My Lulu Belle is SEVEN!

Meet You Future Second and Third Graders!

The Sound of Music

Today Sam and Lucy had their first ever piano recital. They began lessons in January, and they have an amazing teacher. She is fairly strict with them, but very kind and encouraging. She actually called Sam out at the end of the recital today because he kept insisting that he wasn't going to perform. Meanwhile, he knocked it out of the park. Lucy played her little heart out as well, and watching her watch the other students was enough to make me weepy. I'm so very proud of how hard they both worked to master their pieces, practicing several times a day for many, many weeks. Sam in particular was very nervous, and we had to bribe him with  a soda to get him in the car, but once we got there he relaxed a bit. Plus he was totally distracted by the cute little girl sitting next to him. (Not Lucy)

It makes me so happy that my children love having music in their lives. Sam just signed up to play cello next year, so he's going to be working on TWO instruments! And Lucy just may be a little virtuoso in the making. In the time she's been working on her two recital pieces, she basically taught herself the next two songs in her book. I have to ask her to stop playing sometimes! Do I sometimes have to remind them (more than twice) to practice? Yes. Are there times when they don't want to? Yes. But we've gotten over this big hump and I think it's going to be smooth sailing from here on out. And that is music to my ears.

Signs and Signals

The other day an email popped up in the inbox from some parenting website. In the past 8 years I've ended up on a lot of those, and usually I just dump them right into the trash, but they top article caught my eye. 10 Signs Your Child May Have Asperger's Syndrome. I clicked on the link and started reading, and was saying 'yep' after each point in regards to my little Lulu.

1. Fixation on one activity? Just take a look around her room at all of the homemade musical instruments she made out of recycling and yarn for the answer to that one.

2. Little professor speech? HA! Just ask any adult who has ever spoken to her, or go and scroll through my Facebook posts and read her quotes that I've posted. Remember her Valentine's? Her vocabulary is astounding, and includes several made up words that sound the part. Emphatic yes to this point.

3. Difficulty reading social cues? Lucy hugs every person she knows, even if it is painfully obvious that the person on the receiving end of the hug doesn't like it. We have been coaching her on this and kissing for years, and she still has troubles with it. Luckily, the kissing part is more under control, but she will tell people, 'I wish you were a part of my family so that I could kiss you on the lips.' So, yeah.

4. Need for routine? This one is killer for me, because with 4 kids and a husband with a wonky schedule, keeping a regular routine is tough. We try to keep bedtime regular, but when we screw that up she suffers dearly, and so does her teacher the next day. YES.

5. Emotional meltdowns? Lucy's tantrums are epic, and often sparked by something insignificant. Maggie wants to play house instead of vet. Sam took the red twisty straw and she got the yellow one. Fred touched her fluffy unicorn. I asked her to do homework. The fact that she's 6 1/2 makes these even more ludicrous. Yes, yes, yes.

6. Lack of empathy? This was the only one that wasn't an obvious yes. Lucy displays tons of empathy at times, but none at other times. It's a little perplexing to me.

7. Can't understand speech subtleties? Do you know how many times a day I have to ask her to look at my face and listen to how my words sound, so that I can try and clue her in on how I'm feeling about things? Dear jebus yes.

8. Unusual body language? Again, hahahahahaha! Lucy is constantly moving through space as though some weird, triply music is playing in her head. At piano, she moves like Stevie Wonder, even when she's only playing Twinkle Twinkle. The child was made for a career in interpretive dance.

9. Delayed motor development? This was the only hard no on this quiz. Lucy has always been pretty advanced with both gross and fine motor skills. Bike riding, ice skating, chopstick using, you name it!

10. Sensory sensitivities? Holy hell yes. Lucy has a horrible time participating in rug time at school because the texture of the rug is so appealing to her she can't concentrate on anything else. If her teacher puts her in a chair she's devastated because she wants to sit on the beloved rug. She's been keeping a cotton ball as a pet for weeks because she loves the way he feels. She eats many foods with glee, but has a hypersensitivity to garlic, and sobs if she sees red sauce on anything. So, again, yes.

