Notes on Reed from 2007

January 2007

• 1/10/07 – Reed asked me to call Kiki and Poppy to see if he could ride in their car to their house..."can you call and see if that's a deal?"
• 1/23/07 – For my birthday, I told Reed all I wanted was for him to write his name for me. He is very much interested in reading (and in fact really can read many words), but not at all interested in writing. I also had a night meeting on my birthday (when I mentioned this to Reed, he said "Well that's not fair!"). Tod brought the kids up to my office with cupcakes and cards - Reed was SO proud of himself for writing his name on my card - and it really was the greatest birthday present, I'm so proud!

February 2007

• 2/25/07 – Reed can read several of his books now, and is also picking up words all over the place. For instance, he was looking through a bird guide book and said "Does that say 'rock pigeon'?" and it did!

March 2007

• 3/4/07 – We went to the National Zoo in DC yesterday and Reed wanted to bring "his" camera and take pictures for a zoo book. "His" camera is our old digital camera that we bought just after he was born – we've go a newer one now. He did a great job with his pictures. Tod told Reed he was a good photographer and he said "Just like my momma" :)
• 3/29/07 – You are really reading now!!! You can read a lot of your books, usually stopping to ask for help on a few words. It's amazing. You are really fascinated with animals and learning things about them. We worked very hard on your zoo book for our trip earlier this month, and I added facts about where each animal lives, what they eat and other little interesting facts. You want to learn more about dinosaurs too. Just a little sponge! You still have a hard time transitioning from one thing to another, like from playing at home to going out...but once we actually convince you to leave, you're happy wherever you are.

May 2007

• 5/2/07 – you still say "coffeecat" instead of copycat...possibly because we haven't corrected you much on it since we think it's cute.
• 5/29/07 – You occasionally have what we call "night terrors" though I think that term isn't totally correct. During the night you start screaming or crying, a lot of times just yelling "no" over and over. Even though you're usually sitting up and thrashing around, you're not actually awake. Nothing we can do or say comforts you, we just have to let you go through it and then you go back to sleep. This usually happens when you're overly tired and you don't remember it after it's happened.

June 2007

• 6/5/07 – I always buy clothes for you at the end of each season for the following year. Last summer I bought lots of size 4T shorts....but they all just fall right off you! I had to dig out the size 3T from last summer, which still fit you just fine - you're living up to that "reed" name. You are reading more than I can even believe.
• 6/8/07 – In the paper today there was a picture of two street signs – the top one said "no pets allowed" and the lower sign said "pets must be on leash" - you were reading it over my shoulder and you said "but mommy, it says no pets"...woah, first, you read it on your own and second, you totally got that the signs were contradictory. Wow.
• 6/13/07 – The last time you spent the night at Kiki & Poppy's, you left some clothes there because you love to put them down their laundry chute. So Kiki washed them and brought them back. When you put the shirt on, you said "I think this shirt used to belong to Poppy" and I asked why...you said "It smells like Poppy". What a sniffer. Of course, you do once told us "I smell water boiling" too. :)
• 6/20/07 – You have reached the joke-telling phase of pre-school life. You try to remember and tell "real" jokes, and a lot of times you make up your own non-sensical jokes. Totally made up jokes that don't make any sense at all...but you crack yourself up!
• 6/22/07 – Your head teacher at pre-school really thinks you are "gifted". You're doing math (adding, some subtracting) and can read so much. You are constantly surprising and amazing us.
• 6/30/07 – You caught fireflies for the first time tonight!

July 2007

• 7/19/07 – Reed and I were making muffins. He took one quick look at the mini muffin pan which had 12 spots and said we can each have three.

August 2007

• 8/5/07 – We were at the pool and Reed said "Why isn't anybody swimming in the laptop lanes?" -- he'd seen the sign for "lap swim only"
• 8/26/07 – Reed said he wanted to live near us when he grows up, then he said he wanted to marry someone that we didn't know, so that when we saw him, we'd talk to him and not her. He also asked if we would come to his wedding, and if other family members would come. Sometimes I worry about how much you worry about, little Reed.

