Once Upon a Cheerio
Motherhood with a Sprinkle of Creativity
Showing posts with label Life & Motherhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Life & Motherhood. Show all posts
I returned home from Disneyland about a month ago, and I have been going through a Disney withdrawal since. I've been watching walkthroughs of the park and listening to music that they normally play on Main Street, USA.
It's incredible what kind of effect Disney Parks have on me.
Disney people are my kind of people. There's something about that place where once you walk through the gates, it's suddenly OK to let your inner child free. In other words, I'm not ashamed to be a Disney adult.
Once you step into the park, it's not silly anymore to wear mouse ears, sit in a pirate ship and fly above London with Peter Pan, or get excited to meet Mickey Mouse even though you know it's an actual person inside that costume. It even felt natural to wear a Minnie Mouse polka-dot dress out in public!
I haven't been updating my blog as often as I would have liked in the last few months. So much has happened that I haven't had the opportunity to update my blog.
I'm still crocheting and making new things. I just haven't had the opportunity to blog about it. There are seriously not enough hours in the day.
I shared on my Instagram post a while ago that I got a new job. I started this new job in mid-September, it's a temporary job that allows me to work from home. It's supposed to be flexible, but I am in front of the computer all day long. So you can understand why I may not want to spend my evenings also in front of the computer, blogging.
The weekend before I started my new job, Hanson and I also made the largest purchase of our lives: we bought a TOWNHOUSE! We're moving in December and it's all so exciting! We're going from a 700+ square-foot condo to a 1700+ square-foot townhouse!
It's been a bittersweet experience. I love our condo because it's our first home and the whole story of how we got it.
Over the summer, we brought the kids to our public library and signed up for the BC Summer Reading Club. It was a great motivator for the kids to continue to read or do our "activity book" (aka. homework) every day over the summer.
BB was very driven to color in her circle each time she reads a book or worked in her activity book so that she could earn her sticker each time she completes 7 circles. I was a bit easy on her on some days, but I also wanted her to succeed too.
I had some doubts, but by the end of the summer, BB actually finished her Summer Reading Club booklet and managed to earn a medal from the library for all her hard work! She was so proud. She wanted to do more of it!
This summer, BB started daycare. We are very fortunate to get a spot at this daycare because we had deferred three times before finally deciding that it was time for BB to start.
In fact, getting a spot at any daycare in Vancouver is difficult nowadays, not to mention expensive. People have to pretty much register their child as soon as they find out that they are pregnant because the waitlists are over a year long.
I might have mentioned this before, but I was reluctant about starting BB in daycare for a long time. I wanted to wait until BB was able to communicate verbally, but it turned out that she had a speech delay.
Then, I became even more afraid of her starting daycare. I feared that she wouldn't be able to tell anyone if she got hurt or perhaps even neglected because she doesn't talk.
However, holding her back from daycare was possibly doing more harm than good because she wouldn't be able to get socialized with other kids, which is likely what she needs to learn how to talk about.
We visited the daycare before accepting the spot and communicated all of our concerns. The teachers were very understanding.
As a matter of fact, I saw BB make an immediate connection with one of the teachers as she grabbed her by the hand and went brought her to the kitchen gesturing to the Cheerios -- making herself at home.
I completed BB's gradual entry to daycare and got to know the teachers pretty well. Their patience is amazing.
I understand firsthand how frustrating it can be when I don't know what BB wants and she is unable to tell me. I appreciate all the hard work and effort the teachers put in to get to know BB and learn her quirks.
BB started daycare during the summer shortly after Mui Mui was born. It was a difficult decision to put her into daycare because I had a year of maternity leave ahead of me, which meant I didn't have to go to work.
However, I just knew that there was really no way that I could take care of both of them on my own five days a week.
For the longest time, I was reluctant to put BB into daycare because she wasn't able to talk. At 20 months, we had an assessment with a speech-language pathologist (SLP) and found that she had a speech delay and required speech therapy.
By the time she started daycare at 26 months, she only had a handful of words and often needed prompting to say them.
I was always scared that if I put BB into daycare at the time, she wouldn't be able to tell anyone if she got hurt. Or perhaps even neglected because she wasn't able to communicate effectively.
However, I have heard from many parents about how their child/children learn so much from other kids at daycare. It gave me a lot of hope that BB will learn to socialize and eventually learn how to talk one day.
During our daycare orientation, the teachers asked us to create a "ME Book" for BB. This book can contain photos, cards, stickers, letters/notes, etc.
Anything that she may find comforting when she is having a difficult time saying goodbye or when she misses us anytime throughout the day.
We haven't printed out photos in a long time. In fact, I still have this empty picture frame I got from our honeymoon that I have yet to fill. After I had picked up the photos that night, I tried to sit down with BB so that we can enjoy them together.
Nonetheless, she was more interested in playing with my washi tape and trying to "feed" them to her bunnies.
I didn't spend a lot of time putting the ME Book together, but I was really proud of how it turned out.
It's very similar to smash booking which is merely a form of memory keeping. In comparison to scrapbooking, smash booking is kinda random and often doesn't require much planning and organizing.
For the ME Book, I basically taped down all the photos using washi tape and added some stickers from BB's collection as embellishments.
BB looks like a little model from a catalog in this picture. I love it!
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