I Worry

I picked up Allison from school today.  She noticed me immediately, and ran down from the swings, and I could see her start crying on the way down.  She gave me a big hug and I held her tight and asked what happened.  When she calmed down a bit, she said that her friend was pushing the tire swing and it bonked her on the head.

Immediately I start to worry and wonder how hard she was hit.  Did she lose consciousness?  Her pupils look ok.  She's not bleeding from the ears.  She doesn't seem confused, but she's also upset.  During the car ride home, I quiz her, checking her memory, asking math and spelling problems.  She seems OK.  She remembers exactly what happened that led to the tire swing hitting her in the head, as well as events afterwards, and during the day beforehand.  When we get home, I let her play a math game on the iPad when we get home, and she gets them all right.

So, she seems fine.  I'm sure it was just a little bump that scared her more than anything.  Then I remember those horror stories of kids who seem fine, but then later in the evening get really tired, go to sleep with a headache, and wake up dead the next morning.  When Diana gets home, I tell her the situation and leave for basketball.  If she seems groggy or complains of a headache, get to the ER!  Everything appears totally normal, and I have no objective reason to worry.  But I worry.

After the game, I come home.  Allison is still awake. She hears the front door, and comes running down the hallway and greets me with a HUGE smile and BIG hug.  She's so sweet at bedtime, because I think she knows that if she's cute enough she can get away with things.  And it generally works (which makes me wonder why she doesn't employ this stratagem all the time).  I talk to her a bit.  She's awake and alert (having taken a nap today at school).  No headache.  I feel the worry melt away.  Mostly.

I hold her tight and tell her that I love her.  She kisses me on the nose and prances back to her room, singing to herself.

UPDATE:

Upon re-reading this, it makes me sound a little crazy.  I don't always worry.  But when given vague information like "I hit my head" with no idea of the severity, I just wanted to rule out the worst.  Anyways, Allison woke up happy and healthy this morning.  I am no longer worried.

Bad Words...

The other night Diana and Allison were lying in bed Allison's bed, each of them almost asleep.

"Mommy, Hate, Stupid, and Butt are bad words, right?"

"Yes."

"Which is the biggest bad word?"

"Stupid".

"And which is the littlest bad word?"

"Butt".

"Ok."

Eyes, etc

At her four year checkup, it was determined that Allison's eyes were seeing differently.  Her left eye was not awful, but noticeably worse than her right.

After seeing an eye doctor, she was given glasses for six weeks and then a followup.  The followup showed some improvement, but the doctor recommended patching for eight weeks.

Eight weeks is up, and Diana just called me after her followup.  Her eyes are showing continued improvement, both with glasses and without glasses.  That's the good news.  And I need to remember that that IS good news.  The bad news is that she needs to continue patching for as long as she continues to show improvement.  Her next appointment is four months from now.  I was really hoping that patching was behind us, and it's discouraging to hear that it's continuing indefinitely.

That said, the fact that she's showing improvement means things are working, and that's the most important thing.  I just want things to work faster!

Here are some numbers:

1/2012 without glasses before patching:  Right: 20/25  Left 20/40

 

3/2012 with glasses before patching: Right 20/20 -3 (missing 3 letters in row)  Left 20/25 -2

 

5/2012 without glasses after patching:  Right 20/25  Left 20/25 -2

 

5/2012 with glasses after patching: Right 20/20  Left 20/25 -1

 

To put this all into perspective, we're starting from a position where most people with amblyopia aspire to get to.  Some people start off at 20/400 or whatever, so we really are fine tuning.

(I still can't get over how beautiful those Romanesco broccolis are!)



Allison was eating one of these last night at dinner, and started talking to herself.

"Once upon a time, there was an island that was covered in princess castles.  There were no roads or cars or parks.  Only princess castles.  And lots of princesses."

She rubbed the broccoli in butter on her plate.

"Then, all of a sudden, it got really foggy, and the princesses were worried."

Then she took a big bite, and everyone started laughing.  It was a cute moment.

Email

I got an email from Allison this morning.  She got her 15th star (for wearing her eye patch, as well as getting dressed by herself and general good behavior), so we're off to ice cream after work!  Woo hoo!  :)

hi   dady

i  got  mi   15    star

i  love  uoo

from  allison

Word cloud

A word cloud, based on the text from this blog.  Created from here:  http://timc.idv.tw/wordcloud/en/#

Busy weekend...

It was a busy weekend.  Let's recap.

