Catching up

Where to begin?

This past week Lukasz made the journey from crib to "big boy bed" (aka his crib mattress placed on the floor) without a hiccup. We stored Lily's bed frame at my parents' house for the time being so there are no hard or sharp edges for him to hit himself on. He is a very active sleeper. The first or second day of being in his "new" bed, he rolled right off of it and napped on the floor all tangled up in his blanket.

This is how he fell asleep the first big night:

This past week I called many preschools and we toured three, and yesterday we registered Lily in the one that was by far my favourite. They were all Montessori schools, and it's interesting to see how differently people present the space. The first one was, well, filthy, with old food left lying on a bookshelf, and the lady told us not to bother taking our shoes off when we came in, and there was a daycare of pretty rowdy kids in the adjoining room that were welcome to join in the preschool at any time. The preschool we registered Lily for last year was a very quiet, calm space and the kids weren't running around willy-nilly. I may sound like a snob now, but I just have a feeling for what type of environment Lily would be most comfortable in, and that one wasn't it.

I loved the second preschool we toured. I walked in and the space totally made me wish I could go to school there. :o) It was a big, bright and very clean room, and the four teachers were there and they all seemed like very sweet ladies.

The third preschool we toured was by far the most expensive (and closest to us) and the required that we buy our child a uniform. As Lily will likely only be attending preschool for one year before she goes to full-day kindergarten (also Montessori but through the school board), buying a uniform seems pretty pointless. I got the feeling that the uniforms were to prepare the children for the private schools they would be attending.

So she is registered at the second preschool for part-time afternoons. I'm a bit disappointed that the morning slots were full because sometimes she does seem tired in the afternoons, especially when she gets up at 7 a.m. or earlier. But I hope that in another 3 months she'll have enough energy and stamina that an afternoon class will not completely tire her out.

(And as I write this, she has fallen asleep beside me.)

Lily was pretty nervous going in to these different classrooms and was not too receptive to the teachers. I know she well remembers our try at preschool last year, and she is constantly reminding me not to leave her. This summer we will have to call on favours from friends, I think, to let Lily spend an hour or two with them away from me, to get used to being apart from me.


Lukasz, on the other hand, seems totally ready for preschool. He'd march right in and start checking out the things on the shelves, and bring me what he'd found. He amazed the teachers at the preschool Lily will be attending by stacking 8 or 10 blocks one on top of each other without them tumbling down. They marveled at his tower, but he was quick to correct them that it was a ROCKET. Then there were coloured squares on a sheet on the table that matched the sides of the square and rectangular blocks and he got busy piling the correct blocks on the correct spots by matching the colour and sizes of the sides to the colour and sizes of the squares on the page. That impressed them, too. :o)

When we went back on Friday and parked in the parking lot, Lily asked if this was her school and I told her it was, and that we were just going to visit and pick up our (enrollment) package that day. Lukasz chimed in "School? Me, too?" and I said, "Yes, you are coming, too", and his response was an enthusiastic "Ok! Cool!"

He's in the midst of potty training right now, and when he's trained I don't see any reason why he couldn't go, as long as we can afford it and he really wants to. Speaking of potty training, I have to say I think summer is the best time for it, because the easiest way (I've found) for potty training a kid is to just let them go bare-bottomed at all times when at home. Keep the potty in the same room they are in, and remind them every so often that it's there. They will have accidents, but it can all be cleaned up, and Lily caught on pretty quickly that it's good to go on the potty because they she gets to pour it into the toilet and flush the toilet.

Lukasz LOVES to flush the toilet. He waves "bye bye" to whatever is there, and will say "Bye poopie, see you soon!"

Moving on from potty talk, Lily is huge on helping now. They both help me with the laundry whenever their is enough room in the laundry room, and now one of Lily's jobs is to set the table. I pass her dishes, cutlery and napkins and tell her which spots to put them at, and she does it really well.

Lukasz is talking up a storm. He recognizes many shapes, circle, triangle, square, star, oval, and colours, green, yellow, black, red, blue, and he knows the difference between a digger and a bulldozer and recognizes cranes and trucks. There is a lot of construction going on around our place on the highway so we always drive by these big machines and he names them all. He can also all of a sudden count to TWELVE. After that, he goes back to eight and mixes them up a bit.

Our days lately have fallen in to a pattern like this:

7:00-7:30 - Kids wake up.
9:30 or 10:00 - We go on an outing to a playgroup or to one of the many fantastic parks nearby.
12:00 - Come home, have lunch, Lukasz goes down for a nap.
1:00-4:00 - Lily and I do activities together, crafts, stencils, letters, memory games, painting, read books, etc. She also has a little JumpStart Preschool computer game that she's allowed to play 1/2 hour each day. I can't believe how quickly she caught on to using the mouse and navigating around the game!
4:00 - Depending on Lukasz's nap, we go out again or I start dinner and then we got out again after dinner.
7:30 - Baths, stories and songs and in bed by 8:30.

Having a "picnic" - Lily supplied the food:

When we go out I tend to gravitate towards the parks where we can go for a nice walk/run followed by some time spent at a playground. If we go to the local park across the street (which I love.... I think it was top reason I wanted to buy this apartment) we bring sandbox toys, sidewalk chalk, bubble soap and lately, baseball gear (2 bats, 2 balls and a tee). When we walk around the nearby lake/pond, the kids now both run most of the way. Lukasz has yet to say this, but I can almost hear him yelling "Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom!!!" as he kicks his feet into high gear. :o)

We also make weekly trips to the library, and Lily is very good about always reminding us we have to whisper while we are inside. I love books and I love to read, and it makes me happy that so far they seem to enjoy books as much as I do. Sometimes when things get really hairy around here, I stop harping at them to stop picking at each other, or whatever they are doing and I sit down on the floor, open a book and start reading it aloud. By the time I'm done the first page, they are both sitting down, one on either side of me. It's magic.