Friday Focus- Roo

I am so proud of Roo. Since I last had the Focus on her, she has done SO many new things. She really just doesn't let her difficulties stop her. People used to think that she was a lot younger than the other Pink Ladies, but it's becoming obvious that she's two just like they are. :) Definitely some sassy attitude and backtalk going on in that department, much to her momma's dismay. Her vocabulary is getting quite extensive, partly thanks to Ms Julie at speech therapy. You gotta work hard for a lady who says eating a ring pop is therapy!!

They've been doing a lot of work on strengthening the muscles in her mouth so things like milkshakes and lollipops are actual exercise- helping her form her lips correctly and not drool and stuff like that. It's fun to get to spoil her a bit too. She's drinking from a straw consistently now and the first time she realized it was fun was because I let her drink my strawberry shake. :)

Roo has received an official diagnosis of cerebral palsy in the last few months, which allows her to get more equipment at school to help her out with various things. The therapy ladies are currently working to figure out which type of trainer will assist her best in learning to walk. This one was the first one we got, and they've since decided that she's a little too advanced for it. It makes her sit down more and they think she can focus on standing and stepping a lot better with something else. But here she is trying this one out. She was not too excited about it at first.


She definitely wants to stand though. This is one of my favorite pictures of her. She's got a death grip on the gate, and she did fall straight over like a tree after I set the camera down, but she was excited to stand there!



She's having a great time painting and doing art with the other girls too now, and constantly wants to go outside. She doesn't care if she gets dirty or if bugs bite her. She just wants to be out there doing everything she can physically do today, while figuring out how to do something ELSE tomorrow. I love her spirit.

As soon as the back door opens, she is out like a shot. Doesn't care about skinning her elbows on the porch or getting muddy or the fact that she can't climb up the slide alone yet. She can reach the handle of the stroller to push the babies around and she has a BLAST.

Roo's acquired an annoying repetitive habit that we have to fuss at her for constantly, just like everybody else. :) I think she digs it. Just grins when we drag her away from the fridge OVER and OVER and OVER. Now that she's learned to open it and get her milk out of the bottom shelf, she spends half her life refrigerating my kitchen. In a weird way I like that she's getting in trouble. She's decided she's going to stand up for herself and do what she can do. And she'll go far.


Oh, and during our Big Red Barn work this month, I was noticing that she was doing weird sounds for some of the animals and mixing them up, so I asked Kanga. Turns out, the way to say "pig" in Thai sounds just like "moo". Awesome. I guess that's the downside to being bilingual. I kept thinking she just wasn't getting it, but actually she's getting it in TWO languages and trying to school the rest of us!

Friday Focus- Aurora

It's been since April that the Focus was on Aurora, and I'm amazed at how much older she looks just in the past few months. The Terrible Twos are actually some of my favorite times, just because it's new and different every day, and even though some of the days are awful and take forever, the weeks and months fly by. There's so much going on developmentally- she's learning and playing and TALKING. The things she comes up with are hilarious.


She's currently in the "I can take my clothes off by myself" stage. It's to the point where before we tuck her into bed for her nap, we have to put a piece of duct tape across her diaper tapes, or else we have a streaker and a big mess to clean. We're constantly looking over and asking, "Aurora, where are your pants?" or "Hey sweetie, we wear clothes at school. Go get your shirt." I do kind of hope she grows out of this soon. But yay for motor skills! She also raises the entertainment factor at lunch. She was done eating and decided to take her shirt off, but being buckled in impeded her progress... her one arm got stuck in the shirt and she was trapped. It made her mad, but it made me laugh and I had to take her picture before I rescued her.


She's completely obsessed with the plastic kitchen food right now. There must be a pink donut or some fake corn on the cob within reach every.single.minute or we hear about it. "WHERE MY DONUT GO? WHERE?!?!?!" She bops around in the little kitchen area, moving her food from the microwave to a plate and back again, and carries it around with her to have close by during story time or singing.

