Little Swimmer Girl

Tonight Reagan swam. Simple as that. She pushed off from the side of the pool and swam to her teacher. Dog paddle and kicking. Face in the water. Only one breath to get about a quarter way across. I didn't actually get to see it - Jim did. But I am still oh so proud of my little girl.

I'm impressed with the fact that she has made such huge improvements in 10 lessons. That's it. She started with a crazy fear of water. She hate putting her face in or getting her hair wet. Now she is willingly swimming to her teacher. How cool is that?

Little Musician

Maddy may be a budding musician. Anytime I put the Suzuki music in the CD player, she starts to dance and wiggle. She will actually come over to me if we are at home to listen. Today in the car, I had the Mozart Einsteins DVD playing. When the piano part started, she started "playing" a pretend piano. It was adorable. I asked her "are you playing a piano" and she giggled.

Testing?

Should we or should we not send her to kindergarten early? That is the question. So far, she's had two days of testing and she is going back for her final set of tests tomorrow. This is, quite frankly, ridiculous to me. I know she's smart, but I'm not really caring at this point if she does. She is very smart and I know it. She knows it.

The tests that they have them go through are just crazy. It's interesting to see how they test. It's reading, writing, recognition of words, sounds, pictures. It's sequence and memory. It's crazy.  Most of the testing was K-6 or K-Adult. So where is her mark?

She got so restless the psychologist called it a day and asked for us to bring her back tomorrow. She did say "I'd like to see what she can do". It set me back some. I found myself getting really frustrated because I wasn't sure what the real expectation was at all.

So tomorrow, Jim is taking her. I'm going to work. He wants to see how she does. I'm curious and will pray. I don't know the best answer.

Reagan's first splinter

Poor little Reagan got a splinter from my parent's deck tonight. Ugh. It didn't really bother her too much, but it was deep into her big toe and we were worried about it getting infected. As daring as she is, she was petrified to have us work on it. We had to hold her down and talk with her. I bribed her with a new stuffed animal (saved for these occasions). I bargained and all sorts of things. She wanted nothing to do with it. She cried so much we thought she'd puke. She almost did. Jim volunteered his hat. That made her laugh.

In the end, she was scared. She was scared it was going to hurt. There was no logic, just mommy and daddy coming at her with a needle and a pair of tweezers. She freaked out like any normal kid. I think the whole thing took us an hour. We started at about 9:40 pm and she got to bed right before 11:00 pm. Ugh. Poor thing.

We skipped bath and just put her straight into bed. No PJs, just bed. I curled up next to her to comfort her. She was so exhausted I do not think she even noticed or cared that I was there.

Crazy amount of words

Maddy is exploding with her language. It is just amazing. She speaks in sentences. She can tell us "no" quite a bit and is very aware of how to tell us what she needs or wants. And when she dances, she points her fingers.

Dancing girl

Tonight was Reagan's dance recital dress rehearsal. All the girls we so cute in their costumes. We all sat in the front row and waited for the groups to go on. They lined up so nicely and played together. in their seats. When they got up on stage to do their performance, they all did a great job. Reagan was near one side and shook her little bootie as best she could. She smiled and sang and danced. I was so proud.

Karate

Reagan took her second karate class tonight. She seemed very eager and ready to go when we got there. She got into her gi without a challenge. She went out onto the floor and watched. She just watched. We were there early so that was all she could do. I was amazed. She didn't move.
When class started, she actually payed attention and listened. She played, but quite frankly, she did awesome!
I'm so excited. I hope she really likes this stuff.