Saturday morning was Allison's friend Lily's birthday party.  It was an indoor party place with a bunch of inflatable slides and jumpies and stuff.  Allison and Lily were friends at Dorrie's daycare, but now they go to different preschools, which means that Allison was going to a party where she really only knew one person, and where that one person knew and was friends with everyone else.  In spite of that disadvantage, she had a grand old time running around and playing.  It was a lot of fun to watch her be confident in situations where previously she would have shied away.

A good example is a bunch of kids all trying to get into a jump-house at the same time through a narrow door.  Old Allison would have shied back and waited for everyone else to go through before going herself.  New Allison shoulder in along with the stampede.

We came home that afternoon, and then headed out to the Buhr's house for a going away party for Justin and Maja.  Again, it was interesting to watch her interact (or not) with the kids there.  Jaxon and Landon are older and get along well together, racing around and playing games and stuff.  While Tyler is closer to Allison's age, I think he prefers to tag along with the older boys.  None of them go out of their way to invite or exclude Allison from any of their activities, and she certainly doesn't join in with the games that they're playing on her own.  I'm not sure whether Colton was playing with the other boys or off on his own doing his own thing.  Maybe some of both.  Allison seemed happy enough running around and doing her own thing, or hanging out with her parents.

The best part of the night, though, was in the late evening as the sun was getting low.  An impromptu soccer game was going with Norm and some of the boys.  Then another adult joined in, and then another and another, and then the rest of the kids.  Soon it was like 6v7 soccer, with full sized adults and kids running around.  Allison was right out there with us.  She didn't care much for actually kicking the ball and playing soccer, but she had a great time running around, shrieking and screaming and laughing.  We played until we couldn't see anymore.  It was a lot of fun.

On Sunday, we decided to hit up the Imax theater and space museum with my parents, but soon remembered it was Earth Day and a total cluster down there.  So we aborted and went to lunch and walked on the docks and saw boats, and then over to Seaport Village to see the sights.  It was nice.  Diana and Allison then spent the afternoon with Diana's parents, while I went over to Eryn's for some board games.

Allison is still kind of hot-and-cold with her temper and demeanor.  Sometimes she can be so sweet, but she can still burst into tears at the slightest little thing.  She also has been very demanding and insistent, and we've been doing a poor job of regulating that.  We recently told her flat out that we're not going to do anything she asks unless she says "Please".  That's been extended to basic politeness, like saying hello and goodbye to people, saying "thank you", etc.  I've already seen a big improvement in the last couple days, so I'm encouraged to stick with it.

All of the above -- the whining and crying and having a hard time saying hi and bye -- remind me of myself as a kid.  So it shouldn't be too surprising, I guess.

Kindergarten registration is coming up.  Lots of papers to fill out.  There was a questionnaire for the teachers to get to know your kid, and one of the questions was "Is your child a leader or follower?"  It's an interesting question that I'm not sure how to answer.

Language Development

Two things I notice about Allison's speech.  This isn't concerning or anything, but kind of noteworthy.

She doesn't know all the irregular past tenses of verbs.  She'll default to adding "-ed" to the end of the verb.  She doesn't say "go-ed" anymore, but she'll still say things like "thinked" instead of "thought".

She'll also use "that's why" in a backwards sort of way.  Some of her squishy snakes were all tangled up in the bath.  I said "Oh, they're all tangled up!"  She said "No, they're cuddling!  That's why they're friends!"  She'll also get pissed off and throw something or yell, and say "I threw my toys!  That's why I'm angry!"

A Joke

Allison is doing a good job wearing her patch.  I tried a Norm-inspired joke on her.

 

"Allison, I have a joke for you… are you ready?"

"Okay…"

"What is a pirate's favorite letter?"

 

*Allison giggles, as if that's the joke*

 

"Nonono, that's not the joke.  What is a pirate's favorite letter?"

"I don't know…."

"Arrrrrrrr!"

 

…

 

"Why?"

 

Explaining the joke didn't really make it very funny.  Oh well.

Close Shave

**Update**  Diana pointed out that I used the word "street" a lot.  At no time was Allison in the actual street.  She was always on the sidewalk.  Wearing her helmet.

Allison almost died yesterday.  Or at least almost was seriously injured.

We spend the morning at the Wild Animal Park with a friend of hers from preschool and her family.  We got home and were enjoying a quiet afternoon.  Allison wanted to ride her tricycle, so I walked with her out along the sidewalk in front of our house.  It was a quiet sunny day.  No one was around on our tired little street.  She was having a ball riding up and down the street, and I'd tag along after her.  A totally typical suburban scene.

