Club House Camp Out

Sofia has been wanting to camp out in the back yard for a long time and since we didn't go anywhere on vacation this year, we obliged her with some camping activities. We made smores on the BBQ, we read stories under the pergola at sunset and then Sofia rolled out the wagon with all the supplies to the play set fort. She and Ray slept in sleeping bags. Sofia reportedly jabbered on about her world views for quite a while and then fell silent, fast asleep.

(Marcelo wanted to join in the fun but decided the better of it after testing out the fort for a few minutes. He said he didn't like the shadows and that he wanted to sleep in his own bed).

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Unfortunately all my pictures are blurry and they look like they're on fire as it's always an afterthought and I couldn't find the attachment for the tripod. So I tried to get some handheld snapshots with no flash right after sunset. Although, the sky seems somewhat light, it was much darker than it appears but a beautiful sky.

Day Camp 2: Cooking up some fun

Sofia's second camp was quite near the drop off, so I walked her in.

After the necessarily grabbing on to my shirt and tugging, and acting shy, she went in and immediately started writing her name and decorating her apron.  I only lingered for about 30 minutes this time.  Long enough to walk around the surrounding shops and have Marcelo take every item down from the shelves.

I wasn't sure if she would like this one.  I only caught one picture spying on her as they were about to get started.  I don't recall exactly now, but I remember being delighted to see she was either picking her nose or pulling out a wedgie.  I hoped this wasn't after the hand washing.

When she came home, she had had a great time.  She got a mug and some recipes.  I didn't get a straight answer on what exactly they made, but it appeared to involve ice cream and cookies and a lot of sugar, I think.

Day Camp 1: Horsing Around

Sofia has been going to the preschool age Day camps at Thanksgiving Point this summer. She really enjoys going (despite some behaviour that might make you think otherwise) and anticipates each one with much enthusiasm.

They are three hours long and highly unorganized, but she hasn't been kidnapped yet and there's only one more left so I think we're almost in the clear.

For the first one, Horsing Around, I stayed for about the first two hours keeping surveillance. I only thought she'd been lost for about 45 minutes. I wasn't sure if she would have fun on her own and I wanted to make sure I hadn't traumatized her when I spent fifteen minutes chewing out the camp lady for:
1) not being clear about the meeting place,
2) not having a sign of any kind at the actual meeting place,
3) not identifying themselves as the camp people at the meeting place (not even by a t-shirt or name plate,
4) not greeting the parents walking around in circles asking strangers where the camp was while they sat on a table waiting to be approached
5) not having any way to identify my child as being with the camp except for a white sticker with a name which they happened not to have for Sofia
6) not taking the initiative to make her a label out of something after discovering they didn't have hers
7) having other children watching the preschoolers
8) having the preschool-aged kids walk down the middle of the street to the camp location,
etc.
etc.
etc.

After telling her not to go with strangers except for the strangers she'd just met, sort of, none of them told us their NAMES! ... and giving her the rundown on how not to be kidnapped I told her I would come back to check on her and to have fun. She got to do a coloring activity, have some snacks, meet lots of horses and ponys. She got to brush them and of course ride the pony. She loved it.

Then I sent Ray to pick her up, and they gave her to HIM!

Learning to ride a bike - Plan B

Instead of buying a really expensive bike with no pedals, we (my brain and Ray's arms) took the pedals and crank off the bike so Sofia could learn to push and balance herself without worrying about the whole pedalling thing. Who needs to pedal anyway.

Success.

The obvious sign and reward of success is when one can hear birds chirping and singing happy songs instead of the fingernail-scratch-upon-the-chalkboard effect that permeates my nervous system when I hear Sofia whining.

"I'LL BE BACK"

foreshadowing shot

She had to throw in a good, calculated, my-psyche-made-me-do-it fall for good measure

Posing for Parenting magazine, the sweet daughter and perfect dad

Child labor and how to alienate neighbors...again

In the heat of the midday sun, I decided, for fear of being reported by the neighbor's as an abandoned house, to trim the hedge and bushes in our front yard. That really was as far as I was planning on taking it. No way was I even going to attempt the futile war with the morning glory, nor did I much intend to pick up the hedge debris after noticing that my head looked like a giant tomato and might explode at any moment.