While all of these signs point to YES, Lucy has been evaluated twice and received a big NO. Partly because she is still a little young for a diagnosis, and partly because she has days where she is pretty much, well, normal. She is on the cusp, I guess. We are taking Lucy for yet another evaluation this afternoon, where they will assess her quirky-ness and see if they can figure out ways to help her, this time with speech and language.

I struggle so much with the all of the unknown that surrounds her. I cry inside every time I see another kid cringe at her well meaning hug. I love watching her at the piano and listening to the songs she writes with names like 'life fire' or spying on her as she's totally absorbed at her easel. I don't want to change who she is. I only want to help make her voyage through this world a little easier.

Back To School Update: The Girls

Oh, my darling daughters. Both of you faced some serious changes in your school routines this year. Lucy changed schools, which I was very nervous about. I really felt like moving her to the public school was a good idea, and now that we have a few weeks under our collective belts I feel like we made the right decision. She loved her Montessori classroom, but struggled with the freedom of choosing her own work. This year, in a more traditional classroom setting she is doing great! Socially, things don't seem to shabby either. A little girl she knew from gymnastics was assigned to the same classroom, so luckily she didn't have to walk in on the first day not knowing anyone, and since then she had made some new friends. I was a little troubled when a birthday party at the end of the first week was kind of disastrous for Lu, but today I saw a friend call out to her and wait so that they could walk in together. My heart almost melted.

Maggie is in the same school, but we moved her from the afternoon class to the morning class, which means none of her friends from last year are with her anymore. I struggled mightily with this decision, but ultimately for the sake of family maintenance had to switch her. Freddie is now going to school in the morning, and keeping her in the afternoon would have meant a ridiculous amount of time dropping off and picking up at this particular school. Plus, the afternoon dismissal time at that school is still the same as at Sam & Lucy's school, so I would have been struggling to pick kids up at two spots across town from each other. After dealing with that last year, I felt pretty strongly that moving her to the morning class would be key element to maintaining my sanity, and in the end that would be good for her. No one wants a bat shit crazy mom, right? Luckily, because she's a little social butterfly, this hasn't impacted her too negatively. The first few days were weird for her, but now she's got a whole new posse of friends, plus we're still friends with kids from last year and see them socially, so she's got that going for her.

Extracurricularly speaking, my girls are BUSY. Lucy is taking golf lessons after school one day a week, and they both are attending a group piano class and a dance/acrobatics class. Luckily for me, since they are close enough in age, they go to the same piano and dance class, which was a huge relief for me. With Sam in hockey and piano and golf (not to mention the therapy that Sam and Lucy are still going to for now) I don't know how I'm going to manage all of this once Fred starts with sports/activities. Probably with a lot of coffee, and maybe some druge. Legal ones, of course, but I'm pretty sure drugs will be necessary.

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In other unrelated news, we are having a giant birthday party for Maggie this weekend. She wanted a pinata in the shape of a unicorn, of course. I was just starting to think that I was going to have to whip out some paper mache around here, but then a trip to Target saved me. Wandering down the party aisles, Maggie should out, "THERE IT IS! MY UNICORN PINATA!!!"

If anyone dares to tell her that it's actually a donkey, I'll use the pinata stick on your head.

Six Going On Sixteen

I was unpacking Lucy's school bag yesterday when I came across this drawing:

Awwww! I thought to myself! She loves me again. And she's been so excited about being six that she had to include that little fact in her love note. It was folded like a card, so I opened it expecting some more about how much she loves her mother. Sadly for me, that was not the case. Observe: 

Translation:  Dear Jon, Your heart is for love as a heart as I'm heart.

And then the lovely illustration of the two young sweethearts. I asked her why she brought this home instead of giving it to this Jon character. 'Well,' she explained, 'I found out at recess that his name is actually Jack.' 

Six Going On Sixty

For her birthday she got a sewing machine, and said her favorite part was the train ride because it was so serene and calming. I can't believe how quickly the time has gone by.