Most of the houses on our block have normal driveways, but two houses down there is a house that is up on a hillside, and has a long, steep driveway.  As Allison was jamming down the street towards that house I heard and barely saw a flash of white as a car came barreling down the driveway BACKWARDS.  The child of the house (who's about thirty and living with his parents, for what that's worth) apparently gets a thrill out of seeing how fast he can back out of his driveway.

I saw it coming and shouted "ALLISON, STOP!!!"  She put her feet on the ground and was able to stop fast, and the guy in the car must have heard me as well, 'cause he slammed on his brakes.  But if the timing had been off by just a second or two, my shouting and his stopping too late wouldn't have made much difference.

Once the guy saw that things were clear, he drove off, giving me a wave and a "Sorry about that!" as he drove by.  I just kind of waved like "Yeah, I hear you."

My heart was pounding, but Allison didn't seem to care at all, and continued on her merry way.

Crazy.

Allison at Four and a Half

Hello blog.  It's been a while.

 

Allison is four and a half, and continuing on a pretty decent trajectory into becoming a school kid.

 

She's going to her preschool five days a week, minus some days when grandparents take her on some adventure or another.  Preschool was a little tough at the beginning, because Allison is by nature relatively shy and more introverted than extroverted, but over time she has really blossomed there.  She has four or five best friends there (Jordyn, Kaya, Ayu, Little Hannah, Rio…) and frequently they're all super excited to see each other when we drop her off.  If her friends are already there, they'll scream "Allison is here!  Allison is here!" and they'll all run off to play.  Her teachers report that everything is good with her.

 

Diana is leading the charge in looking for kindergartens for her.  She's gone to visit a couple schools already, some public and some private.  So far, she's had a bad feeling about one public school, a good feeling about another, and a good feeling about the private school, but isn't sure that the cost is justified.  It's starting to feel like a pretty big deal to choose the right school.  Or at least choose the school that feels most likely to lead to happiness and success and whatever.  I hope we can find a good public school for her.  (Or, alternatively, that I can overcome by prejudice against private schools).

 

At home, she ranges from being a lot of fun to a dramatic mess.  She can be so cute and imaginative, playing with her little toys and things.  She narrates everything, like she's telling a story, which gives us a lot of great insight into what she's thinking.  She can be really clingy, as well, demanding a lot of attention and being pretty unhappy if we're unwilling or unable to play with her.  Diana is very patient to sit and play imaginative games with her, while I have a hard time with that.  However, I can play Legos and catch and tag and hide and seek and wrassle with her for hours.  So it works out pretty well.  She's not particularly affectionate or cuddly, but when she is we eat it up.  She wakes us up every morning by climbing into bed with books to read, and that is always a fun time.

 

She's somewhat fallen under the allure of "girls toys", and seems to be attracted to the pink aisle.  We don't specifically encourage this (she has plenty of princess toys), but also consciously try to steer her towards other things as well.  Her little squishy animals (frogs, snakes, and bugs) are a favorite, as well as little Lego people.

 

She's very interested in drawing and coloring right now, as well as writing.  She can read and sound out words, but doesn't show a whole lot of interest in it.  However, she'll write extended sentences on her white board, or get a piece of paper and write a letter (or even type an email) to a friend or grandparent.  She writes everything out phonetically, so it's sometimes hard to decipher, but she's very enthusiastic about it.  She drew some shapes and labeled them TRIGOL, REKTAGOL, and SQWER, for example.  I'm not sure how much I should be correcting her spelling, but mostly I just encourage her.  She can do basic addition and subtraction pretty well, and we're sneaking in the framework for multiplication and division as well (like, "if you have three 2's, how many is that?" or cutting up an orange and dividing it into three equal piles for us).

 

She had her four year checkup recently, and while she's in general very good health, was diagnosed with amblyopia, which I take to mean a fancy way of saying that her eyes don't see at the same strength.  That is, the vision in her left eye is noticeably worse than the vision of her right eye.  To help correct this, she saw an ophthalmologist who prescribed glasses to be worn all day for 6-8 weeks.  She had a follow-up appointment this morning, which showed that her eyes were improving, but that she should also wear a patch over her good eye for two hours a day for 8 weeks.  The idea is to help the bad eye catch up and improve.  So we'll see how that goes.  Glasses haven't been too much of a struggle, so hopefully the patches won't be too tough either.  I'm sure if we relax our "minimal screen time" policy that will make things easier.  Other than that, aside from snotty noses and coughs, she's been in very good health.  She's long and lean and active.  She's a fast runner and great climber.  She recently made it across the monkey bars completely on her own.

