A proper of
update on Elena & our lives is long overdue! Elena has changed so much in
the past year & I have been lax in recording it all!
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| From her 4 year photo shoot |
She is now 45
inches tall & 44 pounds…making her the height & weight of an average
SIX year old!! I worry because she constantly hears people say, “She’s so BIG!”
I always clarify that yes, she’s very TALL. I grew up with body issues; I
don’t want her to feel self-conscious. It will be hard for her being taller
than the other kids in school…I know, I was the tall kid too. I hope I can help
her to have the self-confidence I didn’t.
She still attends
preschool four mornings a week. Elena just loves that place & so do I!! She
has really connected with her teachers this year & won over all their
hearts! They’ve made me promise we’ll stay in touch next year! I have signed up
for Elena to start Junior Kindergarten in September. We got to visit the school
when we dropped off the forms & it seems really nice. They have an
orientation session in May & we are looking forward to this very much. We’ll
be able to meet her teacher that day & hopefully some of the other kids in
her class. I can’t believe my little girl is starting school!!!
Elena has many,
many interests these days. She has her music class weekly & is still going
to gymnastics class every week. She has come a long way with her skills. She
flies through the balance beam with ease now, she is able to flip herself on
the uneven bars & she tumbles & somersaults with grace!
She also still
has swimming every week & is in Level 5 now!! She can essentially swim on
her own; she just needs her confidence about it. She does, however, have all
confidence in doing somersaults in the water!! At one of her last lessons, the
lifeguard was asking that they flip from a front float to a back float. Elena,
not being so great about the floats, just did one of her somersaults…she went
from front to back, just not how the lifeguard was intending!
Recently, Elena
started asking regularly to take dance lessons…oh, I’m sorry, she specifically
asks for BALLET lessons. I wanted to be sure this wasn’t a passing fancy
before making a big commitment & was able to find a creative movement class
at our local rec centre. She LOVES it! Except after every class,
when I ask how it went, she says, “Good, but we didn’t do ballet.” So I have done
some research & sourced out a really good studio for her to start at in the
fall.
The other new
interest Elena has talked non-stop about lately was soccer. I was not excited
about this one. I have very deep-seated, irrational fears of bugs & specifically
birds, bees & hornets. The thought of spending Saturday mornings on a
soccer field ignites immense anxiety. However, I’m not about to let my fears
hold Elena back from an interest or good wholesome exercise & fresh air. So
I’ve signed her up for soccer starting in May!
A great source of
pride for me recently is that Elena has graduated to riding a two-wheeler
bicycle! No training wheels!! I gave her a balance bike for her 2nd
birthday & she’s been mastering it these last 2 years but has now grown
much too tall for it. I bought her a new bicycle & intended to put training
wheels onto it. I brought it with us to my friend’s on Easter weekend thinking
her husband could install the training wheels for us. Well my friend encouraged
Elena to try without. Her 2 sons, her & I all headed outside & took
turns running along with Elena & she did really well!! I left the training
wheels off & this past weekend took Elena to the high school parking lot
& away she went! Because she was so confident on the balance bike, being on
the two-wheeler all she had to master was peddling & that she got pretty
quickly. She still needs some practice before I can let her lose on the
sidewalks but she’s getting there! Now it looks as though I’ll have to buy a bicycle
for myself so I can keep up!
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| There she goes!! |
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| Taking a break from all that cycling! |
Elena’s speech is
developing by leaps & bounds! I never get tired of listening to her &
let me tell you, she talks nonstop!! What I love to see is her
gaining the confidence to speak up for herself. Even the mothers at gymnastics
have commented how wonderful it is to see her talking & chiming in to the
conversations! What I find most adorable is how she sounds, just like a little
Italian lady! I suspect it’s because, when she was first learning the sounds of
speech we would over pronunciate & now she does this in regular speech. As
an example, if she were to ask for milk she would sound like: “You get-ah my
milk-ah, pul-eeze?” Even funnier, since she loves pizza she’ll say, “You
make-ah my pizza?” very Italian, lol! Also, if you’re taking too long she’ll
say, “You taking for long time!”
Her vocabulary is
immeasurable now. She really is a sponge. After watching any TV show, she wants
reenact it & can repeat the dialogue practically verbatim! And of course
she’ll assign me a character too!
Of course we have
our hard days, Elena is 4 after all & very willful. Unfortunately for me,
she has inherited my hair trigger temper. If she’s fed & well rested, she
is very easy & amendable. We enter danger zone from when I get home from
work at 5pm to when I get her to bed at 7pm…she starts off being hungry &
then just tired. If I can keep my patience we can usually navigate this time
pretty well with no meltdowns. But if I am off my game, the whole evening can
be a disaster. I don’t want to seem like I think she’s blameless for her behavior
but as her mom, I need to teach her to manage her emotions. Her meltdowns can
be amusing & I sometimes have to be really careful not to let her feel like
I’m laughing at her but she is so dramatic!! Sometimes we can
divert a meltdown by laughing about it but that is a technique to be used with
caution as it can change things from bad to worse in seconds if she’s not in a
place to laugh about it. The number one technique that helps the most to divert
a meltdown is for me to express verbally the feelings she’s feeling. “I know
you don’t want to go to bed! You just want to play & play!” I use the
wishing technique too, “If only we could play all the time!! I wish we could
just play & play all night long!!” Sometimes I have to repeat variations of
these a few times but mostly it will diffuse the situation pretty quickly.
I also make sure
we play reconnection games to…roughhousing, tickle fights & our favourite:
Never Gonna Let You Go where I get her into a hug & then pretend I don’t
know how to let her go or I say, “Um no, I’m just never going to let you go!”
Oh the laughs & giggles that ensue!
We have some
pretty exciting travels coming up too! I have booked our first Disney trip for
August. It has been fun navigating the Disney planning app together. Elena is
very excited & knows we are going but doesn’t know when. We’ve made a deal
that one morning I will wake her up & say, “Wanna go to Disney today?” I
have also booked us on the Disney Alaskan Cruise for 2016. It has been a dream
of my Mom, Aunt & mine to do an Alaskan cruise so when I saw that Disney had
one, we jumped on it! I’ve never been on a cruise & am not sure I will like
being on the boat so if I may only ever do 1 cruise in my life, I wanted it to
be Disney & I wanted it to be to Alaska!
I feel like there’s
a million more things I wanted to share in this update but since they’ve all
flown right out of my head & this is long enough already!