Sofia was out with me for lack of anything better to do. And then ...

Sometimes, rarely, and ephemerally, Sofia does something. Something which requires me to frantically sprint up a flight of stairs in .625 seconds to get my camera in order to capture the "something". Because it is so special, that I may never see it again. I must catalog these events in my life so I can have a way to bring myself back from the brink when I often find myself at the brink.

-o-o-o-o-o
So, I notice the neighbors don't talk to us much lately. I'm sure it's for more than one reason but I've noticed a definite correlation between this shirt and their indifference. I really need to screen Sofia's fashion choices more closely I guess. Even for yard work.

Preschool Graduation

... well, not really. There is no preschool graduation at Challenger. There's "Circus Day" because, apparently, unbeknowst to us, we have been paying for private clown school. Sofia, of course, graduated at the top of the class.

So, while I was putting Sofia's clown makeup on, to make it easier for me to apply the lines and color, I told her not to smile or make silly faces. Of course, she looked at me like I was crazy. "Hello! I'm a clown", is probably what she was thinking. Also, I get the "you are crazy" look a lot. In general. And not just from her. Anyway, to help her understand my insane suggestion, I explained that some clowns are actually not happy at all. They are sad. And that is why they must paint a smile on their face.

Big mistake.

For the duration of the time at school, Sofia was a sad clown.

 the sad parade

Ok, she managed to sneek a  cheeky smile at me once during the embarrasing teacher parts of the Circus

Later, she went back to some serious clown calculations in the playground

Last Day of Preschool

"Sofia, c'mon. Do you think you can smile or something?"

"... can you look at me and smile?"

"... not like that!"

I guess you get what you ask for.

After two years of preschool -yes, that's right, two years: 3-year-old preschool and 4-year old preschool, Sofia is finally done. She got to celebrate with Circus Day at school. The main focus at Challenger is reading and I'm happy to see that goal accomplished. Now that the hard work has been done, she's well on her way.

After not making it in to the charter school by our house, we briefly considered continuing on at Challenger but we settled for the regular public elementary school. I'm still considering "other" options. We'll probably make our final decision when the school year starts. In the meantime, we are keeping busy with reading practice and seeing if we can manage to learn how to write -not like a clown. We also have plenty of activities laid out for the summer at Thanksgiving Point Museum of Ancient Life, the Children's Garden, Farm Country, the Discovery Gateway Children's Museum and the local Lehi Library. This should really help me sharpen my chauffeuring skills.

Learning to ride a bike

For the past year or so, Sofia has been riding a little 12" yard sale bike I got for $10. We repainted it, put new handle grips on it and, of course, a basket. It has training wheels. She rides it about, umh... maybe a hundred miles an hour on our daily neighborhood walks. Sometimes she does tricks like sticking her legs out in the air, putting her toes on top of the handle bars, you know, the standard stuff. Sometimes, she pedals so fast the bike can't keep up with her and the pedals just spin down. Sometimes, she pedals so fast, the bike starts oscillating side to side until she hits down hard enough on one of the training wheels which causes her to shoot off in the opposite direction. Luckily, she's become quite adept at falling into the grass.

On one of our last walks she seemed awfully sluggish. We kept prodding her to hurry it up. "Sofia, c'mon!" She complained that the wind was just too thick for her to ride through. She was starting to get whiny. Ray, naturally was starting to accuse her of deliberately riding slow and whining as part of her and the family's master plan to aggravate him at all costs. So, I look back to see if by chance there might be a legitimate "thick wind"-type explanation for this. Sure enough, the starter bike finally gave out, she wore a hole clear through the rubber in the tire.

So, I wasted a bunch of time on the internet and online classifieds. Ray and I finally compromised on a used, over-priced, boy's MBX-style 16" bike that was REALLY far away by Toole (yes, I know, nobody even knows where that is, really). I tell ya. I'm not a fan of compromise. Comprise = mediocrity. Anyway, it's fine. There are two more boys that will get the used, over-priced, hand-me-down bike in the next few years anyway. And then I will get her my dreamy bike -a proper girls' beach cruiser in some light blue color with flowers, a big old seat and a nice basket.