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You Can Get Anything You Want Down At Lucy's Restaurant

My darling little Lucy, for all of her challenges, has a keen sense of commerce and a real entrepreneurial spirit. She's always begging to have a lemonade stand or bake sale, and is even savvy enough to know that she should have her sale on Sundays when the two churches across the street are filled with customers. Recently I made a big batch of strawberry jam, and took some to my aunt and grandmother's house. I usually let the kids hand deliver goodies when we take someone a little gift, and Lucy readily volunteered to distribute the jam. Later on I found out that she charged them each $1 per jar. While her cunning business sense is to be admired, she is only 5 and so she didn't realize that since I spent $20 on the ingredients to make the jam, and only made 14 jars of it, $1 per jar wouldn't net us a profit. Hopefully she'll learn about that in first grade. 

Knowing this about my Lulu, I wasn't at all surprised to learn that she's decided to open a restaurant. In our house, naturally.

This morning we went to the new supermarket down the road, and they were handing out roses. As soon as we got home she convinced the other kids to donate theirs so that she could have a nice centerpiece at the best table at her restaurant. 

All real restaurants have real flowers on the table. Just like Chick-Fil-A! And all real restaurants have menus, including Lucy's Restaurant. 

Butter Bread. (Why this item gets punctuation I do not know!)

Cheese Sandwich

Mac n' Cheese

Strawberries

Milk, OJ or Green Juice

And Pancakes

Pretty much the best menu ever. She made multiple copies as well, so that each person at the table could have their own. This afternoon for lunch we had quesadillas instead of cheese sandwiches, so she had to change the name to Lucy's Mexican Restaurant, but the signage stayed the same. When we had strawberries for dessert she switched it back. For dinner tonight we are having mac n' cheese. I guess tomorrow we will have butter bread and pancakes. 

Make your reservations soon, as we are filling up quickly! 

Nature Talent Fairy

Because there are days when dressing up like a fairy and eating veggies raw from the garden are just par for the course.

Last Day, Part One

Today was the last day of school for my girls. So I hauled them out into the yard this morning for a not-so-quick photo session. Luckily, they were both champs! 

Despite having a bit of a rocky year, Lucy is sad for the school year to be over. She is going to miss her friends and teachers, and spent over an hour last night drawing and writing notes for them. Most of the cards included an invitation for the recipient to come over and see her Easy Bake Oven. She really is a hoot, this one. Luckily, she gets to bring a part of her classroom home with us over the summer in the form of Peace and Harmony, the classroom rats pets. I didn't really want to volunteer to give them a home for the summer, but last week Lucy flooded the bathroom twice in two days, so I felt like I owed the school something. 

Maggie isn't really upset about school being over, but that's mostly because I don't think she really gets it. For example, her dance class is also over now, but she keeps asking if she has dance class tomorrow. I'm a little worried that next week she's going to be pissed, because this kid loves school. And dance class. I would try and woo her with the swimming pool, but she's not really that into it. I guess I'll be forced to bust out some play dough, which is her favorite in-school activity.

And just because they're sisters, here's a picture of them together!

And here's their picture from the first day of school. I was going to try and have them wear the same dresses, but they both grew so much this year that the hemlines were indecent. Where does the time go???

Weekend Escapes

The past day and a half have been pretty freaking awesome. I want to sit and write about it, but I don't want to miss too much of the fun! We've spent time with family...

Went swimming...

And went to Maggie's first dance recital, which was every bit as amazing as you might think. Just see for yourself...

Summer vacation can't come fast enough.

It's the Lucy Show!

Lucy's school has been prolific lately with recitals and performances. This week was the annual spring concert, in which she got to sing along in four songs. The preparation for the concert was a little weird for us, because since she was off of her normal routine at school she was off her normal routine at home. Plus we've had some changes in child care (AGAIN) which is also making things a bit wonky around here.

The week prior to the show she had a letter in her mail informing us parental types how the children were to be dressed. Since I picked her up early that day, she never got her mail. Which is why in the video below you will see that she is the only child in THE ENTIRE SCHOOL not wearing a white shirt. Parenting FAIL!

