http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: January 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

maggie has a little cold today :-(

a slight temperature (~99.5) and a very runny nose. she's in good spirits though, eating a bagel and watching cartoons on the couch next to me.

a few days ago i was eating a cookie, and maggie snatched it out of my hand and ate it! the girls thought that was hysterical, and yesterday maggie was telling mom about it. she said, "grandma, yesterday mama was eating a cookie and i totally took it! i took it and ate it!!"

totally! she's too funny. she says things in that gravely little voice of hers and it is too cute.

actually, she doesn't like her voice. she thinks she sounds like a boy and she wants a girly voice. so she uses this high-pitched voice quite frequently now, and it's very funny.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

poor nina has a lot of anxiety

i know it runs in the family, so it doesn't surprise me. but poor nina has so much anxiety! like with most kids, it's the worst at night, so we usually talk about how to deal with it at night. i tell her she can either a) try very hard to only think about happy things (and then i give her examples of complex happy things that will occupy her brain, like planning a trip, or doing math in her head), or that she can b) think about what she could do to make it better if the thing she is worrying about were to happen (i think that's what a lot of kids do--plan how they would get out in case of a fire or whatever. i've tried telling her that worrying can be your body's way of preparing you for dangerous situations, so it can actually keep you safe, making it a very good thing! so far nina doesn't appreciate the good side of worry though, so i'm emphasizing strategy A for now).

ANYWAY, if you have any ideas about soothing her worry, lemme know. but i wanted to tell you all about this, and then share some of the typical childhood, and some of the more zany, things she comes up with to worry about.

right now, she worries about:
things going down the drain in the tub
that she'll go after things going down the drain and get her arm stuck (a kid classic!)
that maggie might try to flush teddy bunny bear down the toilet (she's worried both about the damage to the toilet and the damage to teddy bunny bear, whom she loves dearly)
the ball that got stuck in the tube at the portland children's museum. kind of a long story, i don't feel like writing it out, but we got the ball out by sending another ball up the tube. i was surprised that this generated so much anxiety for her.
and a new one today. she said she's worried about her body "doing things wrong." i asked her what she meant by that, and she said, "like, what if i had diarrhea and it moved up into my small intestine instead of coming out?" man, i hope getting her those anatomy books wasn't a mistake!

poor nina though, it's tough to be a kid.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

we have a busy day coming up today!

it's morning. nina is off to school, nick is at the Y (he dropped her off, although it's much warmer today, a balmy 9 degrees above zero!) maggie is still sleeping (cue maggie!), and i'm updating now because this will probably be my only quiet moment for the day. :-)

today is my SAT class, so maggie and nina will be at their friends charlie and hattie's house after school. it's also early release day (my class runs from about 1:30 to 3:00). then tonight we're going to the school for dinner--pastapalloza! pick your own sauce! after that, i'm going to see a movie with my friend beth (on a school night! it's a movie about school, actually. it's put on by friends of the harbor theater, they're showing waiting for superman (you can click on that), it's about how much schools in this country are bad, i think. but it's also supposed to be hopeful. and there'll be appetizers, and discussion afterward if beth and i stay that late! (unlikely, but you never know!).

so definitely no time to blog tonight, hence my unusual early morning blogging.

also, i ordered nina a math workbook and a game for both girls called tanagrams. that's the game where you have a card with a picture on it, and you have to build that picture from the shapes. click here to see. my friend from NY anne recommended them, and i got the harder set for ages 5 to 9 because she said her 5 year old had outgrown the 3-5 set. before they arrived, she told me it was a bust, he didn't like them, they were too hard, and i was briefly afraid that i'd have to put them away for a few years, and we'd lose all the pieces before the girls got to use it. ha! nina and maggie BOTH tore through them. maggie too! you've got to see this. i guess they're not too easy for nina because she has fun putting them together, and she likes games where she can race against herself for the fastest time but there's still a bit of challenge. so, this is totally perfect for both of them.

i also got nina a 1st grade math workbook. i thought about ordering the second grade book, but there's enough in the first grade book that will be new to her, however easy, and it was a good call. she loves it! she wanted to work on it first thing in the morning today. i might check with her teacher to see if she can bring it to school, but i'd rather not actually. she's tearing through it already, but i'll let her go however fast she wants. the newness might wear off and she'll leave it be for a few weeks, or i can just buy her the grade 2 one next.

wow, i can't believe i got to write this much! maggie was up last last night, so i'm glad she's still asleep. it will set her up for a late nap, which means i can go to the movie and she won't be cranky, ready to fall asleep, and needing me. i'm so excited for my night out!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

zyxwvut.... (edit)

nina has 2 very cute tricks she's taught herself: she sings the alphabet backwards and she recites the list of 50 sight words her class is supposed to know by the end of the year (oops, forgot the funniest part! she recites the list in about 5 seconds. it's so fast i thought she was just babbling the first time, then i recognized a few words from her list and figured out what she was saying). very funny, but also makes me worry that she is way too bored at school. probably not though, since it probably took all of 5 minutes to memorize both things. as always, i will try to get a video up for you. maybe tonight...

