I need to catch up on all that happened during the rest of
the summer and the beginning of fall.
The first two weeks of August, Grace took swim lessons. She is such a fish! She loves the water and made really good
progress on swimming by herself. She
passed the class with flying colors. The
only thing that she didn’t demonstrate was holding her breath under water for 3
seconds. Of course, she does this all
the time when she is with us and even when she is in the bathtub.
We bought Grace a tag-along bike that hooks to my bike. She loves it!
It’s a lot easier for me compared to the weight of pulling her in the
trailer. The whole balance thing is a
little tricky to get use to. If she
leans to one side, I have to really be on alert to compensate so that we don’t
fall over! No falls yet, knock on wood! The longest that we’ve gone is five
miles. She did really well and didn’t
want to stop even then.
In August we took a long weekend and headed Up North. We wanted one last getaway before going back
to school. We stayed at Shanty Creek Resort,
which was the perfect location. We went
up to Petoskey and Charlevoix for a day.
We also went the other way to
Just to keep myself involved in music, I teach piano lessons
at our house. I only have five students,
so it doesn’t consume too much of my time.
Anyway, Grace is usually there with me in the room while I’m teaching
the lessons. I always have a pile of
things for her to do to keep her occupied while I’m teaching. Since she is in the room, she is hearing
everything that I say to my students. I
really never dreamed that she was really listening, but here are some
examples. Whenever I am having my
students review the names of the lines and spaces on the staff, Grace will pipe
in and complete them before the students even have a chance. Grace knows E, G, B, D, F for the treble clef
and G, B, D, F, A for the bass clef. She
also knows the sayings that go with them, i.e. Every Good Body Deserves
Fudge. She doesn’t understand how it
correlates to the piano or the music, but it sure is a good start. Here’s a funny story. We were having breakfast together back before
school started. We were just eating and
talking about nothing in particular when Grace asks me, “Mommy, can you show me
a dotted half note?” My mouth dropped
and then I just started cracking up. I
couldn’t believe she had any idea about a dotted half note! Of course, I grabbed a piano book and showed
her right away what a dotted half note looked like!
Grace has always been one to ask a lot of questions – about
everything!!!! Lately, she has been
asking a lot of questions about God. She
loves to read from her Bible. We also
have a couple of books that she likes to read.
They are “I Am a Promise,” “God Knows All About Me” and “Where Does God
Live?” She picks both of these books
frequently. Anyway, here is just one of
the great questions that she asked me.
“Mommy, does God go potty in the boys’ or the girls’ bathroom?” Oh, my!
Where does she come up with these questions?
We had our very last post-placement report due in
September. Three years ago, it seemed
like that date was so far off. What an
amazing three years!
School started for both of us. I’m back in first grade – Yay!!! The first two weeks of preschool were pretty
rough for Grace (and me). We had tears
and clinging when I was leaving. Oh, man,
that is so hard! She goes to preschool
two days a week. The other three days
she goes to the same daycare that she has always gone to. It’s now been about six weeks and things are
going much better. She is still not as
comfortable at school as she is at daycare, but there are no more tears. She seems to love “circle time” at school,
because we have to have circle time every night at least two or three
times. She is always the teacher, of
course. She also loves the “projects”
that she does. She has to hang them on
the refrigerator as soon as we get home.
This week was “D is for Dinosaur” week at school. I was talking to Grace about it. I asked her if she learned any other words that started with D at school. She was taking her coat off at the time, so she said “coat.” I said, “Coat starts with c, /k/. D makes the /d/ sound.” Grace replied, “Okay, da coat!” She is getting quite the sense of humor!
Grace just had her four year check-up. She is doing great! She is at the 50th percentile for height and the 30th percentile for weight. She’s long and lean. Her doctor was talking to her about Halloween. The doctor said, “Grace, when you go trick or treating, what are you going to say when you go to the door to ask for candy?” Grace said, “First I’ll say please. Then I’ll say thank you.” The doctor started cracking up. Isn’t she just the cutest thing???!!!
Well, I think that catches us up for now. I’m going to try to be better about posting in a more timely manner.