My second big failure of the night was not sitting in the same general area where I sat for the William Penn expo. For the entirety of their entrance and first song, Lucy kept looking for me in the area where I sat last time. Instead of singing. And, well, she was a little freaked out when she couldn't find me. So she started covering her face with her hands and being a cute little weirdo. Luckily, she located us between the first and second number and then got down to business, shaking her egg shaker and banging on her tin can.



As you can see from the end of the second number, she thinks it went pretty well.

Little Lucy Goes A Long Way

This has been a big week for my little Lulu! 

She completed her first round of gymnastics classes, and in first place no less! (FYI, all of the kids finished in first place, but don't tell them that!) She enjoys her time there so much, and she can almost do a cartwheel, just ask her! This whole cartwheel thing really bother Sam, because he can't even begin to approximate one. She's reveling in being better than him in something. It's cute. Until they start fighting.

She also had a performance at her school!

This gave me no small amount of anxiety, because we had NO idea it was happening until the day before it was happening. That's what you get when you take your kids to Florida in the middle of February, I guess. To make matters even more anxiety-filled, she was the first performer IN THE WHOLE SCHOOL!

She had to recite a line about William Penn while wearing a lovely hand made quaker hat, which totally went with her sequenced tunic, pink jeans and zebra rain boots. Can you tell she dresses herself? 

She said: William Penn was born on October 14th, 1644 in London, England. 

And she said it like a total boss. 

And she knew it, too. After all of kids took a bow, most of the dispersed to find their parents. Lucy stayed on stage and blew kisses to her adoring fans.

ROY G BIV

At Sam's school, they have bees. You start your day with your bee in the green hive. If you are misbehaving, the teacher will warn you by moving your bee to the yellow hive. Continue to behave badly and your bee goes in the red hive. If you end up in the red hive too many times for the same reason, you have to complete a 'Think About It' form.

So far this year, Sam has already had two 'Think About Its' and can barely go two days without landing his bee in the red hive. The one 'Think About It' was for kissing his best friend, and while we had a long discussion about personal space and appropriateness of kissing at school, I wasn't too upset with him over that one. The real problem is that he just can't stop talking. Ever. His teacher called home the other day, and I'm starting to worry about what we're going to hear when we go in for his parent-teacher conference in a few weeks.

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Maggie is thoroughly enjoying school. She enjoys it so much that she forgets to go to the bathroom while she's there, and pees herself almost every day during pickup. Good times. We're working with her teachers to help quell this issue.

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Last week we had to go in for a meeting with Lucy's teachers. They called us in because they've noticed some behaviors that were raising some flags. Red flags. She fixates, objectifies her peers, doesn't make eye contact. Lucy has always been quirky, but the stress of the move has taken her quirky personality and turned it up to eleven. So we've agreed to have her undergo a battery of screenings. I think that, if she does end up with some sort of diagnosis, it will be on the mild side, and I'm not averse to getting some insight into how she ticks. But still, it kind of sucks. As a parent, it's tough to hear that there might be something "wrong" with your kid. Not because of the stigma or anything, but because you want them to have an easy, happy life. Anything that might stand in the way of that is upsetting.

I don't think anyone could ever pin a label on this kid, but anything we can do to help her move through life more easily has to be the right thing to do.

Now we just have to wait for Freddie to develop some sort of issue!

Gypsy Life: Day Eight

Today we had the distinct pleasure of not only going to our new pediatrician for the first time for Lucy's year 5 well visit, but also of trying out the emergency department of our local children's hospital branch. Oh, what fucking fun!

Most every morning since we've been going to school here the girls play on a very gentle staircase that goes in-between the blacktop area and the playing field. They call it the 'balance bean' (Olympic obsession with gymnastics, anyone?) and they seem to have a lot of fun. Until today, when Lucy inadvertently tripped on a discarded water bottle and let out a blood curdling scream. Since she screams kind of a lot anyway, I didn't rush to react, but when she didn't get up I decided to investigate. I walked over, and saw that she really appeared to be in pain. She got up, but then went right back down. I got her over to the bottom step, she sat for a while, and then she seemed fine. Since I had scheduled her year 5 checkup for 9am, I figured we'd mention it then just in case. The doctor checked her out, declared her healthy as a horse, ankle and all. 

