Claraisms

Sweet Clara Dawn. This little lady is really something special. She’s as turbulent and tumultuous as any 3-year old I’ve ever met, but she’s also as sweet as pie sometimes. She keeps herself quite entertained and her imagination has really developed in the past few months.

• Clara and Ruby started preschool and Kindergarten a couple of weeks ago. They are absolutely loving it. Clara goes 2 mornings a week and has the sweetest preschool teacher you can imagine. This pic on their first day of school pretty much sums up their excitement.
• Clara’s got the music in her. She loves to put on shows which include singing and dancing as well as on-the-spot songwriting for anyone who will sit and listen. At the beginning of every show she says, “The show is starting to begin.”
• Before preschool started she got to go to school to find her locker. When she saw it, she sat down and explained, “I just love it mommy.”
• When I pick her up I always ask her what she did at school and she always replies, “I did everything I need to do.”
• The girls both love riding their bikes and scooters when they come home from school in the afternoons. Clara was super disappointed the other day. I asked her what the problem was and she answered, “I just can’t ice-skate.”
• While peeling a clementine, “I don’t want to get any clemonade in my eye.”
• Clara is great at spotting things while we drive. “I saw a JEEP!” “That looks like the dentist!” “There’s a car wash! I saw a car wash!”
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• “My energy is running out of batteries.”
• I kinda enjoy that she can’t pronounce her “R’s” very well yet. “We watched this weally funny show where the pwincess kissed a fwog and it turned into a pwince!”
• “My watch says its fourteen teen eight.”
• She got to hold some baby goats and bunnies at the orchard last week. She LOVED the bunnies… poor bunnies that get held all day by crazy children. I think this bunny was just playing dead.
• Before she starts a song she says, “a one, a one, a one, two, fwee”
• At the end of her bedtime prayers she always says, “Thank you God for my mom and dad and sister and brother and most of all, thank you for my Clara girl.”
• Ruby detests when Clara is screaming/crying so she covers her ears. Clara detests when Ruby is covering her ears. It’s a vicious cycle of detest. “Wooby is covering she’s ears!!”
• She calls the airport “The Plane Station” like a train station for planes. It just makes so much sense, people!
• Clara and Charlie are best little buddies and spend the hours of 4-6pm most days causing a ruckus, wrestling and chasing one another around the house. I love seeing their little friendship develop.
• “Wooby is just going weally weally fast!”
• “I need to give you a checkup mom.” She gave me this unfortunate diagnosis, “I’m sorry to say you’ve got a diarrhea of your mouth.”
• She loves to pretend she’s going to work and talks a lot about “Daddy’s Hostible” (hospital) “I’m just going to see a lot of strange people eating when I go to work.”
• In conclusion, following up with Ruby’s amazing school picture last week, here is Clara’s school pic. I’ve been laughing all morning about it. Those photographers are lucky I’m not in charge of hiring/firing them!

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Mother’s Day Card

This is the Mother’s Day card that Ruby made for me at preschool today. Other than seriously aging me, most of her answers are amazingly accurate. I’ve never been the sentimental type, but I’m saving this Mother’s Day card forever!

If the image is too small, here’s what it says:

All About Mom
Let me tell you about my mom.
My mom is 45 years old. She likes to write lists, my daddy always puts cheese on the list. The best thing she cooks is spaghetti. Her favorite food is burgers. Her favorite thing to do to relax is go to sleep. We like to play games together. She is really good at using scissors. As you can see, my mom is special because she always plays playdough with me.

Rubyisms – “The Incident Report”

Ruby got her first “incident report” from preschool today.

Pretty much, her teacher noticed she had shoved a corn kernel in her nose so she asked Ruby, “do you know how to blow your nose?” to which Ruby excitedly replied, “Oh yes! I’m so so so good at blowing my nose.” She then proceeded to show her teacher just how good she was and blew that corn right out. The teacher still had to file a very detailed incident report which I will be saving for Ruby’s high school graduation party.

Here are a few more recent Rubyisms:

• “These taste like cake!” – the first time I gave her Froot Loops cereal.
• “I wish I was in med school mama.”
• “Can I have a Holiday Pear?” That’s what she calls the Harry and David pears. We only get them around the holidays, so I guess that makes sense.
• She’s really into rhyming lately, so if I say something like, “oh look! a bunny rabbit!” she replies, “No a grunny baggit!” then laughs and laughs at herself.
• When I drop Ruby off at school she is always beyond THRILLED when we pull in the parking lot and she spots her friends. “Oh, there’s my friend! I missed her so much! Mom! There’s another one of my friends! I just love him so so much!”
• Once we get inside to drop her in her classroom she always greets her teachers with something heartfelt and hilarious. Last week she said, “Oh, Mrs. Mills! I’m so glad you made it!”
• She smushed a potato bug with her shoe a few weeks ago while we were hanging out on the porch. It’s guts came out and ever since then she’s been asking what other animals have guts. “Mama, do bees have guts? Do ladybugs have guts?” etc.
• Once a month we pay our rent, so on that day Ruby gets a sucker from the lady at the bank. Pretty much Ruby looks forward to “paying the rent” all month. “But when we pay the rent I get a sucker!”

