Sunday, October 21, 2012

No Excuses

Well, I guess I DO have a list of excuses for not updating this thing. It was a long, lazy summer for us. Then school started and we had to hit the ground running. It's been crazy, crazy, crazy since school started at the beginning of September.

Aftan is in the first grade now. She absolutely is totally thriving and she loves her classmates and her teacher. In previous years, she would not tell me much about her day. Now, she tells me all about it in great detail. She knows how many lessons she worked on. She knows exactly which ones they were. She relays to me what they sang in music class and what they learned in Spanish class. She started out the year kind of rough. She was not used to being the "low man on the totem pole" so to speak. She was never the youngest in her class. But, this year she is in the 1st grade in a mixed 1st-3rd grade classroom. At first, she found it hard making friends b/c some of the kids in that class are in 2nd and 3rd grade and have been together since they were toddlers in preschool. But, it only took a week or two for her to start making friends and gaining some confidence. She has made a friend out of one of the 3rd grade girls. Aftan brings a little notebook to school every day and her and her friend take turns writing out a little story. Which brings me to another thing. At the beginning of the year, Aftan had no interest in reading on her own. She "could", but she wouldn't. She was having a confidence issue b/c the older kids could obviously read better than she could and she doesn't like to do things if they are not "perfect." I don't know what happened, though. She has taken off. She loves to read now. In fact, she volunteered to read a book to her classmates at the end of the day one day. She is doing great in school!

She has also started swim team at our local Y. This is the child that was doggy paddling at the beginning of the year when she started in swim lessons. She just swam in her first meet yesterday. She swam 5 events which included freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and two relays. It was a really long day for her as she swam in the very first event and then one of the very last events. She was there from 12:30pm - 6:00pm and then stayed at the Y after that until 9:30pm for Parent's Night Out. But, she asked me to sign her up for the next swim meet next month.

Here she is at swim team. The first pic is of her at practice and the others are at the meet yesterday:


 Waiting in the ready room

 Breaststroke

 After the meet


Reagan is almost 4 now. Can you believe it? I sure can't. She also is loving school and is doing great at it. She is working very hard on her handwriting and it is getting really good! She can write her name and Aftan's and also "Mom" and "Dad". She can copy any word. She is also starting to read! It's crazy. She is definitely at the point where she can tell beginning letters, but she is also starting to be able to read short words like "cat", "dog", "in", "stop" or any word that is easy to read out phonetically. She is a smart little cookie. She is also in swim lessons. She moved up to the third level of ten, which is great for her age! She is able to do back float for a few seconds and can tread water. She is still working on getting her arms out of the water for freestyle, but she will get there. 

Here are a couple recent pics of Reagan :)


 At swim lessons


 Playing outside


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