everything elena

so i know i just did a big e post a few weeks ago. lanie's been 3 for almost 2 months now!!! but a lot is going on in her little life and i need to get it down...

SCHOOL
she LOVES school! loves it. gets kinda upset on days she doesn't have school. she talks about her friends all the time, especially emma and ethan. she is often playing school and pretending to be her teacher...daddy, ad and i are the students of course. i'm told she's a "quiet" one...which i find funny. but i knew she would be. elena is a pleaser (typical first born). things like lining up, helping clean up and staying quiet for circle time absolutely tickle her fancy!

a certain boy, ethan, seems to have a special place for elena. his mom tells me he talks about her all.the.time. and last week as we were walking in ethan and his mom were walking behind us and i overheard him tell her, "mom, there's elena! i just love her pretty face." didn't know whether to giggle or run my first private investigation. but i certainly smiled. ethan's also colored pictures at home just for elena. they come home in her folder and i think it's super sweet.

e recently had grandparents day at school...lucky girl had all 4 come have breakfast with her! elena lights up at school. she walks in hopping with excitement. when she gets dressed for school, she says how her teachers are going to love her outfit...and goes on and on with things like that. just the other morning elena's teacher told me that they "love elena's energy!" and "how lucky [i am] to have that everyday!" best compliment a momma could hear!! still very happy with our last minute decision to start her in preschool. she loves being around her peers. i go on her first field trip with her class next week! i can't wait. yay!

thanks to school...lanie now writes her name in order and in line consistently...
RESPONSIBILITY CHART
elena's gone through some really difficult behavior hiccups in the last few months. maybe cuz she's saving all the good behavior for school. excessive whining and unprompted crying jags have climaxed for her and our patience has seen better days. or maybe around every birthday we're going to experience a rollercoaster?!!? i don't know, but we had to do something.
like i said, elena is a pleaser. but we all know it's a bit different at home. it's important for her to behave at home too, but she still needs more prompts and more rewards. i found this awesome chart and we had a discussion about responsibilities. not just being responsible for tasks/chores, but for her behavior. i know some adults that need this. oh yes, i do...in fact i would be more than happy to make up a whole chart for a few people like - wait, where was i? oh yea, responsibility chart. so we elaborated on all the nifty 'responsibilities,' better fitting our daily life and at the end of the day, we discuss our day, our responsibilities. some we get cute smiley faces for, some we talk about how to work on for the next day. at the end of the week if she has 32 smiley faces (we're going to keep upping the #), she gets a reward of her choice. and we choose the same or different responsibilities to work on for the following week. it's also important that we discuss our responsibilities with her and the rewards that we're getting because of them.
we elaborate on each responsibility, so "make bed" means that...and getting dressed, eating breakfast & listening when we need to brush teeth, get hair done, shoes on etc.

SLEEP
e still goes back and forth napping and not napping. i can usually tell right when she wakes up if it's going to be a nap day or not. and when it allows, i giver her a choice. (some days of course she NEEDS to nap.) for the last few weeks, she has been choosing to nap. and her behavior has been much better. which is clearly predictable, but still nice to see. regardless, bedtime is affected. we either can't get her there soon enough (sometimes she's in bed and asleep by 6:30pm) or we're walking her back to her room for the 14th time at 9:00pm. but as long as her behavior is reasonable, i am not complaining. i know she is still in a transition time and we can do nothing but allow for it.

as far as her being scared, we had tried a night-light in her room and it was keeping her up all night. some of our worst nights with her yet, so we stopped that! and now...lanie's been sleeping with a tinkerbell flash-light for a few weeks. you have to hold the button down to have it on, so it doesn't keep her up. she doesn't use it if she wakes up in the middle of the night, only right when she goes down. elena hasn't had a nightmare in a while (that we know of). thank goodness. she does come in our room sometimes still and wants to sleep with us...sometimes she'll go back to her room smoothly, sometimes she'll whine/cry and be more insistent to stay. if we let her stay, it's for 5 mins and back to her room and she won't put up a fight. (we'd probably let the girl sleep with us if she'd stop karate kicking our ribs.) she will still talk occasionaly in her sleep... and it still kinda freaks me out.

she was staying dry over night for most nights and we were just going to let the overnight diapers run out...almost as soon as they did, she started soaking them again. ??? so we're not pushing it. we don't restrict liquids. we probably never will. when we have a 5:15-5:30 dinner time and 7:00 bedtime, it's going to be pretty difficult to. the more people i talk to, the more i hear it's still young to be trained overnight. she's been refusing diapers sometimes at night...she really wants to be a big girl and says she doesn't need them. she will get up and pee and has actually stayed dry for the last week or two. but we don't want wetting issues (for her sake) and are hopeful she'll figure it out with little guiding from us...as she has everything else.

she's also been talking a lot about stopping sucking her thumb and spitting. (yes, she spits the salavia she collects as she sucks her thumb - it is waaaay less than awesome.) she brought this up all on her own. she realizes it's something big girls don't do and we're so happy that she brought it up. so we started a big girl chart for this. we know it will probably take a while, if not years. but we're really proud that she took initiative and figure it's a step! fingers (and thumbs) crossed.

DANCE CLASS
e started dance class a few weeks ago. i'm told she "seems shy, but rocks out the hardest" during activities (they sing and play instruments as well).
yep, that seems about right! that is miss e securing her sticker she received in class. :) she says dance class is her favorite thing. she's always taking her baby dolls to pretend dance class and whines when we can't really go cuz it's not our day.

"I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance." ~George Balanchine