In closing, Ruby’s preschool picture is… well, it’s something. ha!

Unfortunately, Ruby was one of two students in her class who the photographer didn’t get a headshot of, just a whole body, so we had to do retakes so her face would be on the class picture page. Either way, this picture certainly gave me a good laugh.

Rubyisms

“I’m pushing my cheeks down so I can see my necklace”

I couldn’t make this stuff up. If ONE child can say this many hilarious things I can only imagine what most preschool teachers hear on a daily basis from the kids in their classrooms!

• “I’m going to say ‘SURPRISE’ soon.” (…thanks for letting me know.)
• Every morning from under the crack of her bedroom door I hear, “I’m awake! I’m awake! I’m awaaaaaaaaaake!!!”
• When she wants to watch TV she always asks, “Can you put on a show for me?” then she gets all frustrated when I start singing and dancing and act like I didn’t realize she meant a TV show. “Oooohhhh, you mean you want to watch Dora? Oh, okay!”
• “I love my new ball so much! It’s SOOO purple and I love it SOOO much!”
• “Are you punishing me? Am I getting punished?”
• We were coming out of a public restroom the other day right as a woman was coming in. Ruby said, “Oh, that old lady is going potty too, mommy!”
• Everything in the past happened “Last week.” Her birthday was last week, “Last week at the zoo the brown bears were hibernating,” last week she went to school, last week was christmas, everything happened last week.

Here she is on her first day of school. She LOVES preschool. Loves loves loves it.

• Everyday that she’s not at school she talks about how she can’t wait to tell her teacher…, “I can’t wait to tell my teacher about Fall!” “I can’t wait to tell my teacher all about my backpack, she loves my backpack!” “I can’t wait to tell Mrs. Mills about my acorns!” I’m sure Mrs. Mills gets an earful from Ruby every Tuesday and Thursday.
• On her first day home from school I asked her what she learned about and she said, “We learned about being healthy!” so I asked her what that meant and she said, “Like eating graham crackers and water.” (…ok.)
• “I’m SOOO excited that bursting is quite a possibility, in fact, I’d put it in the ‘quite probably’ category.” This is a line from one of her books – but she says it often. hearing it from a 3-year old kinda takes people by surprise.
• She begins by saying, “Here’s the deal…” which is the same thing Ryan says a lot.

I’ve had a few moms ask how I keep track of this stuff. I just jot these sayings down on the notes app on my phone as they happen, then when I’m ready to post another Rubyisms post I have a bunch saved. Otherwise I’d never remember.

Preschool Open House

Tomorrow is my Ruby girl’s first day of preschool. We’ve been getting up 10 minutes earlier each day for the last week to get her me used to earlier mornings… and Ruby has been practicing putting on her backpack.

Last Thursday we went to the preschool open house to meet Ruby’s teacher and see her classroom. As soon as we walked through the doors of the school Ruby ran down the hall yelling, “WELCOME TO SCHOOL KIDS!!” I’m guessing Mrs. Mills will be the first of many teachers who will have to remind Ruby not to run in the halls, or yell in the halls of the school.

This was Ruby’s face when she caught a glimpse her teacher for the first time. Priceless. She has been so so so excited about her backpack and her teacher and riding the school bus “but not till I’m bigger mommy.” 

Her classroom is so fun, full of puzzles, books, maps, colors, letters, shapes, a water table, a play kitchen fully stocked with all household items, easels, blocks, and even a table full of seashells, bottles of sand, and some starfish! She was VERY enthused about the starfish.

Here she is with Mrs. Mills in front of her cubbie where she will hang her backpack and jacket each day. On the night of the open house she chose to pack 3 extra headbands in her backpack. Not sure what she will choose to pack for school tomorrow. ha.

Preschool Hunting

My palms get kinda sweaty at the thought of sending my baby to school… but alas, the time has come to get Ruby registered for preschool starting this fall.

The internet has been scoured, strangers have been talked to and area preschools have been toured in hopes of finding a good fit for us. It’s pretty amazing how many options we have… and how expensive preschool is, and how few preschools are actually accredited. I am new at this whole preschool thing, so I don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.

This morning we took a tour and within 5 minutes of being at this particular preschool, the teacher who was giving us the tour had asked Ruby all sorts of interesting questions I’ve never thought to ask. That alone confirmed that I need to let professional teachers do what they’ve studied for years to do instead of trying really hard to think of, research and create educational preschool type activities and projects to keep Ruby occupied at our house. Whew! It exhausted me just typing that last sentence!

I’m pretty sure there will be tears when I actually have to drop her off on her first day… my tears, not hers. She is ready.