citilife: christie, markus, and willa: 2009-02

As most of you probably know, Willa started at a new daycare yesterday. Anyone who knows me knows that I am anxious and get nervous easily, so you can imagine that I was pretty anxious over the weekend. How would Willa do? Would she cry? Would it take weeks for her to adjust? Should we have left her at the other daycare?

I don't know if it made any difference, but I talked to Willa about it a few times over the weekend. I figured it couldn't hurt because I've read that at this age, children understand far more than they can say.

On Monday, I took her to Beginnings, the name of her new school. She was a superstar! She got down so we could take her coat off and then off she went! She followed a classmate into the potty* (see story below about Willa's interest in the potty) to watch and then started running around. I called during naptime and the teacher said she did really well in the morning - a few whimpers in the morning, but she did the art project, which was making sheep with dixie cups and cotton balls. I was told she did really well with the art project, too, so that made me smile. She ate her lunch and took a nap. All great signs for a first day! When I went to pick her up, she was having fun but ran up to me right away. I know she was glad to see me, which is a nice feeling.

Today, she did great again - no crying at dropoff, played, ate her lunch, took a nap, and is already making the teachers laugh. She's got three teachers and helpers from Temple University's early education program, all of whom are very nice.

I was sad to say goodbye to her teachers last week and will miss some of them a lot, but I do feel good about Beginnings. I like that she's in a nice, big room with lots of windows and it looks out onto a little playground that's just for her school. It's two blocks from our house - how can you beat that? They include potty time in the daily schedule for kids who are interested (but there's no pressure if the child doesn't want to), they do art projects each day, and there's a weekly tumbling class we can sign up for. We saw the tumbling class during our tour and Willa was verrry interested, so I think we'll sign her up. She's such a climber monkey (she climbs up onto her highchair in about 3 seconds flat now), I think she'd love it. Oh yeah, they provide snacks, so I only have to pack a lunch, and they have a huge refrigerator where I can keep her half-gallon of milk and her lunch bag; the other place had a dorm-size fridge and we weren't supposed to send any food that required refrigeration so I would send field-trip types of packed lunches...

She's been tired this week, I suspect from all of the changes. Her normal bedtime was 8/8:30 and she'd wake up around 6:50. This week, she's been going to bed at 7:30 without a fight and sleeping til 7:15 or so. She's eating a lot, too, so maybe it's a growth spurt (example: Sunday morning breakfast - 1 Kashi waffle at 7:30, 1 bowl of Life/Cheerios/All Bran cereal mixture with milk at 8:30, 2 breakfast sausage links at 10:00). Since she's tired, she's cuddly and snuggly, and I love that because I know someday all too soon she will refuse.

We're attempting to take more pictures and video, and now that Markus is back into blog posting mode, we hope to update the site a bit more frequently. Check back soon!

* Potty interest: Willa is very interested in watching this whole pee-pee process. She likes to watch it happen and provide sound effects (pssssssshhhhh - she can't say 's' properly just yet, they sound more like 'sh') while you go. She's very clear on what needs to be done with toilet paper. She'll sit on her potty, fully clothed, and will reach for toilet paper. She goes through the motions and sticks the T.P. in her potty. Then she gets more T.P., "wipes", sticks it in her potty and repeats until we stop her. It's quite funny, especially considering she's still got a diaper and pants on! It is at this point that I'm glad she's clothed because she also likes to reach down into the potty and pull the T.P. back out...we're working on explaining that it should stay in the potty. Anyway, next we wash our hands. Good hygiene is very important! Then we do this all over again the next time I have to pee and Willa is in the room. I never thought bathroom trips would be so full of entertainment (or that I'd be on such display!).