not much else going on here besides ungodly cold and lots of snow. it sure looks pretty falling out there, all fluffy big flakes. and it's toasty warm in here (too warm for clothes according to some 2 year olds i've polled!). but still, we're dreaming of warmer weather (maggie especially. she really misses the beach, the swimming pool, and the sunshine!). also still dreaming about this year's garden. can't wait to start!!!

Saturday, January 22, 2011

and one maggie story

when i taught my SAT class, the girls went sledding with some of their friends and the moms. one of our friends, jenn, was there with her 2 boys but not her almost step-daughter, ella.

here's how jenn told it:
maggie asked jenn, "are you ella's mommy?"
jenn said she wasn't sure what to say, thought about it for a minute, and decided to go with the simple answer and said yes.
then jenn said, 'but that wasn't what maggie was getting at at all. because she looked at me and said, "well, you forgot her."'

haha! she loved it. that maggie is too funny!

yesterday was another snow day!

what a winter! we got about 8 inches of snow on friday, on top of the who knows how many inches that were already on the ground (10?). there's a lot of snow out there!

nina had no school, which was great fun. we got to play outside and had tons of fun, even though it was snowing quite heavily. we probably accumulated 2 inches on our heads out there for an hour! haha!

now the cold sets in... ick! it's supposed to be in the teens tomorrow, single digits on monday, back into the teens on tuesday, then finally over 20 on wednesday, with more snow possible then. what a winter! overnight lows will be well below zero. i'll update, of course!

oh well, we're ready for it. we hung up the swings in the basement, so the girls can have an indoor playground. they need an outlet for all that energy. we also have a little slide and their bikes, trikes, and other wheeled toys down there. it's not a bad place to play!

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

margarete of boothbay III

this one happened last week or so, but i didn't get around to writing about it.

maggie was playing with her dolls in the dining room and then walked into the kitchen where i was and said, "i'm god!"

"no hun," i said, "you're not god. only god is god."

"no," she said, "i'm god to my toys."

some kids pretend to be mommy to their dolls, mine is god. then she started telling me something about what the toys were doing and how she was being god to them, but for some reason i wasn't paying attention.

well, she hasn't talked about what god wants her to do in a week or so, so maybe that's the last of it. such a funny kid though!

finally had my first SAT class

it was great! 8 kids came to the regular class, plus 2 that came after math team. the principal said a few kids told him they were going straight home on account of the weather (wet snow) but were planning on coming next time, and another few had a game or something. so, hopefully turnout will be even better as time goes on, but definitely happy with 10 kids. we did math, and they did a really good job. they're a very engaged bunch, restoring my faith in the school. next week well do grammar, we'll see how that goes!

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

early dismissal from school today!

what a treat! they dismissed the kids at noon on account of the snow. i picked nina up, as i needed to head to the grocery store anyway. so we had a nice afternoon at the house, with lots of wii (nina is a wii tennis ace and still quite the little bowler. maggie is catching on but not too into it yet). it snowed all day, we got about 4 inches i guess, then seems to have stopped but is supposed to change over to rain. we shall see!

not sure about school tomorrow either. there's lots of uncertainty about who's going to get ice, who's going to get sleet, who's going to get rain, etc. i hope school isn't cancelled because i really want to teach my SAT class!!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

lots of sledding

since our last snowfall, we've done lots of sledding. it was perfect snow for sledding too... it was pretty wet when it fell, but it's frozen into a light but icy powder. you can't pack it into a snowball, and it just brushes off of you, but it's still about 6 inches deep. the hill by the school is packed solid of course, so it's really fast.

we went on friday right after school and the girls had a blast. maggie usually goes down on my lap (or lying on my back if i'm on my stomach), and one time we hit a bump and flipped. maggie went flying! she literally did a flip in the air, and i semi-caught her, but she semi-landed on her back. luckily we were in the powder so it was soft landing. she loved it! she squealed with delight and wanted to do it again right away! such a thrill seeker.

nina is a big girl of course and mostly sleds down on her own. she will sometimes hitch up with me and make a train, or share a sled with me, but mostly she goes solo.

today nick came with us, and even grandma and grandpa came! it was a perfect day, probably just about 30 degrees but felt much warmer (when the wind wasn't blowing!) because we had a nice warm sun. ahh, winter is not so bad on days like this!

tomorrow is no school, so hopefully we'll get out for some ice skating. it'll be nice to sleep in instead of having to get up at 6:30!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

nina loves math!