-o-o-o-o-o-

For some reason, I thought I needed to capture her very first bike ride try on video so I have no pictures. (And seeing as technology is just passing me by, I've yet to make the connection between video in the camera to video on the computer to video on the internet. Sad. Just really sad). She did quite well. We had her go back and forth on the cement patio in the backyard. I would give her a tiny push encouraging her to go fast as I thought that would make it easier to balance. She would pedal over to Ray or veer off onto the grass where she would keep pedaling and turning or where she would fall and try to dive away from the bike resulting in an array of colorful bruises up and down her shins for the next week. She was excited to try it but weary of falling.

I tried to explain that the diving away from the bike technique really was not a good idea. We practiced wobbling from side to side and planting her foot down to catch herself. She even peddled as fast as she could toward Ray/the sandbox one time which looked like it was going to end badly and somehow managed to slam on the pedal breaks, doing a bit of a side swipe. She planted her foot down and stopped the bike about five centimeters from Ray’s crotch.  I was sure then, she would be a pro. The second time on the bike proved otherwise.

-o-o-o-o-o-

A couple of days later I told her that because she had done so well, we should go to a bigger area to practice, the church. I told her she could push-ride her bike all the way there to practice her balance and pedal at the church. Somehow, the thought of another practice session sent her into some kind of panic attack. She wanted to ride the bike so badly and at the same time she was deathly afraid of falling. She hadn’t exhibited the deathly afraid feelings on the first attempt despite of falling over a few times.

Needless to say, it took about 15-20 minutes to sort of convince her to go although I pretty much told her after the first 7 minutes that it was entirely up to her and if she didn’t want to practice we could just go on a neighborhood walk instead. This didn’t help. At all.

She decided to go. There was much whining over riding the bike and pushing it along with her feet. There was much whining when we arrived. And there was much whining on the way back. It took a good six months from my life span. The fear was much to gripping and she simply didn’t do too well. Her mind was just willing her to fall even if her body was capable of riding the bike.

All geared up and donning the appropriate shirt and jeans for road rash.

The level of concentration is quite palpable... especially because she appears to be looking only with her "mind's eye" and not her actual retinas.

Hmm, this shirt could be one of the reasons she's not invited to play with the neighbor kids. Thanks Kiri.
I forgot we were on church grounds.
Luckily no one saw us.
I don't think we were reported.

After this, there was no more practice for a week and a half or so. Finally, I convinced Ray to take the pedals and crank off the bike. This took about 9 months from my life span. And we moved on to Plan B.

Cute butt

Reading -- check!

I've been meaning to post about Sofia learning to read in preschool for about a year but somehow (the same somehow responsible for a lot of things), I never got it done. She started reading little books at the end of last school year.

At first, it seemed to take a superhuman effort for her to muster the mental and physical concentration necessary to sit still and sound out each letter, then run the sounds together, and finally read a two- three- or four- letter word. It was almost painful to experience. I wondered how she would ever get passed this point. What if she had ADHD or something. Simultaneously, I discovered that even though I may be able to reach myself how to do a lot of things in life from sewing to computer programming, teaching a preschooler to read was like trying to teach a dog to talk. This is perhaps the first thing I've tried to do that I am simply horrible at. There went my brief fantastical thoughts of homeschooling.

Now, Sofia brings home a new book every week, reads it to us (or the dogs) about five times and takes it back to school at which point she receives a magnet (or mag-o-net as Marcelo would say) to place on her progress sheet. She is doing very well. I have no idea how she can do it. I guess that's why we pay the Challenger people to teach her. And, I am so proud of her. Now if they could just teach her how not to knock people over or break their noses when hugging them, I would really appreciate it.

Since she didn't make the lottery for the charter school by our house, I've registered her for Kindergarten at the public school. I hope she will do as well there as she has at Challenger.