Behind closed doors

So, August school is relaxed with less kids and much more informal. Cubbies are in a different place, and today...the door to the nap room was open. Ellie was excited to show me her "resting area".






We then proceeded to the classroom where she set out mats and started on a large floor puzzle. Her friend arrived shortly after she started and helped Ellie. Very collaborative.

"do you have the pretty dress piece Lauren"

"I need boy piece"

"here, same same colors...it fits"

"we helped"

It was cute, they weren't very descriptive in their requests for pieces with specific colors, outfits, patterns, or anything else...but slowly they got the job done.


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August school

Well summer school is officially over and now it is August school. That means more relaxed, less kids, and Ellie favorite teacher is back from vacation. There will only be 6 kids so Ellie will have lots of focused attention.



Of course, she went straight for her favorite magnetic dolls...after showing Ms. Hyde her new dress.

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Pajama Day!!

Again...special Friday. Pajama day and breakfast for lunch day (I didn't make a lunch, it's provided by school). It's also water play day, although Ellie wouldn't put her swim suit on at home. She also decided that since she was wearing her Cinderella pajamas, she should take her princess crown.


Once at school, Ellie went straight for the big floor puzzles. She picked a tough one...circular shape with children of the world. Soon after we started, her friend Teo got to school and helped out.









On the way to school we had an interesting conversation.

"mommy, I want to get married. I want a pretty dress, and flowers. But I don't want to marry a boy. I don't like boys. Can I marry a girl?"

"sure. The important thing is finding someone you love. But you can't get married till you are 18...and that's a long way away."

"yeah, that's old. I'll have a lot of birthdays by then."

"yep, you know how has had a lot of birthdays and has another one coming up? Grandma Van."

"she's going to have a lot of candles on her cake. Will she have princess candles, Mommy?"

There you go, everything comes back to princesses and birthdays.


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We have hands!

Okay, no photo of Ellie today. I forgot my camera in the car. But I will share some of her latest art, where you can see her understanding on anatomy is developing, mostly in the area of giving her people fingers (we may be cartoon characters with three fingers, but at least there are fingers.

These are two drawings of girls she did at school. The eyes are a little creepy, and don't leave room for mouths, but there are hands. And they are a little more proportional than she had been doing.

This next work of art involves two mediums, stickers and crayons and is a very interesting scene.

Ellie actually visualized what she wanted this scene to look like. For sleeping in her bed she had earned a sheet of "magic garden" stickers. She knew she wanted to use a unicorn, but unicorns need to stand on the ground. So she started by drawing grass. Then of course you need a sky! Then she put the unicorn on the page. She then added the ladybug, which she circled because it was digging. Then next came the two tulips...growing from the ground. She then decided that bees should be in the scene, and added one at the flower and the other riding the unicorn. Its a "magic garden" remember? Then, she wanted to add people. She she first drew Rapunzel (with hands) and put flowers in her hand, because she was going to get married. Then she started to draw Flynn Rider (Ralunzel's love interest from the movie Tangled), but she got distracted and didn't finish that drawing. And of course its plausible that they would be getting married floating through the air, did you not understand this is a "magic garden"? And of couse, Ellie signed her drawing with an "E".

She was very proud of this piece of artwork, as were we. So its on our refrigerator.

Sorry for the delay...

Sorry for my tardiness in posting today. It has been crazy, as I explained to Ellie, "someone didn't listen to words and broke a building and I have to fix it". Yeah, been in high stress as a contractor cut through a suspended slab totally compromising the structure...fun!!

This morning Ellie wanted to show me the big puzzles. But first you have to lay out a mat.









This was a HUGE puzzle that had pictures and numbers, your typical preschool counting thingie. She put it together herself, matching colors, finding edge pieces, etc.














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Guess Who's Back...

...Back in Town.

Well.. I didn't leave town, but this is my first Ellie365 morning entry in quite some time. Since I'm working Saturday I got Tuesday off and volunteered to take Ellie to school.



We had a good morning at home playing with some princesses.. and then at school Ellie wanted to show me the magnet dress-up dolls she loves. (Big surprise, right?)


After that Ellie showed off how good she is at doing puzzles. Even her friend Teo said "Ellie does puzzles a lot. She's fast."












Off to get Ann's car an oil change. It's strange having to actually put a key into an ignition to start a car.

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Tangles!!

Ellie stayed in her own bed until I woke her up at 7:00am this morning. Last night was also relatively peaceful during bedtime. So, she earned back her coveted Rapunzel doll (which had been taken away due to several rough bedtimes).

However, Rapunzel had tangles.

This caused drama. Nobody could do her hair right. There were tears.

At school, Ellie was still so concerned about the tangles she didn't want anything else. The fact that her hair had tangles was a major disaster. And one that was made worse when I had to leave for work and couldn't help.



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Game Day

Like I mentioned before, Friday's are special at school during the summer. Today is game day and a water play day. All the kids were asked to bring their favorite game to share with friends (and wear a bathing suit under their clothes for water play.

Ellie took her my little pony memory game. It's the only game we have...everything else is on the big truck. Unfortunately when she was getting her card game, she spilled them all in the lobby...



And so we picked them up.






Once in the classroom, she set up all the cards to play with her teacher until her other friends arrived.



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Early Morning

So early that Ellie was ultra groggy and I forgot to grab her lunchbox on the counter! (nick got it to her before lunchtime so she did eat).



That's Ellie laughing at me because I forgot her lunch.

Silly mommy.

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Hanging Out

Just wanted to share a quick snapshot of Ellie's and my evening at the playground nearby.



She can grab the bar, flip her feet up, and get them back down without falling.. no problem.

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"What's the number mommy?"

Again, Ellie tried really hard to unlock the gate at school. This gate is unique that you need a code to get in and out (stopping kids from running away).

Ellie asked me for the combination, "what's the number mommy?". Like I'm going to tell her!

She tried a multitude of combinations before giving up and letting me open the gate.

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New phone = better photos

Well, better quality photos at least...





Ellie tried to get into the gate at school, but she doesn't know the code.


But she did open the door for me.






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Back to school

Well, Ellie didn't settle into our regular nighttime routine yesterday, but she did settle right back into our regular morning routine. She stayed in bed all night.

She got herself dressed and helped herself to some squish yogurt breakfast.

At school she showed me some coloring with markers she had done.



And if course, as if she never left, she went straight for thr magnetic dress-up dolls.






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Week at Grandma and Grandpa's House in SB

Ellie spent the week up in Santa Barbara with Grandma Pam and Grandpa Mike (until he left for Comic-Con). Mommy went to Boston for work and to pack/move everything out of the house. Nick spent the last part of the week in San Diego at Comic-Con  with my dad. Hence, Ellie got some quality time up in SB with her grandparents and great-grandparents. Grandma Pam was generous with the snapshots from her cell phone and sent us something everyday. Thus, I will post them here.

Apparently Ellie did everything from chores to riding her scooter at my old elementary school. She even picked her own strawberries to put in her cereal one morning. She had a tea party with Great-Grandma Dolly and painted with Great-Grandma Van (who is quite the artist herself). There was a lot of time with stickers. And when Grandma tried to take Ellie to three (3!) parties in one day, she got plum-tuckered out and fell asleep in the car. There were new toys such as her new favorite, magnetic dress up dolls like she has at school. My mom's report was that Ellie did really well and was a lot of fun.