 

That's it for now.  Mike and Gwen have just had their baby, Logan, and that event has brought back a lot of memories, as well as a bit of a contrast to see just how much Allison has grown.  She's really a joy, and we both go in and look at her while she sleeps and just kind of stand in shock and awe at how much we love her.

 

 

 

Morning report

A few funny bits from my conversation with her this morning:

1.) I reminded her to please drink lots of water today to help her throat. She said "I always drink lots of water because it helps us run fast and get away from the bad guys."

2.) She was talking about all her friends at preschool and she said "When I first went to preschool I was 2 and I didn't know how to make friends and I was sad. But now I do and I have lots of friends!"

Cute kid!

Allison's morning

Posting this because I don't want to forget it.

Diana dropped Allison off at school yesterday, and this was their conversation in the car.  (SorLisa is Allison's brown teddy bear).

A: "Oh, I forgot SorLisa.  I told her I would bring her in the car so we could play after school. Can I go get her please?"
D: "Well, mommy will be home late and I don't want SorLisa to be stuck in my car."
A: "Oh, okay, that is fine.  Can I go tell her though, she doesn't know that."
D: "Okay."  So we go back inside the house.  She runs to her room and I listen in.

A: "SorLisa, I am so sorry sweetie but I cannot take you in the car today because mommy will be home later.  But don't worry you have all these other sleep friends to play with." *pause* "Oh, no don't worry, I won't be lonely without you.  Mommy and Bork are going to be in the car with me."  then she runs back outside.

Diana went out to dinner with a friend last night, so I took Allison to her swimming lesson, then we went out to dinner, then frozen yogurt, then home.  When we got home, Allison ran inside and told SorLisa that she was sorry she was gone so long, and that we went out to ice cream and she hoped SorLisa didn't miss her.

CUTE!

Hi Blog

I haven't forgotten about you.

Allison is almost four.  She's very sweet most of the time, and when she's not, she's at least less of a snot than she used to be.  For the most part, we don't see the arms crossed and angry stomp-offs that used to be pretty common.

My second sabbatical has come and gone, with trips to Montana and Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara, along with a couple Disneyland trips and lots of beach days.

I've played a lot of TF2, and have only made slight progress on a new Xbox game.

Life is good.  More details later.

"Climbed"

Every night, Diana goes in and reads with Allison in her bed. When she says goodnight and leaves, Diana leaves a pile of books on Allison’s bed. I come in and cuddle and talk and say goodnight, and we recite the sleep rules.

Since she has heard the books so many times, she has them memorized. Diana was amazed when Allison “read” a 60 page book to her, completely from memory (granted, there’s not that many words per page, but still… 60 pages!)

The other night, she called me in “for one LAST question.” She was reading her Winnie the Pooh book, and it said “Winnie the Pooh climbed…” She pointed at the word “climbed”, and said “KUH - LUH - EYE - EMM…. Bed? Why does it say ‘bed’?”

I had to explain the silent ‘b’ in “climbed”, and, once again, cursed English for being so difficult.

BUTTER!

Allison randomly shouted "BUTTER!" at lunch today. When we asked why, she pointed at the "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!" spray, and said there was an exclamation point, so "we say it loud."

Yesterday, at Legoland, she noticed the elephant statue. It was squirting water out of it's trunk, but when it dipped it's head, it didn't actually dip its trunk back in the water. She was a little indignant and wondered how it was squirting water without filling back up again.

She's a pretty clever kid.

Recently, I posted an a link to an article on Facebook called "Why I Don't Put Pictures of my Kids Online".  The article didn't directly speak for me, but made several salient points that I generally agreed with.

When a friend expressed some interest in my position, I told shared the full story, which I will share with you now.

When Allison was born, as an immensely proud new parent, I wanted to share her pictures with everyone we knew.  The easiest way to do this would be to put them in some public place online (like this blog).  That was certainly easier than sending out mass emails, or sharing passwords to a locked site, or whatever.

Diana pushed back against sharing pictures publicly with a certain amount of vigor.  She said things that I didn't really understand at the time, about ownership of your own image and that we should respect Allison's privacy, and things like that.  I looked at our newborn baby, and then at my wife, thinking she was clearly crazy.  Allison was just a baby!  How could she possible know or care if we put her pictures online?!  So I attempted to mount a counterargument...

