfast, then he was raring to go, he was bursting out of his chair to go crawl around the splash pad.

I didn't take my camera into the water, so I didn't get any pics of him in the water but he did play with the water jets.  He would go up to one that wasn't on and it would suddenly come on and blast him in the face.  He kind of liked it and kind of hated it too.  Then Sara and I took turns walking him around by holding his hands and dunking him in the streams of water.   I think he mostly had fun.  He probably would have liked it even more if the water had been warmer. 

After they had had enough, we went back to the play ground and the sun and wind dried them off nicely so we could all get back in the car.  It was a fun outing and the best part is that it wasn't crowded that time of the morning.  I want to go back sometime at night because the park is open until 10 pm and they have lights below each water jet, I think the kids would love to see it with the lights on.

We will also probably have Brennan's 1st b'day party at the Splash Pad, there are pavilions that you can get right next to it.  I'm excited to see how that turns out.  I think if it's a nice day, everyone will have lots of fun.

Father's Day Surprise

Sara has been talking about Father's day for weeks.  I guess that's to be expected with a Daddy's girl.  She made Daddy a card a week ahead of time and already gave it to him, she couldn't wait.  She'd be happy if Father's Day was a week long event.

She has been begging me to make daddy cherry cup cakes but instead we decided to go with chocolate chip cherry muffins.  She was fine with that idea.  We bought cherries from he orchard in our neighboorhood and spend hours pitting them.

She helped me mix up the batter and spoon it into the muffin pans while Dan was away on his bike ride.

Moose helped out by chewing on spatulas.

Sara was so proud that she helped and was so excited for Daddy to come home.

The house smelled really good as they baked.  As soon as he got home she ran up to him and gave him a muffin.  He liked the muffins and so did Brennan but Sara wouldn't touch them.

Then they did crafts together.  They made a nice picture that Sara hung up on her art display line in her room.

Then Daddy got to do what he really wanted to do, read his book, while the kids played and I cooked Lasagna for dinner.

Sara loves her Daddy, Brennan too, they are lucky kids to have such a good dad.

Dance class and music recital

Sara is so excited about her Creative Dance class this summer.  She got to go pick out 3 new leotards and some tights for her class the other day at a dance store in Spanish Fork.  Her favorite is the one she wore on today with the ballerina on it.

Her teacher for dance is Mrs. Camilla.  There is another little girl in the class who is also very well behaved and tuned in to the teacher and they are really cute dancing around together.

This is a pic of them "freezing like a statue" when the teacher tells them to.

Brennan and I watch from behind the 2 way glass as they dance and have fun.  The teacher shows them dance moves using familiar songs that they know.  I'm excited to see what she gets out of it this summer.

Next we went up to Daddy's work because we had a 45 minute break in between her dance class and her music recital.  To kill time we fed ducks.

Today was her Music Makers 2 recital.  When we started the class last fall there were 5 kids but 3 of them ended up dropping out for behavior problems.  I'm proud that we've stuck it out as long as we have, for about two years now.  It has not been easy lately with Brennan but we manage to make it and I tell myself it's only 45 minutes and it's been really good for Sara.  Sara has improved so much. She is playing short three or four note songs on her own, rhythms, and learning things like Forte, Piano, Adagio, and Allegro.

Brennan even got in on the action on the maracas

Sara LOVES her teacher Mrs. Laura and we're glad that she'll still be in her class in the Fall.

Music Class  Videos :
Vid 1  

Sara's first sleep over

Sara has been dying to have her first sleep over for about 6 months now.  Marci offered to have a sleep over at her house with Sara's cousins Malina and Sophie.  Sara was so excited.  We thought 4 years old was perfectly the right age for her first over night trip and since she's never had anxiety about being away from us, we didn't think she'd have any trouble and we were right.

She packed up her suit case and didn't even forget her tooth brush.  Also she took her sleeping bag and pillow.  I was a little worried she might wet the bed because she's still be having accidents here but luckily that didn't happen.  However it turns out she had a really bad nose bleed that got all over her clothes and on some of Marci's pillows.

It sounds like everyone had lots of fun though.  They all brought swim suits and went for a bath in Marci's over sized tub.  Malina has a bunk bed but Sara slept on a futon on the floor.  We were worried she would need to go to the bathroom at night and fall out of the bunk bed.  I thought maybe Sara would want to call us to tell us good night but I think she was totally fine where she was and didn't miss us too bad.

Dan and I were struck by how quiet around our house it was without her here.  We really thought we'd enjoy it more than we did but we ended up missing Sara, probably more than she missed us.

The next day at Marci's they played and they went to a small carnival.   Then Daddy drove up to get Sara.  I stayed home and got to sell some stuff at the garage sale without Sara complaining too much, because she wasn't here to see it go.  We mostly just sold old toys she doesn't play with and books that we really disliked.

