Update on Megan

I've been meaning to update on Megan since I originally posted information on Rachel...but its been crazy around here!  So, some things about my very soon (too soon!) to be kindergartner:

• She LOVES hats.  She specifically loves a hat that I got from a fellow mom that she wears practically all the time.  Its a super cute hat, but it has certainly seen better days.
• I found her winter coat at a garage sale (super cute...for $5!) and it came with a hat with a bill...well, for the past week, she's been wearing THAT hat all the time.  Seriously...100+* outside, she's wearing a winter hat.  Its hilarious!
• Speaking of winter hat...in the past month or so, she's gotten into having to wear a mitten.  Not just any mitten, but these very specific mittens that she had when she was about 2 that went with an old coat.  They are too small, but for whatever reason, she LOVES these mittens.  I can't tell you the number of times I've let her wear a mitten to the grocery store.  I'm sure people think, oh, my goodness, look that little girl, how funny...she's wearing a mitten!  It's 2 gazillion degrees outside! :-) One day at quiet time, she quietly worked a huge hole in one of them, so I've not seen the mittens much lately.
• She's very, very, VERY much into the Cat in the H@t knows a lot about that from PBS k!ds.  She loves to watch this show.  And she loves to be the cat. To the extent that she often has to refer to herself (and wants us to refer to her) as "the cat"...or "this cat".  Its hilarious...and frustrating at the same time!  Of course, that also means that she likes to wear a "tie bow" (aka bow tie).  She wears the one she got at christmas ALL THE TIME, but its starting to look "sad" (aka the sides don't stand up like they used to).  So, now we've branched out and sometimes like to use a shoelace tied in a bow.  For the longest time, she also had to have a tail, but lately that hasn't been as necessary (thank goodness!)
• She has 3 very best "friends": Polly (the parrot puppet she got from her play therapist b/c she played with it at every session & was a special toy to her), Buggy (her ladybug pillow pet), and of course Bops (her sheep).  Life CANNOT go on without her friends.
• She can read at least upper first grade level words.  At least.  She's sounding out words like "hazardous," "elephant," "bicycle" and "trumpet" without even having trouble.  However, we were reading a book the other morning and "custodian" tripped her up a little bit, but she came really close in her attempt.  However, I'm fairly certain that's well beyond first grade!
• She's very much into counting by tens right now.  Forwards and backwards.  
• Writing.  The girl will be my note writer.  I was in class last week and I came home to find 8-10 notes from her spread all over my bed as a "surprise!" from her.  She loves to draw pictures, too.  
• She's sleeping better...and later.  Today she slept until after 7am!
• Her favorite colors are purple and pink.
• She's swimming.  She's figured out how to swim on her own.  We've told her to shovel water (paddle) and kick, but otherwise, she's done it herself. She's been working on holding her breath under water in the bathtub for some time.  We've been spending a lot of time at the pool, and she learned to "take the plunge" and is now officially swimming.  Its still very basic, and she still needs lots of practice to improve, but she's doing it.
• She's taught herself to whistle.  Its not very loud, but she does it before she's going to sleep and when she wakes up in the morning.  She also likes to do it to try to get your attention.
• Logic.  The girl is scary smart logically.  Of course the fact that dad likes to show this stuff and "play" these types of games...and because she is so dang smart she's picking up on them....doesn't help!  She's beginning to have logically conversations.  I'm afraid of what she's going to be able to do as a teenager..at which point conversations will go like this in our house: me to Dad: "This is YOUR FAULT! You created this by teaching her how to do this when she was 5!" Dad: "why is this MY fault?"  me: "ha!  Don't even try that one!" :-)
• Here's an example of her being smart beyond her age.  The other day at supper we had baked beans, so Dad said to me, the girls could have "weans & beenies" (aka beans & weenies) for lunch the next day.  Megan pauses and says, beans & hot dogs?  I looked at Dad, raised my eyebrows, smiled.  The girl scares me.  No one has ever told her that word play "secret" that he likes do.  Dang we could be in t-r-o-u-b-l-e!
• She's not really into dresses although she seems to be selecting more of her skorts this year to wear.  When she does wear a dress (and she does wear them to church), she likes to see if its a twirly dress. She's not into girly things, she much prefers throwing the football, t-ball, sticks, dirt and other not-so-"girly" things.
• She's going to be my athlete.  I've started jogging and she frequently wants to go jogging with me.  So, she'll jog with me to the end of the street and back.  She does pretty well.  We got her some pretty good quality shoes this year and I think that will help her, too, if she does run with me more.

Megan is VERY excited about kindergarten starting in just a week.  Mom's not so excited to see her little girl grow up!  Where has the last 4 years gone????