... and I came up with nothing.

I couldn't come up with a single good reason why it was a good idea to publish her baby pictures online.  The best reason I could come up with was that it was slightly more convenient for me.

That was kind of sobering.

On the other side of the coin, I could come up with at least a few reasons why it seemed like a bad idea.  I'm not actively concerned about child predators, but some people think that's reason enough.  I've heard stories of images scraped from blogs and used for commercial purposes.  Unlikely, I guess, but possible.

But most importantly, the more I thought about it, the more Diana's original position (or at least my own interpretation of it) started to make sense in my own mind.  Allison might not want her pictures online.  It took a few years for that to actually make sense.

The idea of a newborn, or even a three year old, making rational decisions about privacy and posting pictures online is obviously ridiculous.  As a baby, we made literally every decision in Allison's life.  Now, as a three year old, we make the vast majority of decisions for her, but fewer than before.  For example, we may decide that she needs to wear a jacket, but she can decide which one.  As she gets older, we'll make fewer and fewer decisions, and she'll take more ownership of her own life and choices.  That's what growing up is all about.

At some point in time, she'll come to realize what it means to post pictures online for the world to see.  And it's possible that she'd come to the realization that we've posted all her pictures, from slobbering baby to awkward teenager, for the entire world to see, and be horrified that we'd done that without her permission(though more likely, she'll say "Gawd, Dad... you're SO lame!").  At the very least, I think it's far more likely that she'd have negative feelings about it than positive ("Gee Dad!  I'm so glad you put all these pictures up!  You're awesome!").

That doesn't mean that I'm afraid of making unpopular decisions.  Far from it.  But if she did feel betrayed or embarrassed about it, I'd at least like to have some justification.  And that's the entire point... I have none.

When she gets to that age and decides that she wants her baby pictures online, then she can do that.  But she's not ready to make those choices yet, so we make it for her, and that answer obviously coincides with our own values.

It's hard to project a little girls feelings forward, so maybe this is a better example:  On a whim, you google your own name, and find that I've posted a picture on my blog from a beach party.  You're wearing a bathing suit, and it was before you'd dropped 30 pounds.  You're eyes are half open, and you're in the middle of taking a bite of cake.  Whatever.  Suffice to say, you don't think it's a flattering picture.  You look again, and realize that this picture has been up publicly for the last five years.  Would you care?

The answer to that question is personal.  Some people are "open books" and wouldn't care at all.  Others are more concerned with image and privacy and might care.  Others would be horrified and outraged.  It just depends on how you feel about these kinds of things.

My point is we don't know what Allison's views are on the subject yet, so it seems natural to make the choice that is the least likely to be painful, and also the easiest to reverse.  (That's the other crazy thing about the internet... Once things are posted online, it's extremely easy to lose control of them.  Taking pictures down after they are released might not be as easy as it sounds.)

The "public" part is really actually key.  We DO share her pictures privately with friends and family.  That might even be hypocritical, given the reasons above, but I'm more prepared to defend a position of "we share pictures of our kids with our friends" than "we share pictures of our kids with everyone in the world."

I fully realize that we are in the vast minority in this opinion.  The internet is paved with pictures of your kids and pets.  Everyone does it, and here's my guess why:

1)  You don't care about your own privacy as much as I care about mine.  And you assume your kids won't either.  I think this is a personal opinion that everyone makes for themselves.

2)  My family is extremely small.  It's easy for me to manage sharing pictures privately with just a few people.  You might have a audience, so you get more value from having a single place to post pictures.  Even if you are somewhat against sharing pictures online, this convenience might sufficiently tip the scale in the other direction.

3)  You simply don't think about these kinds of things.  I think this is probably the case with most people.  They either don't care, or figure they'll deal with that bridge when they get to it, or don't even think it's worth thinking about in the first place.

4)  Something else?

So, to sum up.

I can come up with reasons why I'm uncomfortable posting pictures publicly.  These reasons might be unlikely, or far fetched, but I don't think they are completely bogus.
I can't come up with any good reasons why I should.
So the choice is pretty clear.

I'm still mounting that argument against Diana, so if you can point out a flaw in my thinking, please let me know!

So much to write about, so little time...

So many things going on these days, but so little time to write.

We visited Dave and Elaine and Ben and Julia in Maryland a few weeks ago, and the trip was fabulous.  Easy plane rides, and a wonderful visit.  It was Allison's first time meeting Julia, and they had a great time together.