We went home, and I put on Sesame Street while I did some dishes. When it was over I called the kids over to the table to eat, and Lucy couldn't get to the table without yelping.

Her left ankle was swollen and she could only limp along. 

After many phone calls to many doctors and urgent care centers, we finally got her an x-ray. She doesn't have a fracture, but she does have a nasty sprain. Being 5, crutches are not really an option, so we're sticking with ice, elevation, an ace bandage, and carrying her 52 pound ass around as much as possible. 

Of course it had to be my child who is in the 92nd percentile for weight who needs to be carried everywhere. 

Lucy's First Day of Kindergarten

Last Days

First day...


Last day.

First day...


Last day.

And just because they wanted to be included, too, here are the young 'uns...

Potty Training: Spring Break Style

So we've finally decided to buckle down and potty train Maggs. She's been using the potty intermittently for a few months, and since we're just chilling at home this week while the kids are on spring break, it seemed like the ideal time. She spent last weekend with my parents and wore big girl underpants the whole time with only one accident. Naturally, I was optimistic. I can't help it, it's my nature. (Insert eye roll here.)

I bought her a package of Rapunzel underpants and away we went! Everything was just great until my parents had the audacity to leave on Sunday. We were at the hockey game (yes, THAT hockey game) and Maggie was pretty much non-compliant with our sitter. Then yesterday she was really hit-or-miss with me. She'd go on the potty when I took her, only to pee in her pants less than ten minutes later.

Today was the beginning of the end. This morning she was whining that she didn't want to be a big girl, that she wanted to stay a baby and wear diapers. Well, I'm not one for quitters, so I said no way! Put on your big girl panties, both literally and figuratively. She did, and it was ok. For a while. I had to put Freddie down for a nap mid-morning, so I situated her at the table with a bowl of raisins. And when I came back downstairs she had made a few raisins-like objects of her own, right in her Rapunzel unders.

Good times.

I set about cleaning her up, and then I got to cleaning up the bench she was sitting on at the time of the incident. I was looking for some lysol wipes, but I wasn't having much luck finding them. I poked around under the bathroom sink, and guess what I found stashed behind a wall of toilet paper rolls?

A huge pile of...........

CANDY! (Admit it, you totally thought I was going to say poop, right?) And discarded candy wrappers!

By this time I had pretty much forgotten about Maggie and she was running around the house pants-less.

I cornered my two big kids and gave them the third degree. It was pretty obvious after about six seconds that Lucy was the guilty party. Adding to to the evidence against her is the fact that she always takes an eternity in the bathroom. Even if she only goes in there to get a tissue. After trying to pin the blame on both of her younger siblings (because we all know Fred has a mean sweet tooth) I explained that if she told the truth she wouldn't be in as much trouble. She broke down and confessed everything. Even about how she used the step ladder to get the candy down from the high shelves in the pantry. *facepalm*

So now Maggie is back in diapers and Lucy isn't allowed in the pantry. Can school just start again, please?

Season's End

Well, another hockey season has come to a close. It's kinda weird, really, not having somewhere to be four or five days a week. Weird, but totally awesome. Hockey is fun but the season is sooooooooooooooo long, especially for little kids.

As with last year, I wanted to do a compare and contrast video. Here is Sam at the end of last season and the season before. Here is Sam a few months ago. I didn't really get a good video of him in a game at the end of the season, so that video from the public session will have to do.

Now onto the Lucy! Here is a video of her pulling along some other kid a few weeks ago:

I am amazed with her skating ability. Even more so compared to Sam at the end of his first season. The only issue is that she has almost zero interest in the game of hockey. She loves to skate, and she'll do drills until the cows come home, but try and get her involved in a scrimmage and she's done.

I'm thinking we may have a figure skater on our hands. Bring on the bedazzler!

Bonding Over Nose Picking

We try and discourage them, but we are obviously not persistent enough.