The First Day

I will start by saying that Emma Catherine went straight to her classroom today with no problems, and she was very excited about preschool. I wanted to get that out of the way, so that after you hear about my morning you will already know that things turned out well for Emma Catherine (and me).

We had a little bit of a rough morning. I tried to be completely prepared and have everything ready last night, but as I have learned you can't plan for everything. The first thing that happened was that Bailey woke up at 5:15. I waited for a little while hoping that she would go back to sleep on her own, but she had the hiccups and then she got mad and pushed out of her swaddle. I went up there and re-swaddled her and luckily she went back to sleep but I did not. My alarm went off at 6:15 and I got up and got ready and then made Emma Catherine's lunch. I thought I was doing well at this point. Emma Catherine woke up at 7:30 which was perfect because I was going to wake her up around then anyway. She was in a great mood and excited that she was going to preschool. She got dressed and we went downstairs. I forgot to mention that it was pouring rain outside. While Emma Catherine was eating breakfast, I put her new white keds on. I thought to myself that they seemed a little big, but I didn't worry too much about it. When she got down, she started walking in them and her feet were sliding out of them. I know this is not important in life but I really wanted her to have new white shoes for the first day of school. I found her old, dirty, too small keds and tried my best to clean them up a little. (I know this is completely vain.) Then it was time for me to try to tackle taking some pictures of her. She isn't into pictures these days so I ended up having to bribe her (i know, another bribe) with a peppermint candy to stand with her backpack and lunchbox to take some pictures. At this point it is 8:45 which is the time I wanted to leave. Bailey is laying on the floor with no clothes on. I quickly dressed Bailey threw everything and the girls in the car and we were off. It was still pouring rain..ugh. As I was traveling down the road feeling bad that my child was going to be a little late for her first day of school, I came to a stop because they are doing construction in the middle of the road. There were at least 30 cars backed up on each side of the road. When we finally get to school, the front parking spaces were full, of course. I had to park across the street and get both girls across the street and into the school. Luckily Emma Catherine has her own princess umbrella and she carried her own backpack. I had to carry an umbrella, Bailey's carrier, her nap map, lunchbox, and my camera/case. We made it into the preschool and none of us were too wet.

While I stopped to set our umbrellas down, Emma Catherine just kept walking down the hall and right into her class. She gave Mrs. Janice (her teacher) her backpack and started playing. What a relief that she was so calm and happy. I tried to get some pictures of her with Mrs. Janice but she was already busy playing. When I was leaving, they were about to have snack, so I knew she would do great. After I got back and in the car, I let out a huge sigh of relief. I can't believe Emma Catherine is at school. I'm getting a little teary right now.

Right now the house is so quiet with Emma Catherine at school and Bailey sleeping. I almost don't know what to do. Oh wait, there's always plenty to do. I've returned phone calls, unloaded the dishwasher, worked on the paperwork for renewing my teaching certificate, and blogged. Now it's time to go nurse Bailey. I think 2:00 (pick up time) will be here before I know it.

she immediately started playing

Emma Catherine and Mrs. Janice (too busy to pose for the picture)

Our new journey

Emma Catherine started on a new journey today...preschool. We had parent orientation today and she got to meet her teacher and play with the other children while the parents had a meeting. She has been so excited about preschool and she is going to preschool at our church so she knows her way around. I thought she would go right in with no problems but there was one problem. Her closest friend, Chloe is not in her class. I didn't think it would be that much of a problem expect that Chloe and her mom and sisters got to school at the exact same time that we did. We started walking to their rooms and Chloe went in to her room and I kept walking with Emma Catherine to the next door. She stopped at the door and said, "Where's Chloe? This not my room. My room's there." (pointing to Chloe's room) Then she fell apart right there on the floor. I told her teacher that she would be okay and thankfully she was. When I got back in the room, she was coloring and smiling. All the 2 year olds go to music and playground together so they will see each other plenty. They arrange the classes by age and even though Emma Catherine and Chloe are 3 weeks apart the cut off is right between their birtdays. Emma Catherine is the youngest in her class, but we are okay with that. I think it will be good for her to be challenged plus she probably fits better with the older ones since she is potty trained. I am excited to see what Emma Catherine learns this year and how she matures. Her first day regular day is Tuesday so I will post next week on how it goes.