ah, it makes me so happy! she asks for math problems to solve nearly every day. i had been writing them out for her, but it was hard to keep up, so i found a website with worksheets i could print out for free. it's been fun, and they have all kinds of nifty ideas i'd never thought of! yesterday when it was snowing she did a worksheet that required her to make a bar graph (color in the boxes) of fruit that billy banana had picked from his garden, one that had her identify which number of two was bigger, and then which was smaller, using numbers up to 100, and one that showed a calender with different symbols for the weather on each day (snowman, umbrella, sun, etc), and asked her how many days was it sunny? what was the weather like on the 17th? etc. she breezed through them but had a lot of fun. i also printed out two addition worksheets of 20 problems each. the first one with no carrying was a breeze, and the second one with carrying was a bit harder at first, but she's really gotten the hang of it so quickly. i guess we'll be doing subtraction with borrowing soon. the carrying and borrowing are second grade stuff! if she keeps up this pace, she'll be done with 3rd grade math before she goes into the 1st grade. well, i'm not going to worry about it right now, maybe she'll lose some of this zest for math and move on to something else before she gets crazy far ahead. and if not, the school has been open to working something out on their end. we shall see!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

snow day!

it's nina's first snow day, what a treat! we've gotten about 6 inches of snow since it started at 7 am. fun fun fun!!

i'm going to try to get the girls out now that it's winding down. more from us later!!

Monday, January 10, 2011

more margarete of boothbay

yesterday (or the day before?) nick was ushering the girls upstairs to brush their teeth before bed.

"no!" said maggie. "god says he doesn't want me to brush my teeth!!"
nick ignored her and started carrying her up the stairs.
"god is very angry!!" she told him.

haa!! what a little devil that girl is! what on earth are we going to do with her??!

Saturday, January 8, 2011

how does it get to be saturday so fast?!

well, the rest of the week was very good. went to a playgroup with maggie on thursday, skating after school on wednesday, and dinner with friends on friday. a busy week!

nina's doing a great job with skating! we're going to go again today, this time nick will come so that someone can take care of maggie when she gets bored skating. she lasts about half an hour, then she's done. on wednesday i let her sit in the front seat of the car (no keys, of course) while i got nina's skates off when she was done. when i got back to the car, maggie had shoved THREE cd's into the cd player. our new car!! i was able to partly pull them out, but then i heard a crack and decided to leave the rest to nick. i didn't want to get any more blame for the mess than was already heading my way.

fortunately, they came right out when nick gave a tug. whew! cd player still works like new. lesson learned about letting maggie sit in the car!

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

nina is a popular girl

on monday i went to lunch with nina, and gabe B asked nina if he could hold her hand on the walk back to nap. then tyler asked, and then grace. it started to look like it might get ugly, but nina said she would eeny-meeny-miney-mo it. tyler and gabe stood straight and tall while she's sang her little rhyme, it was sooo cute. when she landed on gabe, he had the biggest grin.

what the heck though! i'll tell you, no one was ever fighting to hold my hand. much less 3 at once!!

back to school post-vacation has been a little rough. some tears this morning, and i picked her up after lunch. the only thing they do after lunch is rest, snack, special, and math, and she doesn't like the math they do at school. she called it "baby math." so i emailed her teacher today to see if we can figure out something a little more appropriate for nina. we'll see. i'll update of course!

Sunday, January 2, 2011

had our annual new years party yesterday

we have such a fun group of friends here in boothbay! the house was full, but luckily it was warm enough that the kids got to be outside a lot of the time. then, when the kids were inside all sugared up, we managed to drug them with some TV and no one got injured. a new year's day miracle!!

tomorrow is back to the old routine. nina said she didn't want to go back to school, but she's never very enthusiastic about going. hopefully maggie and i can have lunch with her and that will help. i'll let you know tomorrow. tonight she said, "i wish i could stay home with you all day like maggie." awww, it broke my heart!! i miss her too!!

maggie of boothbay?

this weekend we were in the car, and from the backseat, maggie tells me that she doesn't have to wash her hands after she goes to the bathroom any more. because god told her she doesn't have to.

she's TWO AND A HALF!!! trumped by god. i think i see catholic school in her future, the nuns will straighten her out in no time.

the next day in the bathroom she went to the toilet, rubbed her hands on it, said "god told me!" and ran away. what a handful!!

the thing that had me worried though was the news tonight. they showed a building collapsing during this raging fire, and maggie was watching. she was sitting on my lap and i heard her quietly say, "that looks like fun." i wasn't sure i heard her right, so i asked her to repeat herself. "i said it looks like fun," she said again.

eek!! good thing we don't have matches in the house. this child has given me so much gray hair!