Last week was Mie Mie's first week in her new school. She has a nice teacher and seems to be really enjoying it. This is a relief because she spent the three weeks prior telling us how much she hated school. And when I would say, "Surely you must like something about school," her answer would be, "Sure. Recess, recess, music, PE and art." We have thrown ourselves into reading. At first we were reading the first Harry Potter book out loud to her every night. Now she also has books that she reads to us. We just finished the first book from the Magic Treehouse series. She reads every other page to us. She does struggle significantly with her reading, so it is important for us to spend a lot of time with her on it. We have already seen her go from dreading reading time to begging to do, "just one more chapter?" On average we have been reading 45 minutes a night. And some days we have had no TV... other days we have had 30 minutes. I'm pleasantly surprised about that.
Last week Nigel had his first play date with Gwen Bean, who is also 2 and is about 4 months older than Nigel. It went really well. I think both Anna Marie and I were surprised. They played together, and sometimes on their own... they shared, and there were no meltdowns. Not too shabby for 2 year olds.
Last Friday Mie Mie had her therapy appointment in Olympia, which is about 2 hours from our house. She is going down there during her transition, and in late May will be moving to a therapist in Kirkland - only 15 minutes from our house! Nigel and I went to go take Mie Mie out of school early on Friday to make her appointment, and then it took 20 minutes for her to get to the office. So we were late. It was snowing like mad. We jumped on the freeway and made it to the appointment with 2 minutes to spare. The therapist was 15 minutes late. (urgh!) Then Nigel and I entertained ourselves in the lobby for an hour during her appointment. It was sunny in Olympia, but I knew it was snowing in Snohomish and I wasn't sure how much. We got in the car and headed back home. We got stuck in the traffic through Ft Lewis and Tacoma, but that was expected, (there are no carpool lanes on that part of I-5.) What I didn't expect was to slow down to 10 mph in Seattle and to maintain that speed all the way to Lynnwood. by the time we got to Lynnwood it was 6:30. We had left Olympia at 2:45. The kids were screaming and fussing in the back because they were starving... and Nigel hadn't slept in the car more than 10 minutes, so his lack of the normal 2 hour afternoon nap was also contributing to the mood. I decided to stop in Lynnwood at Applebee's to fix the food problem. While we were sitting there we watched an amazing amount of snow fall. I got back on the freeway to finish what would normally be 20 minutes to get home, but instead it was almost an hour. We probably had 6 inches of snow at our house already. We got home at 8:30. It was a really long day. The snow kept falling all night and was still falling when I woke up at 7 the next morning. Then it warmed up and the snow started melting, so I let the kids go out for a few minutes before it was gone. I didn't really have to worry, because it started snowing again that night, and we still had snow until yesterday afternoon at our house. It was one of the biggest storms we had all year, and it set a record for latest snow fall. I guess the earlier record was April 11 in 1972.
On Saturday we also went to the library with the kids. Can you believe that it was Mie Mie's first time to a library outside of school? She's going to turn 8 in July... I couldn't believe she'd never been to the library. We got her a card and she checked out 3 books and a movie. She was super excited. Nigel also got two books, one with a choo choo train and one with a plane. (He LOVES planes, trains and cars!) Then we went and met the Stutzmans and Zaniewskis for dinner on Saturday, and Mie Mie fell in love with all of them.
All in all we are adjusting pretty well. We are still finding our routine, and starting to have some less-than-perfect behavior from Mie Mie. But, our disciplining tactics seem to be working really well with that. Last night she was an hour late to dinner. (She was out in front of our house playing with her friends, so we could see her. We also reminded her to come in a couple of times.) So she came in to us cleaning up dinner and cold spaghetti sitting on her plate. She wasn't happy, but we explained that she chose to have a cold dinner by not coming home at dinner time. She couldn't argue with that. We also explained that playing with friends is a privilege that you lose if you do not obey the rules. So today she is not playing. :) We know that it is going to get very "fun" with her soon!
......Pictures to be posted after adoption is finalized......
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