Goodbye Paci

Yesterday was a big day for Emma Catherine. For the first time since birth, she slept without her beloved paci. Since she is 2 1/2 and going to preschool in a couple of weeks, we decided it was time to try to get rid of her paci(s). I was very nervous about it because LOVES her paci and always has. She usually has about 6 or 7 in her bed at a time. (I know, it's crazy) Last summer at about 18 months, we cut her paci time to just in the bed and in the car and it went so well that we couldn't believe it. She asked about it but there were no tears or fits. In about April of this year, we told her that her paci now could only stay in her room. Again, no tears. It took a couple of times in the car of her asking where it was, but after that, she didn't even ask. This week, I started talking to her about pacis being for babies and that now she is a big kid because she uses the potty. She decided she should give her pacis to Bailey so she went in Bailey's room and threw (literally) her pacis in Bailey's crib except her Aubie paci. I let her just use her Aubie paci for a couple of days because we wanted to wait to take the paci away until the weekend. (in case things didn't go well) Last night was the big night and who would have guessed, there were no tears. When we were getting ready for bed, she asked about it and started to act like she was going to get upset, but we talked about being a big kid and then distracted her by getting her to choose her book. I read her a book, we said our prayers, covered her up, and that was it. She didn't get up and slept all night. I guess that lets me know that she IS a big kid and could have handled it earlier. Maybe I was more emotionally attached to it than her. I'm not sure, but I definitely didn't give her as much credit as she deserved. She is growing up so fast right before my eyes. Today when she took her nap, again, there were no problems. I am so proud of her!

A while back I posted on Bailey not using the paci. As an update, she is still not using a paci. She is a complete thumb sucker and I'm okay with that. I just pray that maybe we will have as easy of time getting rid of the thumb sucking as we did getting rid of the paci. We'll have to see.

Beach Pictures

Boy, this sure took me awhile to put together. Hopefully I will get better as I use this program. Also, we had so many pictures to choose from. Enjoy!

The Beach

Last week we went our summer vacation and we had the best time. We met my parents and sister at Panama City Beach and stayed at the Splash resort. We chose it because it looked very kid friendly and boy, it was. They had kid slides, 4 pools, a lazy river, water spitting frogs and a lot of it was covered so we didn't have to worry about sunburn. It was so nice to relax and enjoy being with family. As an added bonus there was a new mall near our condo so my mom, sis, and I got to hit up Ann Taylor Loft. Another added bonus was that on the way to the beach we stopped and stayed in Dothan. We went to a friend's wedding, stayed with dear friends, went to our old church, and visited other sweet friends. Even though we really like Chattanooga, it made us miss Dothan.

We were so proud of Emma Catherine on this trip because she became a little more brave. Even though she is so independent and wants to do things her own way, she is very scared to try new things. (like swings, the pool, slides, etc.) On this trip she tried a lot of new things. First she started swimming in the pool by herself with swimmies on. One night Ryan decided to see if she would use them and she did and then she took off. She kicked, floated, and turned all around like she had always been doing it. In the past all she would do was mostly sit on the edge of the pool and play with her buckets. She also started jumping to us from the side of the pool. I think part of the reason she was open to using them was because so many kids around her were using them. She also got brave in the kids area. She was at first nervous to go down the slides and by the end of the week, she wanted to go down by herself. She had so much fun in the pools that she really didn't want to go on the beach. We had to make her go down to the beach even for just a little while.

We tried to take family pictures on our last night and we all wore white, but unfortunately none of the pictures of the whole family really turned out. We set up the tri-pod but by the time the camera took the picture, it seemed that someone wasn't looking (especially Bailey or Emma Catherine). We also took our first trip to Gulf World. We had a good time but let's just say, it's not quite Sea World. One thing that I did learn at Gulf World was that we are definitely not ready to go to Disney World. By lunch time, Emma Catherine had had enough. The dolphin show was the last show we went to and Emma Catherine hardly watched it even though before we got there, that was the show she talked the most about. We took a ton of pictures so I am going to work on posting them using one of those pictures sites.