Trampoline Dream

"Papa this is my dream come true"- is what she said to Dave when she got to bounce on it for the first time last weekend.  

The Olympics weren't that exciting to P. The one event to capture her attention was the trampoline. After watching the women's event she said "I'd like to have a play date at their house.  Can you call them up and see if they have kids?"  After that, it seemed every kid's house we went to had a trampoline. So, of course she was determined to have a trampoline of her own.  We kept pushing it off because it was so hot. The last thing I wanted to do was set this thing up and then tell her she couldn't jump on it because it was 107 degrees outside. That would have been torture.  So we waited until it started to cool off and finally ordered it.  We pushed it off so much that one day she said "I know I'm getting a trampoline. You don't have to tell me anymore. The question is when?  When will I get my trampoline?"

Thanks to one of Dave's buddies it was put together last weekend. She has had a blast.  Today I jumped for the first time and realized why she's so tired after jumping. It's kind of exhausting after a while. It'll be perfect for the winter months when it's too cold to be in the pool.  

A Rug, Some Numbers and Some Learning

I recently discovered that Annika is a kinesthetic learner. I always thought she was a visual learner but it turns out she is more of a  kinesthetic and an audio learner.  Luckily, not too long ago we did a hopscotch runner out of Flor tiles. I chose to do the numbers in felt instead of painting them on.  I had a feeling that it would be helpful for the kids to learn numbers if they actually got to hold them, feel them, trace them and jump on them!

Thank God I went with that choice because it has been a lot of fun playing with the numbers and hopscotch. I'm not having to drill her or do a workbook of any kind. All we do is play and she is pretty quickly learning the numbers by sight. She can count and gets simple adding but she hasn't quite gotten that this: 4 is a four.

Hopscotch isn't as useful right now. Instead what we do is we take turns calling out a number and the other person has to jump on it.  When I call them out I only call what she knows and gradually add one more when I think she's gotten the groove of the first ones. So I'll call out 1-2-2-3-4-1-3 and she is jumping on each square. Then I add 5. So I go 5-3-1-5 etc. This suits her learning style perfectly.  I could not have worked out much better than this!

Sunday

Today was one of those rare days when it's just P and me and we have no plans. The day evolved but we had a couple of breakthroughs.  First, P is the one who directed what we did and second, we actually cleaned up as we went along!  It usually takes a lot for her to clean up but today she went along with it without a fight or delay.

P pulled out the games and puzzles out of her game drawer after breakfast. First time she's shown an interest. First we played the fishing game. 

You have to collect either the same color or number on the fish until you fill your boat up with 4.  You fish and if you catch the wrong fish you put it back.  It never mattered where I put my bad fish back, or if P saw it. This time she saw I picked up one of her orange fish and saw where I put it back. When it was her turn she went and grabbed it! Too smart!

Next we put a puzzle together. Amazed she seems to figure out the harder pieces first.  I need to stop telling her how I would go about putting it together and let her do her thing. 

Then, we played with her stacking alphabet boxes.  It's been at least a year since she pulled that out! After stacking it I asked her to find certain letters.  She got some but didn't get others. Then, it surprised me to see her looking at the letters on the boxes and drawing them on paper!  Woohoo! She's getting it and she's showing an interest. 

We finally started cleaning up.  She wanted to paint or stamp as I had first suggested. I asked her if we could clean up some mess before starting an art project. We cleaned, she sort of played and cleaned. I did some stuff on the computer.  We cleaned, we played, on got on the computer again. Finally outside. She played, while I cleaned the back yard a bit. Finally we painted. 

I had some lanterns left over from her last birthday.  We decided we could paint them orange and turn them into jack-o-lanterns for Halloween.  

When we finished painting we cleaned it all up! Again, a first! Then we made lunch, salad and quesadilla for me. For her it was salad, quesadilla, apple sauce, probiotic drink and turkey and cheese!  Growth spur? Then she took a nap after lunch.

It's almost 5pm. She's still napping. Neither one of us has gotten out of our pjs. it's been a remarkable day.  I pray we will have days like this till the day she leaves for college.  I really really love my time with P!  I remember it being so hard when she was a baby and then a walking, curious toddler.  The dynamic of being around her has changed. I have a buddy.