Beginning of Spring Break!

No preschool for us this week because of Spring Break.  Esme's very first one!

We started off the day with a play date with Esme's favorite friend in the whole world right now, Emily.  Esme L-O-V-E-S Emily!  We play a lot of make believe at our house and no matter what we're doing, Esme pretends her name is Emily. :)  This is a great improvement over our previous pretend personality - Rihanna.  Yuck...  Anyway...

Emily's mom, Laura, is the best and she planned an Easter Egg hunt for the girls which included Emily's three sisters.

Esme and Emily

Esme, Jessica, Emily, Hayley and Rebecca

And don't forget Daisy!

After we got home from Emily's house, Esme went for a bike ride.  She has come such a long ways since last fall.  She has all kind of confidence and just zooms all over the place.  I couldn't keep up!

Look how far away she is!!!

Over all it was a great day!  Thanks Laura and the Roth family for having us over.

Fashion choices

Esme continues to floor me with her fashion choices.  I love them!  Here she is as she got ready to go hiking with Aaron.

I'm convinced she'll be a fashion star someday!

Waiting for the Bus

Today Aaron was sick.  He finally caught the crud that the rest of us have beed struggling with. :(  That meant that I took Esme to Aaron's parents for the day when he usually does it.

I was loading up the car and running in and out of the garage and when suddenly I got a glimpse of Esme.

Me:  Esme, what are you doing?

Esme:  Waiting for the bus.

My car was the bus, and it was not even close to looking like rain.

Board Games

Today we had a fun day.  Esme got a new game called Sequence.  I've never played this game before in my life, but the kid version was fun!

 Cinder decided she wanted to play too.  She kept crawling across the board.

 Kaiser, however, was not as interested...

Littles 2 or Littles 3 - that is the ???

Today was Esme's last day of swimming lessons for this session.  It looks like we are going to do Littles 2 again next session.  At the beginning of this session, she started off doing so well that we thought she was a shoe in for Littles 3 next time.  We even registered her for it with the instructor's approval.  But then we had a few iffy weeks.  After we got back from Hawaii, Esme didn't want to do as much in the water without help.  She wanted Miss Christy to hold on to her the whole time, or to jump into Miss Christy's arms rather than into the water beside her.  So we decided that it would be better not to push her and re-registered her for Littles 2.  We thought/think it would be better to make sure that lessons are always an enjoyable experience for her.

Wouldn't you know it, tonight on her last night of class, she kicked butt!  She did so great!  Miss Christy said it was her best week ever and that based just on tonight she would say she could move to Littles 3.  What to do, what to do?

We decided on this.  We're keeping her in Littles 2 for now, with the same rationalization as before.  I would rather have her do really well in Littles 2 than to flounder in Littles 3.  That being said, the first week of class the new teacher will test her and if it looks like she could move on, we will reevaluate then.  So the verdict is still sort of out.

The last thing done in class each week is some sort of fun reward for the kids.  Today it was getting thrown in the air like a cannonball.  Esme loved it!  Thanks Miss Christy for a great session!

Taking care of Mom

Today I stayed home from work.  I had a headache, cough, sore throat, plugged nose, etc.  Your everyday, average crud.  Esme has been sick too, but she's towards the end of it.  She felt good enough to go to The Children's Museum with Mamoo and Papa while I stayed home and slept the day away.

When she got home, she came and sat with me for about three and a half minutes.  That's really all you can get her to sit still for these days.  She brought one of her books for me to read to her.  I told her I really thought she should read it to me since I was sick.  She reminded me that she didn't know how to read, so I asked her to try it "for pretend".  She made up a great story about Scuffy the Tugboat.

And then she left to play downstairs and do "more fun things".  Oh well, at least I got a few minutes with her!

Granola Girl

Esme loves to dress herself.  For the most part I let her.  I know there's going to be a time in the future when the struggles of being a parent of a girl are going to be huge.  Boy issues, friend issues, self esteem issues, facebook issues.  Ugh.  Not looking forward to it.

I, not so secretly, hope that by the time Esme is a teenager the pendulum is going to shift far in the opposite direction of where it is now.  I pray that facebook and anything remotely similar is gone, that turtlenecks and long prairie style skirts and dresses are in, and that tattoos are taboo.  Please, just allow me to live in my dream world for just a little while, won't you?

Ok, so back to the real world.  As I said, I let Esme dress herself 90+% of the time.  My main reasoning for this is twofold.  First, I think that there are bigger fish to fry, if you will.  I'm not going to argue about colors that don't match, etc because I want her to have a lot of "yes" moments so that I'm not the "no" mom that never allows anything.  Second, and more importantly, I think it's most important that Esme likes the way she looks.  I care more that she thinks she's pretty than if anyone else does.  And if she thinks she looks beautiful in a mermaid dress and galoshes or a gazillion accessories who am I to tell her differently?!?  She needs to answer to herself.

On that note.  The other day she decided that she wanted to wear her Chaco's.  Yes there was snow on the ground and no she didn't care.  I told her that she had to wear socks so she should probably just wear her shoes.  She said - "I can wear socks with my Chaco's!"  The compromise that we made was that she had to wear her boots to preschool and then she could wear the sandals.  Oh my gosh, that made her a happy girl!

So here she is, my granola girl.  I posted a picture of this on facebook (do I see the irony in that?  Yes I do!) and a friend of mine from Washington state said this was a sure sign that we are meant to be back in the Pacific Northwest.  Who knows?  Wouldn't that be nice!  Maybe someday Esme really will grow up to be a granola girl in Portland or Seattle.  We'll have to wait and see!