Sydney's growing up--and still as boogery as ever

I love her so much! I mean how can you not love that face! But there are some days that I just want to shake her! (don't call CPS--I haven't actually done it...yet...)  Time is flying and she is just growing up faster and faster everyday.  My beautiful, loving, crazy, smart, caring, independent, bratty, obnoxious, loud, opinionated, AMAZING little girl.

I'm going to backtrack a little here, since I haven't been keeping up with blogging.  Sydney is now almost fully potty trained. She still wears diapers or pull ups at night (I guess I should start night training soon but I'm willing to put up with it for a while). She still has an accident every now and again, but mostly because she gets too caught up in what she is doing and can't stop to take a break.  She also has "accidents" on purpose whenever she gets mad at either Chris or myself for putting her in time out in her room or fussing at her.  She will throw a tantrum and pee on herself either on her floor or on her bed the second we close the door to her room then when asked why she did it she says "I dunno" but with further probing she comes out with "You make me mad" or "You make me sad." Yelling and fussing don't help...just pushes her to do it more because she knows it gets a rise out of us. So in order to nip that in the bud, we had to change our time out routines and locations. Now she has time-out in a little plastic chair in a corner of the living room.  It actually has turned out to be alot more productive because she HATES having to sit there and be still and look at the wall.  If she doesn't sit i nthe chair quietly and face the wall we threaten (and actually follow through) to add more minutes to her time-out.  Usually after 2 minutes (or less) she is ready to apologize. (Although I will honestly say it doesn't always work, it does work better than sending her to her room :-/)  This way she can't go in her room and have an "accident" or go in her room and play.  It also helps to keep her room a happy place, rather than a place she dreads to go. Anyways...

So we also started Syd in a preschool/MDO program. The school is called HISKids and is a baptist affiliated school located at the New Hope First Baptist Church about 5 minutes away from our house.  Sydney's best friend Jack goes to the school as well, and it is where I have gone and currently go to Bible Study once a week (that's another blog in and of itself for another day)
She goes to school 2 days a week, right now its Mon and Wed from 9am-2pm and she LOVES it.  They do all sorts of activities, arts/crafts, sing songs, learn colors, shapes and ABC's, and eery week focus on a different topic i.e. night and day, winter, the 5 senses etc. She even *gasp* takes a nap there, usually about an hour and a half (which is AMAZING because she will NOT take a nap at home).  Her teachers are sweethearts and Syd loves them too.  She usually won't give me too much info when I prompt her on what she did at school other than to tell me she played outside, played with friends or sang "Twinkle Twinkle" but her teachers provide a sort of progress report everyday when she comes home telling about how her day went and what they did. I also get a calendar every month that tells what topic they focus on each week and a bible verse that corresponds to that topic/lesson.  I am just so glad we finally decided to send her to school and that she loves going to school so much.  It gives me a much needed break and some alone time with Caden, plus gives her the opportunity to expand her horizons, make new friends, learn new skills, helps her to follow directions (at least directions given by anyone besides myself :-P) sing and learn new songs and basically just run around using up all that energy she never seems to lack :-) It's a good thing all around :-)

We also have enrolled Syd in a gymnastics class at The Little Gym.  Thanks to the info I got from another mommy friend, I decided the Little Gym class was the way to go. Also, much thanks to Aunt Linnea for suggesting we put Syd in a gymnastics (or dance) class and for helping us financially to take care of it :-) We already attended our free introductory "mommy and me" class but haven't started regularly because of her recent bout with RSV (again more info on that to come). Her first official class is this Saturday and I am eager to see how well she does.  Here are a couple of pictures from our intro class:

Circle time activity

Balancing Act :-)

She seemed to really dig the class but not so much the structure. She really just wanted to run around and do whatever she wanted to do (especially when she saw other kids leaving "circle time" to go play on the equipment) so here's hoping she will actually participate in the class and not just run around climbing on things at will.  We will be in the mommy and me class until June and then since she will be 3, I think I'm going to enroll her in the dance class they offer.  For the dance class she will be on her own (without me in the class with her like the gymnastics class is right now) but I have a feeling she will do just fine.  We shall see I guess.

I think that's about it for a sort of short and sweet version of life to date with Syd. Of course its a little more detailed, but at least not a minute by minute account (not that my brain could handle that anyway).  More blogs to come about our recent bout with RSV, Syd as a big sister, and about my return to Church :-) (that one should be fun) I predict many more blogs within the next few days just playing catch up :-) until then!