First Snow this Season

She would have played outside all day if I had let her.

Advent Calendar Day 5

A new animal today: a little deer. She got the box out today by herself and said let's open number 5 and then found it herself. She's mad in this picture because I couldn't get a good shot with my camera and she was tired of posing.

Advent Calendar Day 4

We missed a couple of days while Piper was a grandma's house. On the second day she got the green tree, on the third she opened a bunch of little birds that sit on the tree. Today she got some food and a basket (?) that it sits in.

Advent Calendar Day 1

We got Piper her first Advent Calendar this year. It is a Playmobile one with a forest theme. Today she opened the first door and found a tree. It went very nicely with her Schleich raccoon.

Dear Santa

Piper wrote a letter to Santa telling him what she would like. I'm not sure about the Barbie stuff as she has no idea what that is. I will go and get her the purse she saw at Meijer because she won't stop talking about it.

General Update

NAME/ALIAS: AGE: Piper, 3 years 2months

PSYCHOMOTOR STUFF: getting better at really using a hula hoop now, tries to dribble a ball (hands)

COGNITIVE STUFF: She is big into arguing her point now, and is very logical about it too- not the typical arguing tantrum type stuff she has done for months. Her language is much more rich and complex and expressive. Sometimes I am just amazed at how she speaks- and the things that come out of her mouth in her baby sounding voice.


ACADEMICS: Last night we went out to dinner and she entertained herself with the sugar packets: making patterns and counting them. She is really into counting everything right now and has great one to one correspondence. The teens mess her up, and as long as it took her to count to 12, it might be ages before she gets to 20 correctly. She continues to be fascinated with the moon, and we talked more about it last night since it was a crescent moon. At dinner she told us that our lemons were crescents- apparently her word of the day. She pointed out the stars in the sky and argued with us about whether one was an airplane, a star, or a planet. Self-sufficient on the computer with general use. Can use Word and Paint. plus several software programs like KidPix and JumpStart. Opens and closes programs with ease, prints, and shuts down computer.

CREATIVE OUTPUT: Lots of building of forts, tents, houses: out of pillows, couch cushions, blankets, and other misc. materials. She has very elaborate plans and gets upset when we make her clean up. Poor Stella is picked up and carried to these areas and forced to play. :) She has also been rewriting songs that she knows with new lyrics. I was impressed that the meter and rhythm still matched the original tune.

EMOTIONAL ISSUES: Again, very argumentative, usually age appropriate when tired or hungry, but often just to be silly or sarcastic. Is completely logical and uses reasoning with her debating. She’s loud! I guess in general we are a loud family, but it really comes to light watching her. Will not sleep in her own bed. We have finally got her out of our bed and sleeping in a chair/ottoman combo in our bedroom. Is embarrassed about performing still- will NOT perform if asked. I caught her waltzing the other day with her stuffed dog and she immediately stopped and hid when I looked at her.

SCHOOL UPDATES: n/a

Halloween

Piper loved Halloween and true to form was Dorothy again this year. I don't think the costume will fit next year, so she'll be forced to pick something new. :) She was up bright and early Halloween Day dressed in her costume and shoes watching the Wizard of Oz for the upteenth time.

She loved trick or treating once she got into it. She was a bit shy going to the doors by herself, and when she got tired, she was done. Nothing would convince her to go to another door. She told us she had plenty of candy. When we got back to her grandparents' house, she passed out a few pieces to the kids who were still coming to the door. She also had fun sorting all of her candy into piles and counting it all.

Pumpkin Patch

We went to the pumpkin patch today with both the girls. Erick got free passes for us at work, so that saved us $18. :) Piper had a lot of fun picking out just the right pumpkin. They had lots for the kids to do: corn mazes, tricycle path, petting zoo, hay ride, bounce house and slides, live music, food, and more. She was a little cranky and grouchy by the end, but she had fun. She fell alseep in the car on the way home.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Leaves

Puzzle Video

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

She's not a big puzzler, so
I was happy when she drug this out and started showing an interest in doing them.

Riding Her Bike

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Piper finally has enough interest to ride her big bike now. Her 12 in. bicycle is too small for her, but she wouldn't really try riding this one (16 in.) much this summer because it is still a little big for her and wobbles a bit. This one also has the braking issue when the pedal is pushed the opposite direction, so she sometimes has trouble getting around it. She is getting a lot better at it after this first time though.

General Update: October

NAME/ALIAS: AGE: Piper, 3years 1 month

PSYCHOMOTOR STUFF: Finally got brave enough this last month to ride her 16in bike (even though she rode her 12in one with no problem) She’s had it forever, but I think she was scared because it wobbled a bit when she’d get on it. It still a tad bit too tall for her, but she did great. We also recently acquired a Wii system, and she is all over it. She loves the swordfighting game especially.

COGNITIVE STUFF: She’s finally ready to do puzzles on her own. Nothing amazing since she’s only doing 12 piece ones independently, but I am so proud of her for finally having the patience and drive to complete them. Previously she would only do them if I helped her and gave her hints about turning the pieces, and would throw a fit if they would not fit exactly. She will work on 24 piece puzzles with a lot of encouragement.

I always type out her update in Word before I post it. I realized that last October’s update was in the same folder so I opened it up and this is what it said:

“Piper has discovered YouTube on the iPhone and looks for favorite videos. She is really good at the puzzles on it even though she struggles with regular ones without help. She gives up too easily when frustrated because a piece won’t fit perfectly even when she knows where it goes.”

