Posts by Michelle

Preschool Update

Posted by Michelle on Jan 20, 2012 in Parenting | 1 comment

I recently attended my first Parent-Teacher conference at TLE’s preschool. I’ve been to other Parent-Teacher conferences at TLE’s other school so this isn’t a new experience. Neither, it seems, is the report. Gross motor and fine motor skills are either age appropriate or above though she still only scribbles and doesn’t really draw anything recognizable yet. And her self-help skills and math skills seem to be age appropriate as well.

Speech continues to be an issue. She talks a lot but her speech is hard for others to understand and she is prone to meltdowns if she thinks no one can understand her. The director of the school asked if I was okay with bringing in a school district observer, which I am. I am hoping that the school district may have some suggestions but for now, keeping her in a typical preschool seems to be helping her a lot.

She’s continuing to develop socially. She tends to play alone and still doesn’t initiate play with other children though she will join in on invitation. Her teachers mentioned that she’s shown a lot of progress from when she initially started school in the summer to when she started going again full-time in December after that partial hiatus.

Overall, the conference was what I expected, including the same issues of attention and willfulness that her other school observed over a year ago. She’s better about it now than she used to be but still won’t do things like sit still for story time and directing her to do something can take some time. Hopefully we’ll find some ways wrangle her to be more compliant in the coming months.

My Reminder

Posted by Michelle on Jan 16, 2012 in Parenting | 0 comments

All smiles

It’s alarming to realize how is easy it is to lose sight of what’s important. Try as I might to balance motherhood and building my writing business, I can’t help but feel that I am failing in both. More than once, I have entertained the idea of returning to the corporate world, trying to convince myself that this was for the better.With more money, we’ll be less stressed out. We can take her on vacations, buy her more toys.

And then, TLE will do something. She’ll smile. Or laugh. Or tell me how much she loves the playdough I just made for her. Or we’ll nap together on a whim after preschool. Or I’ll look at a photo I took of her just a few months ago, how different she looks now, and wonder to myself, Where did the time go?

And all at once I’m reminded about what’s important, all the things that I swore that I’d never take for granted.

A 3 year old’s Christmas

Posted by Michelle on Jan 9, 2012 in Family | 0 comments

Christmas 2012

Every year since we purchased our home, I promised myself that I would do our house up big for the holidays. Three years later, I dragged our tree and assorted decor out of garage storage sometime around mid-December but actually didn’t decorate it (or the house). In the end, it was our housemate who ended up putting up the decor the day before she left to spend the holidays with her family in the South Bay.

While being sick certainly had something to do with it — down with bronchitis pretty much the entirety of December — it just didn’t feel like Christmas this year. Every year, I tell myself that I’ll do more for Christmas and somehow, I end up doing less. I know part of it is economic circumstances which doesn’t help my holiday mood any. It makes me feel bad, especially since I want to make the holidays as magical for TLE as they were for me. And I feel like I’m failing her because I just can’t deliver.

There weren’t a lot of presents under the tree this year. But then I look at photos like this, her excitement as she climbed into her “big girl” car for the first time, and am reminded, not for the first time, that the presents — neither quality nor quantity of them — really mattered.

All that she really cared about on Christmas morning, as she  cuddled the stuffed cat that was all that she had really asked Santa for, was that she had Mommy and Daddy to cuddle her on our laps while she was watched Christmas cartoons and ate candy canes.

There may come a time when she’s older, when TV and the Internet will tell her about the fancy decorated houses and the mounds of Christmas gifts that define the holidays in other households. And I harbor a hope to deliver that to her, someday. But my deepest wish is that she remembers — and will continue to remind me — the best Christmas gift of all for her when she was three years old: to be loved and warm and cuddled by Mommy and Daddy.

Untempered Schism

Posted by Michelle on Nov 12, 2011 in Parenting | 1 comment

TLE is quite the chatterbox these days! It seems that she’s making up for whatever lost time she had while she was speech delayed by talking up a storm. From the moment she wakes up in the morning to the moment she conks out at night, she’s just one big, chattering ball of energy, consuming absolutely everything in her path.

Her sentences are becoming ever more complex and she’s able to really get her point across. I love listening to her as she narrates little stories while playing with her toys. So cute!!

A downside with her talking more is that we’re getting a lot of back talk these days. There’s a lot of “I don’t want to” and boy, she does NOT hesitate to lay on the guilt trip when I put her in time out for being sassy. After time out, I always make it a point to give her a hug and a kiss, and we talk about why she got a time out.

“Mommy,” she pleaded with me this afternoon, hanging her head and looking up at me through that impossibly long fringe of eyelash. (This child will NEVER need mascara as an adult. I am so jealous.) “I don’t like it when you put me in time out. It makes me so sad.”

Ouch. Heartstrings. Pulling. I’m trying to find a non-punitive discipline solution that doesn’t involve time outs but redirection just does. not. work. with her. *sigh* So much of trying to wrangle TLE is to channel her boundless energy and enthusiasm into positives but sometimes, it feels like trying to control a hurricane.

The Only Empress

Posted by Michelle on Oct 23, 2011 in Family | 2 comments

TLE has begun to notice that several of her classmates have siblings and every so often, asks why she doesn’t have a baby brother or sister. I also can’t help but notice that several of my mom friends with kids similar in age tend to have more than one child.

Since our friend Rainbow Dash now lives with us (RD’s kind of like our benign version of Jason Mewes) TLE has several adults to ping-pong off of but I know she does crave peer interaction. Otherwise, she’s very dependent on us for her socialization and now with her going to school less, she’s become even clingier when she’s at home.

We have our reasons for being a one child family but I do get sad thinking about TLE being lonely, especially when I read about other moms talking about how their kids have built in playmates in their siblings. On bad days, TLE come to me and cry that she wants someone to play with.