She is already looking forward to her next sleep over. She is a super social child and I think it's actually been good for her to get away from us for a while. 

She has also been playing with her neighbor friends non-stop since school got out.  I assume that will continue all summer.  They are pretty good kids, so we are lucky in that respect.

Her sand box in the back yard has taken a beating over the last few weeks.  Other kids really seem to want to dig all the sand out or fill the sand box with water.  We've managed to preserve some of the sand and dry it back out from being water logged but it's funny how difficult it is to keep a simple sand box.  Sara has done a good job of keeping the top on it otherwise so the yard sprinklers don't soak it.

We will be getting out her back yard pool any day now as soon as I make another stopper for it.  Then the real summer fun can begin.  Brennan has his own little 1 ring pool to play in that I'm sure he will like splashing too.  Both the kids are getting tans.

This is how we do it

Sara has been helping us in the yard a lot this year and I'm always amazed at all the stuff she can do now, without as much supervision or need for direction.  She helped Daddy clear his garden to plant corn.  Dan and I were both amazed how much she helped and it cracked us up that she wore her pink watermelon dress while digging around in the dirt.

She helped pull all the grass out of the garden, load it in her cart, and pull the cart over to the compost pile and dump it.  She also helped Daddy plant a row of corn.

Sara has a very busy summer ahead of her (so do I consequently).  She is signed up for creative dance lessons at the music academy where she and Dan have music class.  Also, she will be going to a week long summer camp there for music.  She is also signed up for swim lessons again.   I'm hoping we'll also go to the library a lot because they have lots of summer programs and also we hope to go to the splash pad a lot.  I wish I could take Sara to the Spanish Fork pool because she'd probably love that but I'm nervous about watching both her and Brennan at the same time in the water.

Also she is planning on having some sleep overs at some of her cousins houses.

I hope this summer we can resolve the tantrums that she has been having.  Both Dan and I feel like it's starting to get out of control.  It seemed like it had gotten better for a while and now it's bad again.   We've researched the issue on line some, specifically tantrums for 4 year olds. It seems like other parents have similar problems with four year olds as they begin to develop their personalities, gain Independence, and test out their parents boundaries more.

 In fact, some of the accounts of what other children were doing were far more shocking than anything we've seen from Sara at all, this is an example http://smilingmom.com/blog/four-year-old-tantrum/   So maybe we haven't got it so bad and maybe we're not even doing anything all that wrong.  Dan and I keep trying to figure out what we could be doing differently, what she is or isn't getting enough of, and we're mostly coming up empty handed.  I'm hoping if it's a phase that it's over soon. It's been the worst struggle, by far, that we've ever had with Sara.   She did not tantrum during her 2's or 3's, so maybe she was saving it ALLL up for 4, lucky us.

I've noticed she really responds well to things she feels successful at, like we all do.  So we try to magnify those things for her and really tell her she's done a great job.  We also try to repeat things that she'll be successful at because there has been a lot of negativity lately.  We feel like we're always correcting her behavior and she's always testing us otherwise.   She loves to hike, loves to garden, scooter ride, sing songs and dance, read, she likes having special jobs to do, etc.  So we do a lot of those things.

I was worried that there may be a medical cause too.  She has been peeing in her bed again a lot at nap time and at night, which is something she hasn't done for a long time.  We were worried maybe she has a bladder infection or something.  She has also taken to sleeping a lot more, she takes her nap every day and says shes tired and wants to take a nap more frequently.   I guess we'll figure out what's going on eventually.

Until then, we will still have a good summer and hopefully we can all make it through this none the worse for the wear.

4 year old check-up

Sara had her four year old check up today at the doctor.  It was a little late because we were trying to get her allergy test done first so the doctor could have the results on hand. 

They measured her weight (37lb) and height, checked her eyes, and blood pressure.  She passed all of it with flying colors.  The doctor said her growth and weight are perfect and he said with a vegetarian kid he was kind of surprised she looked so good.  I explained to him that she eats really well and healthy and that we are lucky, most parents would kill for a kid that eats so well. 

Sara's vision check was funny.  She had to wear a pirate patch over each eye as they checked the other one.  The nurse was so nice to her and Sara was so proud of herself for getting the shapes right.  She thought it was a fun game.

She also answered all of the questions that the doctor asked her and was proud of herself for getting everything right.

Sara had to get three shots today to get her ready for kindergarden.  She laughed on the first one and then started crying for the others.  The doctor said she does not need any more vaccines until she's 12, so that was good news. 

Luckily she didn't cry or freak out today while the doctor looked at her.  It was a huge relief for me.  It's hard to take care of both of them by myself when they are freaking out.

The doctor didn't say too much about her allergies other than, if we go to an ice cream buffet, not to let her have any toppings because sometimes the peanuts can end up in the sprinkles accidentally.

I feel like she graduated today from being a little kid, as far as doctor visits anyway.   I'm glad it was a good experience for us both.