Preschool!

Lydia loves Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.  She sings the little tunes he sings on the show all the time, and often sings them to comfort Sophie.  Like at breakfast if I leave to use the restroom I can hear her sing "Grown ups come back!"

For months I've watched Lydia approach other kids at the Library or grocery store or wherever, wanting to make friends and wishing that I could form a playgroup for her so that she had regular social interactions with kids her own age in addition to what she gets at nursery.

So after watching an episode where Daniel Tiger goes to school for the first time I asked if that was something she was interested in.  And she absolutely was.  For weeks we've talked about preschool and what Lydia could expect and yesterday was her first day!  The night before we found her a backpack which she promptly filled with stuffed animals.  Daniel Tiger brings Tigey, his Tiger stuffed animal to his first day of school, and Lydia wanted to do the same.  Sophie was a little jealous of Lydia's backpack, so Jon brought one up from the basement for her to wear, and it cheered her up right away.

First thing yesterday morning Lydia walked out of her room carrying her backpack.  Despite still being in her pajamas, she was ready to go!  We found an outfit she approved of, gobbled down breakfast and did her hair as quickly as possible.  We took a picture outside while Soph was still sleeping, hoping that those few extra minutes might allow her to wake up on her own.  She didn't.  And she wasn't happy being woken up.  Lydia was so worried about being to school on time!  And because we didn't want to risk being late, Soph got to be carried around the block in her pajamas.  She was not in a great mood, but she kept it together and the three of us took off and made it to school a few minutes early.  She was on time!

  While she was at school Sophie and I (mostly I) made cookies for Lyds.  And when we picked her up she said, "you came back!"  We then walked home talking all the way, and enjoyed some delicious milk and cookies.

When Jon got home that evening and asked how school was, this was her response, "Corn cobs!  Paint!!  Yellow, red and brown.  It got messy.  She brought me some apples.  They were sour!  There was a tree with monkeys, a swing that birds could swing on at the top of the tree.  We didn't play with cars.  I played with green play dough.  I used a roller and a cutter.  I was making a big birthday cake.  Our teacher pulled out Thanksgiving stuff.  Ms Lisa read a book about the roast beef and the comb inside it.  The little boy set his comb on the roast beef and it melted.  And his dad threw it out the window and the dog caught it."  I am not familiar with this one.  Anyone...?     

All evening she kept talking about how school had worn her out.  She was so tired from school!!  But she's looking forward to another day tomorrow!

Halloween- All's Well That Ends Well

Jon and I are convinced that we had more fun with Halloween this year than ever before and possibly enjoyed it more than our girls did.  Maybe.  For months Lydia has talked of little else other than her dressing up as Elsa in regards to Halloween.  We enjoyed asking her if she planned on dressing up as cousin Elsa, and she'd laugh and tell us no!  Elsa from Frozen!  She's also awaited it's arrival with eager anticipation, including discussing with us just how many days remained for at least two weeks leading up to the holiday.  But for Lyds it wasn't just that.  No, her giddy excitement included insisting on assigning parts to all of us.  Sophie as Olaf, Jon as Sven and me dressing up as Anna.  She would even assign the parts of Kristoff and Hans out to different family members or some of her stuffed animals when it suited her.

Sophie's costume arrived in the mail long before Lydia's did.  And we helped her into it right away.  She looked so great!  She'd wave her stick arms and seemed to really like Olaf's head on top of her own.  Lydia handled that pretty well.  She loved seeing Sophie in it, but asked for days when her costume would be coming.  Jon was tracking it and she would ask over and over again if it was still in China after he'd showed how far it needed to travel on our world map.  When she saw Abby's Facebook video her friends made before she departed for China Lydia mentioned that it might be a good idea for Abby to pick it up.  Makes sense, right?

