The Nest Half Full: Growing little gal!

Mia is becoming such an independent little person! As a mother it has been difficult to WANT to let her exercise her autonomy! She has been doing things like dressing herself, cleaning her room and brushing her teeth on her own for a while. We know she has shown keen interest in participating in her food prep. She loves to help make muffins and pancakes and cuts her own food (albeit roughly). She is now tall enough that a stool is putting her at the perfect height to help with these things. Her interest has spread to rinsing dishes and putting them in the washer and using the microwave (under very close supervision!). She'll bring her stool to the counter, open the microwave and put her dish inside and knows that to heat her leftover rice she needs to push "3", "0" and "start" (it's the same for her pancake if you're wondering). Each time she uses we talk about what goes in the microwave and what cannot, so she's well aware that she only uses her dish and removes the silverware. She's very good about asking first.

We had our parent-teacher conference with the post preschool on Monday. She is definitely ready for kindergarten, it's unanimous! She knows all of her letters in their capital and lowercase form (she knew most of them by the first conference), she can identify numbers up into the 30's and can count consistently to 22 (although she has a serious grudge against 15, not sure why!) and she knows all of her colors including Grey (which is often "silver"). At the first conference one of the things she needed to work on was not interrupting people during circle or story time. She had a hard time with that and unfortunately she comes by it honestly as I know I have the tendency! On Monday her teacher was excited to report that she has improved and can now wait until it's either her turn to talk or raises her hand to wait until someone is finished. Her teacher was also very impressed with her sharing, saying she never turns a friend down when they want a turn with a toy. Sometimes the bike is difficult to share when they go outside but she's generally pretty good.
I had the opportunity to see just how wonderful she is at sharing when we were the parent helpers at Ruth Washburn yesterday. There was a squabble over something, stuffed animals and what to do with them I believe, and I heard Mia pipe up, "Hey guys! We don't need to fight we need to do TEAMWORK!" It was so rewarding to hear her be the problem solver! I thought her choice of words, especially since we don't see much of the Wonder Pets! Wonder Pets is a TV show on Nick Jr or Noggin, one of those preschooler tv channels. The three pets routinely save baby animals from various predicaments and their theme song says, "Whats going to work? TEEEEEAM WORK!" and she saw it frequently as a young toddler but not so much recently. Either way, it was just great!

Mia is a good pet owner. She never forgets that Sushi needs food! It bothers her that we don't feed him every day, "Doesn't he get hungry Mommy??" The gal at the pet store said that these particular Beta's were fed every other day and so far he's thriving on that schedule. She is very conscientious about reminding me that he needs clean water. She still very much wants a kitty. When we were at Chris and Angie's house we saw a couple of episodes of the show, "Cats 101" I think it was called. They featured a couple of breeds that were touted to be less offensive to allergic people. Well, I looked them up online and they are nearly $1000!!!! Sorry, but she can save her allowance :) Angie suggested keeping my eyes peeled on rescue sites. I guess when cats are too old or don't win shows anymore they are abandoned so you can find purebred cats at specific rescues. I've also seen data that says pure white cats do not have as much of the offensive dander. They know there is a certain protein in the dander that tends to bother people and certain breeds of cats and white cats appear to lack that protein. So let me know if you run across a white cat!

In other news we're dealing with another cold. The poor thing has a super runny nose and a cough that won't leave her alone. The good news is that Tylenol makes a dye-free cough and cold syrup that doesn't contain corn ingredients! So far it's doing okay, I'm not noticing a marked improvement but then again the child doesn't absorb everything. We're staying home this weekend, no yoga or church because she needs to rest and we really don't want to share the funk!

Sharing her water with Starsong