Aurora's emotions run high most of the time. If she's happy, she's delighted. She bounces, she jumps, she claps her hands and laughs hysterically. If she's sad or angry, she is prostrate on the floor, kicking her feet and screaming. Everything is very terrible and she loses all her many words instantly in the face of her anger. :) We don't take her nearly as seriously as she'd like us to though, and her fits never last long when she doesn't get an audience.

Do not mess with me. I am very serious about this.

Oh, wait! Art! Muddy piggies! Life is all better!

The upside to this is that she's not very physical- just to keep balance in the universe I guess, I've noticed that there are two kinds of kids at this age. You have the weepy ones, and then the ones who haul off and slug you. We've got strategies to help them through this stage either way, and it's interesting to see which way they fall. You can't always predict by their behavior as babies, but we nearly always have a split pretty evenly down the middle. It's just so hard to learn to control yourself when you're two. Sometimes you have to yell about it, and sometimes you have to push your friend.

But back to Aurora... she loves to find little cubbyholes to hide in. The other day she was calling me and I couldn't find her for a minute- then I realized she was under the table, but lying on top of the chairs. :) Silly girl.

2010 Schedule

Everybody was given a copy of our schedule, but I know how things are. :) You put it in a very safe place, never to be seen again, and then you can't remember whether daycare is open or not. So. Here is our 2010 schedule. Since the holidays are quickly approaching, I figured a refresher might be nice. Kanga and I will work on the 2011 schedule soon and you should have it by Christmas of this year.

Giant Steps: Noteworthy Days for 2010

In addition to our paid holidays for the year, we also reserve the right to take 4 paid personal days. Any additional vacation days we take will be of no charge to you. If you are on vacation, please remember that you must continue to pay to hold your child’s space.

Friday, January 1: paid holiday for New Year’s

Friday, January 29: paid personal day

Friday, April 2: paid holiday for Good Friday

Monday, May 31: paid holiday for Memorial Day

Friday, July 2: paid personal day

Monday, July 5: paid holiday for 4^th of July

Monday, September 6: paid holiday for Labor Day

Tuesday, November 23: 4^th annual daycare feast lunch for parents- come and go, 11:30-1:30

Wednesday, November 24: paid personal day

Thursday/Friday November 25/26: paid holiday for Thanksgiving

Thursday/Friday December 23/24: paid holiday for Christmas Eve/Christmas Day

Thursday/Friday December 30/31: paid holiday for New Year’s Eve/ New Year’s Day

Policy, Housekeeping, and Paperwork

I got a call this morning from a potential new family who wanted to look at the information website I keep- I gave her the address and then realized it's woefully old. Most of the things on there are still accurate, but I haven't updated it in a long time and rely on this blog for most of the current happenings. I probably need to just make this one the web address on the state site so people can see it. I'm going to be working on a series of info posts to link to in the sidebar so that new clients can check us out and get a better feel for some of our policies. If you're a regular reader, you likely know these things already, but a refresher is always nice. So. Look for new things to pop up about policies and hours and things like that. It's not that I'm making tons of changes; just that these things weren't listed on this site before and I'm trying to get everything in one place.

Friday Focus- Silvermist

I am just having so much fun these days with all the girls. (Not to say I'm not enjoying the boys, but when I think of the kids, it sort of breaks down into O'Malley, the Pink Ladies, and the Little Boys.) The Pink Ladies are cooking up fun and mischief daily though. Literally. I eat so much plastic food during the day! They spend a lot of their time in the kitchen area dreaming up meals. Silvermist and Aurora feed each other corn and donuts and giggle like hyenas.


Miss Silvermist is the most articulate of the bunch at this point and constantly tells us, bosses us, and otherwise lets us know the things she finds important. She's also quick to correct her friends when she sees they're not following a rule. Never mind that she'll be doing it herself in ten seconds. That's completely different.

At lunch, Aurora was asking for more food and yelling "MORE FOOD! MORE! MOOOORRRRRE!" Silvermist just looks at her with the scornful eyebrow and says, "You manners?" :) When she wants more she's likely to forget the please and thank you herself, but it's so much easier to remember that OTHER people ought to be polite.

