Archive for the ‘Ava’ Category
Man, I dread these things. No wonder my parents opted out as soon as they could. Talk about stressful.
We had Ava’s first conference of the school year today. As I’ve mentioned in a few earlier posts, we’ve had some recent behavioral challenges with her at school and for the first time in a long time I really, really wish I could just stay home with her for a while. Not that I’m justifying or rationalizing her behaviors, but dang. She’s 4. Why are the expectations so high nowadays??
For example, she got in trouble today for taking a piece of candy from the treat jar. The treat jar that was left, unsupervised and at kid level, by another teacher who failed to put it back up out of the kids’ reach. I get it that Ava knew she wasn’t supposed to be in it and she admitted that, but geez. Again, she’s 4. The temptation to grab a sweet is pretty hard for me to resist so I can imagine how hard it would be for her. For that she got a semi-public (mainly because there isn’t a lot of room for privacy in their classroom) mini-lecture about stealing. I did address the issue of labeling a (my) child publicly but I think I need to reiterate that again with her teacher in the morning.
Her main teacher really is mostly okay. She’s pretty straightforward, yet understanding so I don’t really have any complaints with her. The few concerns that I have had we’ve discussed, resolved to our mutual satisfaction and I’m good with that. She is very good with the kids, has a ton of patience, and seems to understand the value of positive reinforcement – which is something that we’ve discussed at length both in the past and again today.
Ava is also very stubborn and strong-willed. I know this. Really, I know this. Fortunately for me, I have a stronger will and I win because I am the mom. Her teachers however, cave in just often enough to reinforce Ava’s behavior which only makes it harder for them (and for me) next time.
Also, speech. I think Ava is doing fine from my perspective. I’m surely biased but I see frequent changes for the positive in her pronunciation of words all the time. Is she 100% clear to all people all the time? I doubt it because sometimes there’s a word here and there that I don’t get either but she can mostly communicate with neighbors and strangers fine so I don’t think it’s a huge issue that she can’t really pronounce /sp/ all that well at this point. S is fine if it’s alone but it’s the combo that she can’t quite get yet. Am I wrong here, y’all?
And they pointed out that she doesn’t yet know her phone number or address yet. Again, she’s FOUR. What she does know is how to turn on my iPhone, enter the unlock code (that she’s memorized – which reminds me that I need to change it again to keep her out of it), get to the favorites screen, and know which words to hit that will call Dad’s cell phone (which she did a couple of weeks ago while J was several time zones away from us – waking him VERY early in the AM hours).
And word cognition. Apparently she’s not so great at determining which words begin with a particular sound. Some she can get, some she can’t. I just can’t help but think that my mom probably wasn’t worried about this particular skill at all when I was 4. And hey, look. I grew up and can read and write. I even have my own blog where I can massacre the english language and all related grammar rules at will. The thing is – she knows this stuff and will answer your questions IF she feels like it or is forced into it by someone like, say, me. For example, I asked her to give me a word that starts with A. She did. Ava. I’m good with that. I asked for a B. After much hemming and hawing and whining and dragging of feet (and a few minutes of a stand off in the car where I told her we would sit until she gave me a B word) she did. Burp. And then illustrated with one.
She is her father’s daughter, after all.
It wasn’t all negative. She’s meeting or positively progressing in all of the developmental and educational milestones they track. At least there’s that.
It just felt to me like an awful lot of it was about what she’s not doing and I am scared to death that’s what’s coming across to her at school.
I sure hope not.
Edited to Add: I quizzed Ava all the way to school today about her address and she does know it quite well. Turns out Ava’s answer to the question, “Where do you live?” when asked by her teacher was “Home.” Well, duh. She answered the question accurately then, IMO. I plan to point out to her teacher that the question might be better phrased next time.
that we saw this sweet face for the very first time.
Picture taken today, 6 November 2011, with Ava holding her actual referral pictures. The Spider Girl costume is courtesy of the 70% off after-Halloween costume clearance rack. Needless to say, she quite fancies it and I suspect it’s going to get a lot of wear for a $3 costume.
We found out we were expecting a little one named XiaoBei. She was a little over 7 months old and I started crying like a baby, sitting in my office at work for all to see, as soon as I answered the phone and heard my social worker say, “You have a little girl.”