September 2007

• 9/1/07 – Based on your teacher's recommendation and our own thinking that you're "smarter than the average bear", we took you for an IQ test. A psychologist administered the Stanford-Binet test and you scored 134, which puts you in the 99th percentile. We did this testing so that we'd be better prepared in making schooling decisions for you, and so we could share the information on your skills, abilities and learning styles with your teachers as you enter school. You loved doing the testing and were quite disappointed that when we went back for the second visit where we got the results that you weren't able to do any more tests. What we'd told you about it is that we were talking with someone so that we could help you be ready for school.

November 2007

• Random recent thoughts on both kids….the kids keep wandering into our room most nights. We try to make ourselves return you to your beds, but it doesn't always happen, which is unfortunate for me because I don't usually get restful sleep when you're there (too much wiggling around). Though it is really cozy having all four of us there, especially on a weekend morning. I know it won't be long before you'll be too big for all that. Amy usually lumbers down the hall with her little pillow and her blanket in her hand, happy to climb up in bed with us. Amy seems eager to sleep at both nap and bedtime, while for Reed it still seems to be a necessary evil. I think he would stay up all night if his body would let him, just reading books and doing puzzles and BrainQuest games. Amy wakes up generally very refreshed and happy. Reed continues to have night terrors when he's overtired - it's really hard because he just cries out, no words other than sometimes "no no no". He's still asleep and even having us come to his room doesn't help – he doesn't know we're there. It usually passes after a few minutes. We hadn't mentioned this to Mom and Jim before, and a couple of months ago Reed was having a sleepover and had an episode – they were scared and didn't know what to do but quickly figured out he was still asleep and they just needed to make sure he stayed safe. I hope this phase passes pretty soon because it leads to an un-restful night for all of us (well, Amy snoozes right through it). Yesterday Reed asked when he was going back to "learn more for kindergarten" – when we did the IQ testing with the psychologist, we told him it was to help us get him ready for kindergarten, so that's what he thinks it was. He really enjoyed all the different tests. Reed is doing really great in his class at school - they have switched to mixed age groups, which means there are kids that are close to his age all the way down to kids who are around 3 years old. He helps the other kids, just like he can really help Amy by explaining things to her so she can understand. Reed is reading so incredibly well and continues to be very interested in learning new things. He also is big on knock-knock and other jokes, which Amy tries to copy. We've heard "Why'd the chicken cross the road?" about a thousand times lately. We also hear non-sensical jokes that Reed makes up. One day in the car he said "Why does red mean go and green mean stop?" purposely mixing them up. I asked why and he said "Because there's no God". Tod and I didn't quite know how to respond but Reed quickly said "Why aren't you laughing?"....well I still don't know what do think about that one!
• 11/12/07 – We are in Florida celebrating your 5th birthday! Kiki and Poppy take each grandchild to Disney when they turn 5. We went to Sea World yesterday, which was so cool. When you woke up this morning, you opened a couple of gifts in our hotel room (the Nick Jr. Hotel) and we headed out for the Magic Kingdom. What a day! You and Amy got lots of autographs from the characters, rode some rides, watched the parade, and had a ton of fun. You and Amy weren't so crazy about the fireworks to end the night, but all in all a fantastic time.
• 11/9/07 – Today Reed said "I'm not going to talk a lot when I get back to school because I'm going to be thinking about Daytona and Disney!"

December 2007

• 12/7/07 – Lately you have been talking about adding letters...it took me a few minutes to figure out what you were doing. You're adding up the letters' placement order in the alphabet - like you told me B + H = J (2nd letter of alphabet + 8th letter of alphabet = 10th letter of alphabet).
• 12/10/07 – Today cousin Cristie sent some new photos of baby Mitchell. Before Mitchell was born, we'd sent them a bunch of your baby clothes for him to wear. Included in the photos Cristie sent were some of Mitchell in one of your winter hats, and some of of him in a pair of your airplane pajamas...I teared up seeing them. It seems like just yesterday you were that baby and now you're this grown up, smart boy who's learning and doing so much every day. I don't know where the time has gone but I wish I could get some of it back.
• 12/11/07 – I think 5 is a hard age for you - you are feeling like you're a big kid, but you're not really - you're stuck in the middle of the "babies" like Amy and the "big kids" like Aly. I guess this is just one of the many phases of wanting to be more grown up than you are, which will go on all the way until you actually are grown up.