Rachel

Since I'm so far behind on blogs...and I have so much I'd love to post, I figure I'll start with Rachel and some things about my beautiful teen.

She loves to take self-portraits...here are a few!

• She loves all things princesses...especially Cinderella.  She's OBSESSED with princesses.  I am SO SICK of princesses and princess movies.  Sigh.
• Her English has improved like you would NOT believe!!!  You can even understand her on the telephone now (something I was not able to do for a while).  She really is doing marvelously at English.  We're waiting to get the results from a test she took in early April that measured her English skills to determine her eligibility for ESL services.  They tested her in reading, writing, speaking and listening.
• She LOVES science.  In fact, she is doing so well in science that she is doing the same work that every other 8th grader is doing and she's doing well!  She's getting As & Bs.  In fact, she's doing well in math as well.  They do make some accommodations on word problems, but they have reduced the number of accommodations (at my request) in there and she's still doing well.  She's still struggling in Reading/Language Arts (duh!) and social studies as is to be expected.  However, she's very, very, very smart.  It can work in her favor in that she can do really well...but it can also work against (me!) in that she works the system when she doesn't want to do the work.  And sometimes she doesn't want to do the work.
• She loves dresses/skirts/girly-girly things.  She would love to wear make up, but I say no way. I do allow mascara and lip gloss, but nothing else.  She really does not need it...and she already looks so grown up, she really doesn't need it (besides its sometimes difficult enough to get out the door to school as it is!!!).
• Boys...she is NOT interested in boys at all.  And is the exact reason and argument I make for her not wearing any more makeup.  I'm very grateful she's not interested in boys...however, they don't feel the same way (and it drives her crazy that they are interested in her!).
• She loves to fix her hair.  Its not uncommon for her to fix her hair in at least 2 (or more) different styles (that I see!) before school.  On the weekends...there's no telling what her hair will look like after spending some time in her room! :-)  I suspect a potential future in cosmetology.
• We've figured out that she needs a lot of sleep.  So, bedtime for her is typically around 7:30pm.  We figured out that the amount of work her brain does to translate everything is tremendous.  When she doesn't get to bed as early, she will say that when she's in school the teachers just say "blah, blah, blah" and she doesn't know what they are saying.  However, when she has had enough sleep, she can understand what they are saying.
• She's loves mom time, but has really started loving time with dad, which is great.  In fact, we've moved to a period where she prefers to talk to dad about things over mom.  Kind of surprising, but I see this as a good thing.
• Rachel loves food.  In fact, there are no foods that she does not like.  Literally every meal she says "this is my favorite!"  Seriously.  Everything is her favorite.  We've had for the longest time problems with her overeating, which has lead to her gaining nearly 10lbs in the past year.  No, she's not overweight and we're not worried about that right now.  In fact, her having gained a little weight (while a pain that none of her clothes now fit!) makes it easier to find pants that do!  What we do want her to learn, however, is good eating habits.  We want her to know what are proper portion sizes as well as knowing that even though something tastes really good it does not mean that she should keep eating it.  I think--knock on wood--she's figured it out.  She's asking less and less for 2nd helpings.  And when she dishes up her own food, she's actually dishing up a reasonable portion.  I'm very proud of her progress in this area in the last few weeks.
• She also really, really, really loves sweets.  In fact, we don't typically have many sweets/candy/ice cream and this has been an issue for her.  So, we created "mom & dad's candy shop".  Since we have lots of candy from an Easter egg hunt at Megan's school and Megan's valentine's party, she can use her money to buy candy.  They are small, single serving helpings and she's learning how to decide how to manage her money as well. So, its a double positive here!!!
• I'm so not ready for her to be in high school next year.  And honestly, I'm not sure she is either.  But, she will be.  We hope that next year we will have moved because if we stay in this school she may just have to learn YET ANOTHER LANGUAGE.  I did not specifically ask, but to graduate from our high school students have to take either French or Spanish.  I would sure hope that ELL students would be exempt from that requirement...but common sense does not always rule here.  So, there is no telling.  Also, if we move to the district we want to, she may be able to take Chinese to improve her reading/writing of Chinese.  She's started becoming concerned with not remembering how to read/write Chinese.  I'm thinking the problem is more like there were a lot of words she NEVER knew how to read because her school was so horrible, but she's not at the point yet where I could say anything bad about the orphanage or about China. Yet.  One day she will, but its not yet.
• It depends on the day you talk to her, but she says she would like to go back to China as a translator.  Other days she wants to say in the US and do something else.  So, it's hard to say.
• Friends...this is one area she has really struggled with.  I think in China she was highly popular.  In America, she's "odd" and is not.  Its been a rough transition for her.  We had a very rough patch about Feb/Mar, but she seems to be handling it better when she realized she is not the only kid who doesn't have 100+ friends.  After we told her a million times--and she polled many, many people--she realized that people can be fine with only having a few people as friends in 8th grade.  Life has been better.