And then today Roo learned how to open the fridge, which is a huge milestone. She'd had to resort to begging her friends to not step on her and please bring her milk over HERE!!! Silvermist decided that Roo really should close it. Again, never mind that she herself will stand there with the door open so long that it's "S, please close the door. S, we don't stand with the fridge open. Sweetie, shut the door now. SILVERMIST! FOR THE LOVE OF PETE SHUT THE FRIDGE AND BACK AWAY WITH YOUR HANDS IN YOUR POCKETS!" And she just laughs. Sometimes she closes it and sometimes we have to bodily scoot her away. So she definitely knows the rules, and so do we. But we were being a bit lenient with Roo since she was having such great success in finally getting the door open. When she finally was able to open it and scoot out of the way so it didn't shut on her, she just lay there marveling at the salad dressing and grinning. Silvermist found this to be unacceptable.

Commentary with this goes: "Roo! Move away. No, Roo! Shut da door! I shut da door now! YOU MOVE BACK!!!!" All in a very cheerful voice, but accompanied by dress tugging and the understanding that she is to be immediately obeyed. :)


I wear my caterpillar hat. I wear my caterpillar hat. I wear my caterpillar hat!!!

She's been very excited about painting every day with our new curriculum. Here's the barn to go with Big Red Barn, of course, which is our title for the month. I like the way this is set up- it asks you to do the paintings one on one with each kid, only use one color at a time, and work on directives like wearing a smock, holding the brush, talking about color, and staying in the lines. Set up other opportunities for creativity- this one is for following directions and improving. She's getting better every time about remembering to stay at least near the lines, and we're working on colors. Right now all of them are blue. :)

And then there's this, which may be my favorite picture that I've ever taken of Silvermist in all the months she's been here. The weather is finally gorgeous and we've been out in the yard a lot this week. The kids are all reacquainting themselves with toys they haven't seen in months and running around having a great time. Silvermist was sitting on the red scooter holding a toy- it's in her left hand in this picture so I can't see it and I don't remember what it was. She was totally minding her own business and out of nowhere Aurora comes running at her and snatches it away. Indignation ensues, along with some yelling on both sides and some mediation from Kanga about being sweet and Silvermist had it first and Aurora needs to give it back now and wait her turn etc.... Normal stuff. While this was going on, Silvermist had of course gotten off the scooter so she could chase Aurora down to get her stuff back. When the crisis had passed and she was once more in possession of the Very Important Item, she turned around to get back on her scooter..... only to find that Stitch had snuck in out of nowhere and occupied it. I LOVE THIS LOOK ON HER FACE. It's such a grown up, "you have GOT to be kidding me with this!" face. Totally cracks me up.

Caterpillar Dayz

I can't decide if I'm having more fun, or if they are. Part of it is just the novelty of new routines and something exciting scheduled to do everyday. I'm finding that it's easier to stay on track with this program so far and I love that. It's really fun to have every activity connect back to the theme somehow. They even have a big list of snacks in the book that correspond, with recipes and ways to get the kids involved in the process. Yesterday we made Monday's Apple Smoothies with applesauce and juice concentrate in the blender. Super yummy. It puts everyone in a happy, huggy kind of mood. :)

We've been doing some butterfly work too. Here is a gluing collage we made of some butterfly wings, and also using scarves as butterfly wings to do some flying of our own.


We also did Muffin Tin Monday for lunch, choosing all foods that the caterpillar ate in the book. They were practically incoherent with glee to get a tiny piece of cone and bite of ice cream as part of their lunch. :) No seconds on that part though, just the healthy stuff.

Are you sure I don't get more of that green stuff?

Mint chocolate chip is my favorite!!

Friday Focus- Esmeralda

Friday Focus: Esmeralda from daycaregirl on Vimeo.

Our Esme has moved on as of last week. Her family found a new house that is still sort of in the area but just far enough away that our place is not really convenient anymore. I thought I'd put a slideshow together to give her parents- since she started in January she missed out on the Christmas one I do, and I have lots of cute pictures of her. Then I couldn't get my DVD burner to work and didn't get to give them a copy. So at least it will be here so they can see it.

We will miss you, Esmeralda! We wish you luck and fun times at your new school! :)