Since getting home from Maryland, we cracked down a little on Allison and bedtime rules.  The "Sleep Rules" were instituted, and we review them every night.  I say the chorus, and Allison chimes in with the counterpoint.

"You need to stay in your bed..."
"... except to go potty!"
"... and you need to stay quiet..."
"... but I can talk to myself or my sleep friends!"
"... and you can't call for Mommy or Daddy.  We want to be alone."

As long as those rules are followed, she can leave her light on and read in bed.  Breaking the rules results in lights out and no more playing/reading.

Bedtime used to be an ordeal, with constant visits and calling for us between about 7:30pm and upwards of 10pm.  It's much, much better now.  In general, Allison seems happier and healthier, more polite, and just riding a crest of being a good, happy, sweet kid.  She's just great.

She's also extremely thoughtful.  We have quiet car rides a lot, and she'll bust out with all kinds of questions.  Diana sent me some from today:

A:  Is the blue part hard or soft?
D:  Blue part of what?
A:  The sky

 

A:  Do people who don't talk have nice manners?
D:  What are you thinking about?
A:  One time when I was riding the smooth escalators, I moved over for a man but he did not say anything.  does he know how to say 'thank you'?  (This was from our trip to Maryland, when she spent a lot of time on the moving sidewalks in the airport).

A:  Mommy, I wish three things.

D:  What are they?
A:  I wish that I can have special eyes to see underwater like Ariel, and I wish to see a broken rainbow and a jumping river (images from the Dreamsack book)

She's a good ship...  She can get a little dramatic though, at times, when things don't go her way.  She'll say coldly "I don't want to talk to you", and whip her head around, nose high in the air, and stomp off.  Not sure exactly where that came from.  It would be aggravating, but it's so cute. 

In entertainment news:

Reading: 
Song of Fire and Ice (aka "Game of Thrones") Book 2: Clash of Kings  Awesome.

Watching: 
Game of Thrones on HBO.  Awesome.  Survivor.  Also awesome.

Playing: 
I finished Portal 2.  Only took a few play sessions, but was pretty fun.  Diana and I have played a bit of the coop, but only a few levels.  I'm waiting for the PSN to come back up, and maybe can hook up with Baditude, or take it over to Mike's or something.

Programming:
Bad Golf has sold a total of around 1700 copies, netting a total of just over $1100.  It still sells a copy or two per day, but it's pretty much dead.

Luckily, I'm just putting the finishing touches on "Battle for Venga Island"!  I hope to have that all ready to wrap and ship within a week or so.  It's a bit more ambitious of a project, with a bit more risk/reward factor, so I really have no idea how it will perform.  But it's been fun to work on, and I think has some originality to it that hasn't been done before on the XBLIG system. 



And... I'm out.

Three and a half

Allison is three and a half.

 

It's a little overwhelming to try to summarize Allison at this point.  She's in a weird grey area of not quite being a "kid", but not much of a "toddler" anymore, either.  I'm not exactly sure what those labels mean, and maybe our whole childhoods (or lives) are just one big grey area of development.

 

We were at my parents house recently, and being a half-year milestone, we measured her height.  She's grown about two inches since her third birthday, and a little over four inches in the past year.  Crazy.  We frequently note to ourselves how long she looks when she's lying in the bathtub.

 

She's had a lot of emotional growth in these past months.  Her imagination is growing, and she plays out little scenes with her toys.  Favorite toys these days are little girl and mermaid toys, but she still hauls around Ramone from Cars and other stuff animals.  She's still part-time at Dorrie's house, and part time at preschool.  The latter has been a bit easier since she made friends with a girl named Jordyn, and the report is that they're inseparable.  So that's nice.

 

She can sound out many basic words (like HAT, TOP, CAT, DOG, etc), but has understandable trouble with things like "TAPE", where the silent E adjust the vowel sound.  The more I try to teach English, the more messed up I realize it is.  Too many exceptions to the rules.

 

She's getting a flair for the dramatic.  She might ask if she can play with the iPad (for example), and if I say no, she'll pout and cross her arms and whimper "I guess I'll NEVER play again" and stomp off to her room to sulk.  This only lasts a minute or so before she reappears again.

 

Though she was sick recently, she's never had any real concerning health issues, thank goodness.  She has a second cousin who has really critical health problems, and that it puts Allison's coughs and runny nose in real perspective.

 

We have an upcoming visit to go see Dave and Elaine and her cousins in a week or so, and that should be a fun adventure.