Okay, that's the most I can think of right now...I know there's many more things I can write about our teen...she's blossoming and overall doing fantastic.

mid-August

Dang, I've been wanting to a better job of blogging...and again, the month is half over and I've not blogged. Shoot. Okay. Looking forward to the girls being in school so that I will have time to work on things like blogging! Geez. The days just FLY by!

I've been thinking about blogging...and all the things I've wanted to include. So let me post a few things that come to mind tonight. I teach a class next week, then Rachel & I start classes on the 22nd. Megan starts on the 29th. I'm not sure where the summer went. Sigh. But back to my list:

Megan

• She is reading at probably 1st or possibly 2nd grade level. She is instigating more and more reading opportunities. I'm not sure how much further she's going to be by the time she starts kindergarten. I'm scared to think about it.
  
• She's starting to express interest in math (Lord help me!). I've been dragging my feet so she has some sort of challenge in the future!!! Geez.
• She LOVES to build towers with blocks. As in she can literally spend an hour or more multiple times a day in her room building towers and pyramids with her alphabet blocks. I'm sure glad I didn't get rid of all of them!
• She's recently gotten into "decorating" her room (aka taking the bow hair clips and clipping them on her curtains, drawer pulls, picture frames, etc.) during naptime and/or in the morning after she wakes up, but before she's allowed to get up (before 6am)
• She's started asking for a clock in her room with hands so she can tell what time it is to get up (which she says is when "the hand is on the 6"...she determined that time...not us, but I'm good with that!!!).

Rachel

• Rachel's English is coming along. She's doing awesome! Its incredible how far she has come!!! She's doing amazing.
• She loves beautiful dresses (as in formal dress up clothes)
• She enjoys going to church and is making friends there.
• She loves crafts and drawing. She loves making bracelets with beads, especially.
• She hates to wear her glasses (Megan loves to wears her "just glasses"...still)
• She loves Americ@n foods especially pizza! She loves my homemade pizza--well, not MY truly homemade pizza as she's not had that yet--but there are various types of pizzas that we make at home that she likes.
• She's very excited about school...she'll be in 8th grade.

Okay, that's the best I can come up with at the moment...so I'm calling it good for the time being...I hope to update once classes start next week!

I'm so far behind!!

There are so many things that I've taken pictures "for the blog" and so many things Megan is doing that I want to get on here. But quite literally, every week since July I've had something demanding my time. The dissertation took up June, July, August, September and most of October. The end of October was our first garage sale. Then the beginning of November we had a Scentsy fundraiser which lasted until mid-November, the BBQ Bash, then it was Thanksgiving...followed by graduation (and mom & Katie's visit)...followed by Christmas. Then I taught a class the week after Christmas. Then January...which was spent getting ready for a consignment sale, and spring semester starting. February held play dates for Megan and the consignment sale. March was again, teaching another one week class, faculty meetings for me, a lot of over-time for Dad and the March garage sale with a little travel preparation sprinkled in. Then Monday, April 4th, we received approval to travel! This past week has meant airfare decisions/purchases, shopping for clothes for Rachel and some packing. Of course, the semester is not over for me, yet. So, I've been grading papers, reading discussion board posts as well as keeping up the house--make that catching up on the housework from a whirlwind few weeks!

So, at this point, I'm leaving for China on April 21st and getting Rachel on Easter Sunday! What a sweet surprise. Ian was born was Easter Sunday and Rachel joins our family on Easter Sunday! It fills my heart with joy. I'll come home May 5th. I don't know any additional details, but Dad will home until May 23rd. I know we will enjoy having him home those weeks! And I plan on blogging while traveling...I'm hoping to find time! :-)

Changes are in the air...

Do you like the new changes to the website? I kind of do...now, if only there was the time to put more information on it! Well, maybe in a few months.

On the one hand, I hope time goes so fast--until we bring Megan home. On the other hand, I have so much do for school (teacher & student) I really need for time to not go so fast.

Spring is in the air, we've had weather in the 70s and 80s and I am liking it (but my allergies aren't!). To be able to go outside and enjoy the sunshine, warm breeze, flowering trees and fresh air...aaahhh...I love Spring! Just think, next Spring I'll be taking Megan on walks in the stroller...Could I go for that? hhhhmmm