This time a note from Dad

Reed (5 1/2 yrs) called some of his hot wheels race cars "jickpenny." For several days I couldn't understand what he was saying. We went to the mall where Reed said "Dad, Look! There's jickpenny!" He pointed to JCPenny. But that still didn't make sense because none of his race cars had JCPenny logo's on them. Finally at home he showed me the race cars with pictures of "Richard Petty" on the back. He had confused Richard Petty with jickpenny. What fun.

Early summer update

Amy can now write many of her letters and is so eager and proud to try. She's been able to write her name for several months now and lately is even asking to write peoples' names on their cards when she's signing them. She can write Reed's name really well too. Amy is also asking us how to spell words sometimes too. Today was the first time I've heard her say "but I don't know how to read!"....which was something Reed first said when he was probably a little bit older than Amy is now.

Amy has been taking ballet class this spring and the classes just wrapped up last weekend. It was held at the Cub Run Recreation Center and started out with about 10 girls in it, all 3-4 years old. The first class, Amy walked right in the class with no problem, and watched everything the teacher Miss Debbie did, doing her best to imitate her. It was terrific! Week 2....not so good. Some of the other girls were scared to go in - this is kind of a unique setup because there's a window you can watch through, but parents are not allowed in the class at all. Some of the girls were afraid and resisted going in.....and I swear it never would have occurred to Amy on her own to be afraid to go in the class, but she sure did pick right up on it. A couple of the weeks she didn't go in the class at all, others she went in only for brief times. It was so crazy, because once she was in, she LOVED it! She took it so very seriously and never took her eyes off the teacher, doing her very best to do everything she was supposed to. She wrapped up the last two weeks going right in the class with no fuss and she did just great. She was thrilled to get two stamps on her arm the first to last class, so proud of herself.

We're thinking we may sign her up for another class a little later in the year, when she'll be a little more mature and hopefully there'd be a little less of the drama.

I'm just remembering now that when we told Amy she was going to take ballet, her biggest concern was "will there be a stage???" and hoping she would get to go out on stage first. So we had to explain there wouldn't be a stage but it'd still be a lot of fun. We're very proud of how well she did in the class.

We signed Reed up for a class called "Little Labcoats" at the same time as Amy's class. We were excited about it and thought it'd be great for him....but it didn't quite live up to expectations. The class was for 4-5 year olds and I think he'd really be more appropriate for a class designed for kids that are 6-8 or so. But he still enjoyed it for the most part. A strange coincidence, there was a boy in his class named Sam who was also in his "Farm School" class at Frying Pan Park that we had him in around the time Amy was born. That family also had a baby girl just a week or two before us. Small world!

Amy's self-soothing

For a while now, when Amy's tired she has found a way to comfort herself....it's a little odd, but it makes her happy. She will take our thumb and click her own finger nails under our thumb nail....she only does it when she's tired. It's her little quirk, not too much different from what Reed used to do when he was a baby....when you were holding him, he'd reach up and try to put his hand in your mouth. I guess every kid has their little things that make them feel better!