The costume came and Lydia was not disappointed.  The gloves and the crown were perfect!  One of the most appealing reasons for being Elsa was obtaining her powers.  I remember going for a run at the park and seeing Lydia wiggle her fingers over puddles on our path.  She told me that she was practicing turning water into ice.  I love that girl's imagination!  Her gloves would keep things in check.  We weren't worried. ;)

The Monday before Halloween I had the girls decorate their pumpkins, courtesy of Uncle Isaac and Aunt Amber, and they had a ball marking them up with Sharpies.  Jon came home with pictures of different Frozen characters and Toy Story characters to serve as stencils for our pumpkin carving.  Lydia was so excited!  On Wednesday we stayed up late scooping pumpkin guts, something that the girls were not too keen to take part in.  In fact, they adamantly refused to touch the stuff.  I can't really blame them.  First time seeing the inside of a pumpkin surely was surprising.  Sophie loved watching her Dad use the dremel and see little pieces of pumpkin fly all over the kitchen. Lydia didn't want to go to bed until she saw the jack-o-lantern all lit up with a candle inside.  And she wasn't disappointed.  Olaf looked amazing!  And Jon was back at it again the next night carving Anna in another pumpkin.  Olaf took three hours, but Jon learned some tricks so that when it came to down to carving Anna it only took him an hour and a half.  We'll see if this becomes a family tradition in the coming years...

 

The girls got to participate in some fun activities leading up to Halloween.  They went on a hayride twice, dressed up in costumes from last year, and had their faces painted at the ward party.  I cracked up when Lydia requested to be painted like a pirate after showing her all these cute stamps; things like hearts, flowers and butterflys.  She would not be swayed and the result was one happy pirate!  Sophie wanted a heart, but she wouldn't hold still for a picture so we weren't able to capture that moment.

 

 

And then it was Halloween!  I ended up watching our friends' boys from early morning until mid-afternoon which postponed some of the excitement.  The girls had a good distraction with two other little ones here.  After Jon got home from work we got the girls into their costumes.  Sophie looked fantastic in her Olaf getup.  She apparently didn't like her little pants.  My guess is that they itched because she kept pulling them up and wasn't content until Jon rolled them up for her.  And Lydia made a lovely Queen Elsa.  I tried to make her hair look authentic, but Lyds acknowledged that her hair wasn't quite long enough.  Her braid wouldn't rest on her shoulder like it should, but we did add a little bit on top to make her look like Elsa.  Unfortunately Lyds rolled around in the love sac before we left for the day and that was that!

We were off!  First a visit to Isaac and Amber and then to Grandma and Grandpa Blackhurst.  The girls were happy to fill their baskets, and Lydia was especially pleased to see candy corn!  A new found  favorite treat.  Next we trick-or-treated at Grandma and Grandpa Fraziers where the palpable excitement suddenly came to a halt.  There was a skeleton sitting on the front porch and the girls did not like it.  Not one little bit.  It was bad enough seeing it sitting there, but when it lit up and talked it was really bothersome.  I covered Lydia's eyes when I saw the scary mask moving in the window, and once inside Sophie wouldn't let me set her down.  She stuck with me like glue, and Lydia let it be known that she wouldn't be leaving through the front door.  So after a few minutes we exited through the garage and went a few doors down to trick-or-treat at Aunt Stacey and Uncle Lance's.  The suckers were very welcome after the spooks they'd seen, but it wasn't enough.

On the car ride home Lydia announced that she hated Halloween, and that she wanted to take off her costume.  What?!!  After so much eager anticipation we didn't want the day to end like that for her.  And the thought of her dreading future Halloweens was very unwelcome.  We convinced her to keep her costume on through dinner so that we could go trick-or-treating to a few neighbors before calling it a night.  And then our sweet neighbors came to our house and invited Lydia to join them.  She was all for it!  She, Sophie and I joined Cinderella and her Mom.  Cinderella ran like crazy from house to house and Lyds did her best to keep up.  She only tripped and fell a few times, but it didn't really slow her down.  She was having the time of her life.  Then Jon texted that Uncle Tophe was at our house and we went home to see him.  Lydia ran all the way down the street, so excited that he was there!  Then Uncle Tophe offered to hand out candy while Jon joined us to go to a few more neighbors.  Since this was the first time our girls have trick-or-treated I'm glad that we were all together as a family.  This kind elderly couple had a special gift they wanted to to give our girls.  They sit behind us in Sacrament meeting each week and we've learned that they only had sons, so they've really enjoyed interacting with our girls.  The wife told us she wanted to give them black patent leather purses to fill with whatever they wanted when they came to church.  She couldn't find what she was looking for, but the purses she gave them are darling.  Our neighbors are so good to our girls!  When we came home and the girls saw their loot Lydia's attitude towards Halloween was much more positive, but that was pretty clear when I saw her running around with Cinderella.

And the night ended so much better than it might have.