I called J right away. I called my mom. I called my mother-in-law. And then I told my whole office who then promptly cracked open several bottles of wine to toast our faraway little one with.
It was a lovely, lovely day that I will never forget. Definitely one of the top 10 days of my life.
And I love this kid more than I can ever express. She is marvelous, wonderful, kind, loving, and her dad and I think she is just about perfect.
(Even if we did spend a whole lot of the 4th anniversary of that day in the corner.)
We’ve had some kinda really bad news this week. Most of which I can’t talk about here since the information doesn’t belong to me. I’m just not happy about it. At all.
We’ve had sorta good news in that we finally got our homestudy sorted out and sent our immigration paperwork to be approved for the eighty-twelfth billionth time. We started the homestudy renewal in July, btw.
We had a really surprising phone call with some news I don’t quite know what to do with. Good? Bad? I don’t know yet.
I realized I’ve been to the doctor more times since I turned 40 than I went in the 39 years before that. I came to this realization while sitting in my neuro’s office getting 30ish shots of botox in my head, jaw, and neck after I waited in a completely empty waiting room for over an hour – leaving me lots of time to be introspective about how you really do fall apart after 40. Oh yeah, and my doc thinks that popping noise in my neck might just be a touch of arthritis setting in. Thanks for making me feel even older, doc.
Ava’s having some behavior issues at school that are just wearing me out. There are two main challenges: The first is that she’s extremely strong willed and doesn’t want to listen to her teachers – so she just doesn’t sometimes – and the second is a personality conflict between Ava and another kid that’s causing some minor physical aggression. I’m just about at the point where I want to say just let ‘em take it out onto the playground and work it out between themselves because I’m, frankly, getting tired of the dreaded blue note showing up in her take home folder. It’s funny because these two tiny (the smallest two in the class) girls are clearly struggling for alpha status. The other little girl tells people all the time she’s a “Barbie Girl.” I tell Ava that she could end this by making it clear to everyone that she’s a Warrior Princess (think Mulan) and this should end the whole argument since everyone knows Mulan could kick Barbie’s rear end with one hand tied behind her back.
I am joking, somewhat. It’s just been really difficult in trying to figure out the right balance of disciplining Ava for misbehavior at school (that she’s already been punished for there) while understanding (not that I’m justifying) that much of what she is doing is developmentally appropriate for her age group. She’s definitely not the only one who isn’t a “good” listener but this frequent catfighting (kitten fighting?) thing is kind of shocking/annoying/trying my patience. Besides, her behavior as of late has really shown us that we have no freaking clue as to what we are doing as parents. Seriously, none. At all.
So, what DO you do? We tried putting her to bed early (really early) as a punishment since it cuts her time down with us, which is also a pretty awful punishment for me since I miss her and want to spend time with her – well, mostly…except for Tuesday, Wednesday, and especially Thursday of this week. But an early bedtime really isn’t that effective as a punishment when she cries for a few minutes and then promptly falls asleep and stays that way all night. I mean, YAY for sleeping, of course – but it clearly wasn’t so much of a win considering our original intent.
And ta-da!!! Here are the ballet ‘recital’ pictures I promised only a short(ish) time ago (note:date adjusted on this post since I’m trying to keep things on track and I have some other draft posts that will be coming shortly. With pictures!!). I’m kind of limited on the pictures I can/will post since many of them contain full face shots of the other kids and I don’t like to post photos of other people’s kids without permission.
So, without further ado, behold my very own mini black swan (and please note that she is the only one dressed the way they’re all supposed to be dressed).
Warming up:
Checking out her the audience:
Entranced by her finger/hand butterfly:
Trying very hard to get into first position:
ImPatiently waiting for her cue:
DANCING!!!
Thank you, Miss E! We had a (mostly) lovely experience in Ava’s very first ballet class and are sorry we won’t be in your class next time.
Sorry, TM – no stripping pictures to be found. That’s because I was too busy being absolutely mortified out in the hallway with all of the other moms watching her through a two way mirror – of course with me all the while mentally willing her to stop it and stop it NOW. I’m not sure if it was the mom/daughter telepathy or the stare-down from her teacher that stopped it, but whatever.