Notes on 2006 Amy

January 2006

• 1/9/06 – Amy says "hi" and "uh-oh"
• 1/23/06 – Amy crawls!
• 1/24/06 – First tooth pokes through - bottom middle right

February 2006

• 2/6/06 – Second tooth - bottom lower left
• 2/21/06 – Signs "more"

March 2006

• 3/5/06 – Stands on her own!
• 3/7/06 – Takes a few steps!
• 3/12/06 – Dances!
• 3/18/06 – Makes rocking motion and tries to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" - also tries to do "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and claps afterward

April 2006

• 4/10/06 – Walks all on her own
• 4/16/06 – Easter morning, Amy stood up in her crib pointing to her Easter basket, she was so excited to see she got bubbles
• 4/17/06 – Third tooth - top middle right
• 4/21/06 – Fourth tooth - top middle left

May 2006

• 5/19/06 – Amy wants to carry her own plate to the sink
• Sometime this month Amy decided she looooves her jacket and hat
• 5/29/06 – When we got to the page in her book where it says "elephants are big, elephants are heavy, stomp stomp" she stomped her foot and smiled

June 2006

• 6/4/06 – Amy's words right now are hi, bye-bye, up (means both up and down), momma, dadda, more, dog, ball and balloon.
• 6/8/06 – Amy now says milk with the 'k', also says Elmo
• 6/26/06 – Amy says rock, moo, baa; also copies Reed

July 2006

• 7/17/06 – Amy can make lots of animal sounds (like cow, sheep, cat, dog) and is saying more words all the time

August 2006

• 8/1/06 – Amy has words for CJ and all done. She walked around yesterday saying 'happy'. Today in the car Reed asked her who was singing and she correctly answered Elmo. Amy points at herself and says 'Amy'. She also says baby, Emma, mine, eyes, milk, night-night. She still loves brushing her teeth and goes to sleep at nap and bedtime really easily. Amy can thump her chest like a gorilla.

September 2006

• 9/12/06 – Amy uses some phrases now! Like "move, Reed" and "yay Reed!" When I say "who's the prettiest girl?" Amy will point to herself and say "me!"

October 2006

• 10/22/06 – Tonight we had dinner at the Wenzells. Amy hugged Great Granddaddy Wenzell's legs two different times and asked him to help her put on her 'jacky' (that's jacket). It was so sweet to see that since she doesn't know him all that well and with his Alzheimer's, he doesn't really know who people are a lot of the time. I'm thankful the kids have gotten to know him even a little bit.
• 10/27/06 – When I was reading books to Amy, she held her finger up and said "one more book?" How can you say no to that??

November 2006

• 11/1/06 – Amy has already learned it gets a fun reaction if she wipes off mommy's kisses! She's talking SO much it's amazing. Even some more phrases now like "cookie monster," "minnie mouse", "school bus" and "Amy get it". She can identify pretty much all of her body parts too.
• 11/10/06 – When we play the Riders in the Sky song from Toy Story, "You've Got a Friend in Me" Amy echoes "me" every time they say it.
• 11/17/06 – Amy calls every store we pass "nonalds"
• 11/18/06 – Amy made a very good attempt at singing "Happy Birthday" - wow!
• 11/20/06 – Whenever I put you to bed, you usually cry "mommy" when I am ready to leave...I tell you "Mommy's never far away" and without fail you always respond "Amy?" like you're asking "never far away from Amy?" and I reassure you, "Mommy's never far from Amy". Then you go right to sleep...okay well sometimes you fuss for a minute, but not usually too long.
• 11/29/06 – Amy is beginning to show her temper! She is talking all the time and really lets us know what she wants and doesn't want - sometimes even by yelling! Amy also tries to repeat everything we say. I see her watching my lips as if she's trying to learn how to get her mouth to make the same sounds. Driving home yesterday Amy called out "Poppy, where are you?!" just out of the blue.

December 2006

• 12/1/06 – We went to see Santa at Kiki's old work...Amy was so excited to see him when we were far away, but refused to sit on his lap. Oh well, maybe next year!




• 12/3/06 – Amy's first night in a big girl toddler bed! She was so excited to help set it up, then to pile all her stuffed animals on it and jump on it too. No trouble switching out of the crib at all.




• 12/25/06 – This Christmas, Amy was most excited about the Zoe slippers she got from cousin Cristie and....a tube of mini-M&Ms. Amy even took the M&Ms with her to nap on Christmas day. This month, every time she saw the picture of her with Santa (well, near Santa), she'd say "No Amy sit Santa's lap".