As I was looking through my pictures from the last few weeks, I noticed that all of them were of Helaina. Since her 4th birthday is fast approaching, I figured it would be alright to dedicate this post to our beautiful preschooler, Helaina.
The older that Helaina gets, Randy and I increasingly enjoy our time together with her. With the help of our family to watch Zachary, we manage a couple dates a month with our sweet girl. This past Sunday after church, Helaina and I met up with Meg and Delaney for an afternoon play. It was our first trip to the Marquis Theater in downtown Northville, and it was fantastic. We saw "Tinkerbell visits Storyland." Helaina loved the play, the popcorn, her friend Delaney, and an afternoon out with her mom!
Both Helaina and Zachary have become quite the helpers around the house. Helaina takes pride in doing simple chores and helping us with the housework. Some days I am amazed at how quickly her cognitive and motor skills have developed. With the help of "the flip and fold" (which was a fabulous wedding gift from my friend Kelly Martin), Helaina can fold laundry better than any adult! It may sound silly, but there is much joy in these simple tasks we do together throughout the day.
She insists on having her "own" pile of folded laundry and then carries it nicely to the basket in the laundry room.
In the past few months, Helaina has taken a great interest in doing "homework." Several of the kids in the neighborhood are school-aged and most of them can not play during the week because of their "homework." Well Helaina is a child that doesn't want to miss out on anything, so almost every night before she goes to bed, she does an hour of "homework." I have to laugh as we sit quietly at the table together and wonder if this same excitement will continue into her school years. Most of her homework consists of letter recognition, letter/number tracing, and simple activity books. She can write her name independently, but usually struggles with the letter "N". She has her numbers 1-12 down pat and most of her alphabet as well. She also does some simple addition and is beginning to understand simple subtraction.
In January, we switched some of her classes from the Rec Center to the local YMCA and Helaina hasn't seemed to mind at all. Monday night is a 45 minute gymnastic class with four other girls and an instructor. Wednesday night is a 30 minute swimming class with two boys and an instructor. She enjoys many aspects of both of the classes. She's such a social person and is task oriented, so it's great to watch her mature in these settings as well. She's so, so close to swimming independently. She back floats, front floats, treads water, and can swim under water in the deep end for several feet before coming up for air and then swimming to the side of the pool. She's still working on the breaststroke and arms circles, but there's definite progress being made.
Some things never change though as our strong-willed, independent girl has a bad habit of being bossy and sassy. We treasure her strong personality and hope that it will take her many places when she gets older, however, we feel it's more important for her to learn kindness, humility, respect, and a love for others. Last week at school, the teacher approached me and said, "I just want to let you know that we had to talk to Helaina today about being too bossy with her friends." My response was, "Thank you for addressing the issue as we know that it can be a problem at home too." The teacher then kind of laughed and told me that during free-play, Helaina had lined up 4 chairs in a row and was pointing with her finger and telling each of her girlfriends that "I am the mom. You listen to what I say. All of you are going to timeout and don't get up until I tell you that you can." I just had to laugh. Of course she sees some of this at home with Zachary, so Randy and I had a little chat with her that night. Today at school the teacher said she did fine and there were no issues. Oh my, I think we have our work cut out for us!!! In the end though, we wouldn't trade this job for anything in the world. We love you Helaina girl!
