Welcome to the year 2006. I have come back from the future (February) to tell you about how we spent the first month of the year. No bizarre weather anomalies this year. Just the standard 30 out of 31 days of rain, though this is only the 4th wettest January on record.
Ellen is very ready for kindergarten we think. She has gotten good at doing some games this month. Ellen was working on a maze early on in the month. She asked me for some help, but since I was eating an orange my hands were messy. I asked her to try it on her own first, and I would help her when I was done. After a few minutes, she yelled, "I did it! I just took my time and figured it out." She's definitely getting there. She's been working on staying dry at nights. We finally just stopped buying her pull-ups, but we had to take away her big blanket since we didn't want to have to wash it as much. After 2 straight dry weeks that we tracked on a calendar with stickers, she earned it back. After another 2 weeks, she got to go to her favorite restaurant (Old Spaghetti Factory) and sit in the trolley car. She made it through the month of January with only 2 accidents. And only one of those actually caused some wetness on the bed. Ellen's also quite clever. While driving on the way home from somewhere, Ellen was reading one of her books about the beach with one word per page and a picture that goes with it. One of them was "pail" which she said correctly. We asked her how she knew it was pail and not bucket. Ellen replied, "I'm smarter than a cookie". That made us crack up, of course, since we always tell the girls that they're smart as a cookie. Not only that, but she demonstrated her grasp of homonyms one night at the table. Just out of nowhere, she started saying, "Pee for yellow pee. Pea for green pea. and P for the letter P". The last weekend of January, Jada played Scrabble Junior with Ellen for the first time. She did a good job with it. I'm also teaching her how to play checkers. Finally, I dropped Ellen off at her school on the last day of January and while we were waiting, Ellen pulled her backpack over her head and said she was riding in her hot air balloon. Then she went further. She moved the straps over her ears and called it her hot ear balloon. That's my girl. Of course, these cute moments are often tempered by the fierce tantrums that she gets into involving all the classics: kicking the walls, screaming loud enough to rattle the windows, uncontrollable rage, flailing about on the floor, irrational demands, and absolutely no contrition. They don't occur quite so often, but they are at twice the rage as before. I haven't decided if that's better or worse.
Phoebe hasn't had a great month. She regressed quite a bit in the potty training which we expected, but she went all the way back to pooping in her pants. She was peeing in her panties when we let her wear them on purpose. We're trying to keep from doing the same mistakes we made when Ellen did this similar thing. We at least got her back to mostly pooping in the potty by the end of the month, but it's been hard. She's certainly little miss bossy and stubborn, as you might imagine. She wants autonomy from us, that's for sure. She's still testing her limits as she preps for the terrible three's. I woke up one morning to a door slam. I walked in to her room and found her standing in front of her closet where she had pushed her small picnic table over. She had also placed her laundry basket upside down on top of that to try to get something out of her closet. I think I got to her before (I certainly hope so, anyway) she climbed all the way up, but she had already pulled some things down by at least standing on the table. It's not all bad though. Phoebe can recognize the letters b, e, h, i, k, m, n, o, p, r, s by site. She can spell her name and tell us her birthday. She can sing the whole alphabet song to different tunes, and she switches back and forth between that and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". We've also moved her away from the small bowls and plastic utensils to big girl bowls and grown-up flatware.
As a family, we've done some fun things in January. Starting on New Years Day, we had some friends over for dinner. The very next weekend, we took the girls up to the mountain (that's Mt. Hood to we in the know) to try out some snow shoes at the Winter Trails demo day at the White River West sno-park. (I don't know why they spell it like that. Like an extra letter is really that difficult to add). We got there a bit later than we wanted to, but we got the girls packed into their snow bibs and coats and headed over to register. We found a one vendor that had kids shoe's. They are shaped like bear paws. Ellen did OK, though she complained about walking in the deeper snow, but Jada eventually led her over and helped her through. Phoebe was having a very difficult time. She walked in a straight line ok, though very slowly. But she did not enjoy herself at all. We finally went back to the start where there were a bunch of dogs running around. They weren't actually interested in the girls for a change, but that didn't make any difference. The girls just completely freaked out and we couldn't calm them down, so that was it for the day. The weather was pretty good for us, and the next day, Ellen asked when we'd get to go again. So during the week, I had gone to G.I.Joes to look for new suspenders for my rain pants in case we could go up skiing. I found some youth snow shoes for a good price and just picked them up for Ellen. Jada and I attempted to go skiing the next weekend, but it was a holiday weekend, so we couldn't even get into the parking lots. We decided to bail, and just drive home. It was beautiful that day. It was snowing like crazy above 3000 feet. The trees were all flocked. The next weekend we decided to take the girls snow shoeing this time. We went to an "easy" route near Government Camp on Hood. We were the first ones there. It was fun. I carried Phoebe in the back pack. Ellen just trucked right along after we figured out the best way to keep the shoes from falling off. They both did really well until about 1/4 mile from the end of the hike. They got tired and whiny, but that was to be expected, and Ellen did finish on her own. We let Phoebe out to play in the snow while I put everything away in the box. Then we went for pancakes at the Huckleberry Inn in Government Camp. Man, that was tasty. It was a great morning. The girls both did a good job.
I've also spent some mid-week time with the girls while Grandma was ill. I was taking the girls to school, and I was a little early since Jada and I were tag teaming, so we stopped by a guitar shop so I could pick up a tuner. The shop owner let the girls play some of the acoustic guitars. They climbed up on the little stools, and started a-pickin' and a-ginnin'. Both of the girls started dance classes again at the rec center. Ellen is taking more ballet, and Phoebe is taking a creative dance class. She loves it. They both really enjoy singing and dancing. they're quite the artists.
That's it for now. February is already started, so I have to figure out how to get this out on time next month. Oh, and I have pictures too.
Journal Entry: February 9, 2006