Funny that I was talking about her frustration back then too!

ACADEMICS: I’ve noticed more patterning with her blocks. She is a whiz on the computer now and it’s a fight for me to be able to get on it myself. I got her the Jump Start cd’s for Pre-school and kindergarten, and it will be interesting to see how she does on them. I’ve observed her trying to teach Stella to do things like use my iPhone and turn pages in books. Other than a couple of sight words, there’s no real reading yet. I’ve made her a couple of books to hopefully encouraqe her. She’s been very interested in the Scrabble Jr. game lately though, and also in copying my writing. She will only write her name by herself if I bribe her however.

CREATIVE OUTPUT: Lots of drawings- more birthday cakes, an aquarium with fish and a castle, has added eyebrows to her people drawings.

EMOTIONAL ISSUES: Very strong-willed and independent right now. Is having difficulty with jealousy over any of Stella’s new milestones. If someone is excited that Stella can crawl, then Piper immediately has to show us she can crawl too.

SCHOOL UPDATES: n/a

Party Montage

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Happy Birthday to Piper

We had Piper's birthday party at Incredible Pizza. It was very busy, but she still had a lot of fun with her cousins. I made cupcakes and Erick deocrated them to look like Dora. She opened presents and has enjoyed playing with all of them over the last week.

General Update

Child's name: Piper

Age (in months, or years and months): almost 36 months! She will be 3 on the 11th, so I guess this is my last general update here.

Physical abilities: She got a real hula hoop and a real jump rope as an early birthday present from my sister. Previously, she had been using various things around the house to play the part. She is not great at either one yet, but she can get the hula hoop around a couple of times, and she tries so hard to jump rope. Maybe soon she’ll figure it out. She can write her name and use a computer mouse correctly. I had to bribe her to get a video of her writing her name. She was being as silly as she could to push my buttons, but I kind of still got a record of it.

Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc: speaks pretty well in long sentences and clauses. Vocabulary is good, as in I have nothing to compare it to but she uses some fairly complex words. She surprised me by counting to 8 in Spanish the other day. I wonder how many other words she knows since she is not a performer at all. The main language hang-up she has right now is using “her” in place of “she”.

Reading/pre-reading: She knows a couple sight words and her name, but I have not done anything with her in the longest time. She reads her books to herself and tells the story by the pictures even if she’s never read it before. She reads to Stella all the time too, especially the concept books with a picture and one word. Asks me to write other words like mom, dad. and caterpillar. She knows environmental print like store signs and traffic signs.

Number stuff: I overheard her count to 8 in Spanish and 11 in English. Direct teaching has no result. She’ll get it when she gets it. Getting better with patterns.

Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: She is very interested in games right now, board games and especially computer games. She is quite proficient on the computer and easily starts her games up to play. These games work on patterns, letters, numbers. shapes, colors, etc. Some of it she already knows, but its still fun for her. She loves to do mazes.

Creativity: Loves to make lists, especially birthday lists, and tells me what to write. She drew this picture of a birthday cake a few weeks ago, but I hadn’t posted it yet. The cake is sitting on a plate and has 6 candles, apparently she thinks she should be six this year. The swirls on the cake are the sprinkles and icing.

Imagination: most of her play is pretend play now. She loves her dollhouse and her regular dolls.

Social:really wants to be and play with other children. She is still a bit aggressive at times with others her own age. She is wonderful with Stella, and does everything she can to make her happy when she is sad. I love that she gets up every day and tells her good morning. She talks to her like a normal person and not a baby, which is so nice to hear. She also “translates” for us what Stella is saying.

Character/personality: Still aggressive but can be very sweet and loving. I’m ready for the terrible twos to be done. She never really has true tantrums, but she is very vocal when she wants something, and has little patience for waiting.

School Updates: n/a I’m looking in to sending her somewhere for a couple days a week just to be with other kids.

Link to blog/websites/photos:

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Carnival Pics

We went to a small church fair. Piper loved riding the rides with her friend Savannah.

Marion County Fair

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We went to the Marion County fair this week. Piper had a great time riding the rides, playing games, and seeing the animals. She was just barely too short to ride some of the big rides, and she wanted to go on absolutely everything. She loved the motorcycles that had ramps to jump. I can't wait till next year when both the girls can ride together.

Using the Computer

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Piper has gotten really good on the computer and can use the mouse fairly well on her own. She likes to play Starfall and a couple other games I downloaded for her. Starfall she can do pretty independently, but with the other games I have to stay close because she can get frustrated at times since she has not played them as much yet. It's scary to think how quickly they learn technology. We didn't have anything like this when I was her age, and there was definitely no internet yet.

Smoothies

Nick Jr. has a segment on every so often about making smoothies. I figured this could be something we could do together. Piper helped me get the fruit ready, and she put it in the blender. We used strawberries, cherries, blackberries, and I snuck in a plum. She had never had one before and we had a dozen that were going to go to waste. We also added fruit juice and some plain yogurt. She loved pushing the buttons on the blender and was excited to finally make it. Of course she had to have stickers on her straw like they do on t.v. Now every time it comes on, she reminds me that we made them together.

Another Carnival Ride Post

Notice the effective safety strap...a bungee cord? I think these rides are left over from the 1970's. You'd think they would be able to update them by now.