No more posts (just fooling!)

I bet you thought I wasn't going to post again - April Fool's! Pretty boring April Fool's day. I should call home and see if Mom and Dad were able to get each other. Mom usually has to work quite a bit harder to get Dad than vice versa, which frustrates her a bit! How'd you do, Mom?

Amanda has been doing great. She is still quite obstinate/ contrary/ whatever you want to call it. If I say the bath is ok, get in, she says it's hot. If I say wait, it's hot, she'll say, "No, not hot" and gets in (not dangerously hot, of course). I read about giving children a head's up about what's going to be happening next, so she will have time to wind down with whatever is occupying her, so I'll say that we're going to eat supper in 5 minutes, and she'll just matter of factly say, "No." She will be eating nicely and then remember that I said not to chew with her mouth open, so she'll open it and chew loudly (to be naughty? to be funny? to show that she remembers she's not supposed to? I'm pretty sure it's all part of the power struggle she's still waging).

Day care has been going quite well. There was a change last week, when Miss Nancy's class gained some children and there were just too many and they moved some kids around. Amanda was moved to Miss Amanda's class (confusing with the names). I asked the assistant director if her class had kids that maybe were behind on some skills, slower developmentally - I can't remember how I worded it. Tough to word it in a way that won't make her want to give a politically correct answer. I wasn't surprised when she said that no, it was just a way of balancing the numbers. The next morning when I saw Miss Nancy, I told her I was sad that Amanda wasn't going to be in her class anymore, and she said, "Oh, she'll get there. She just has a few skills to work on." Ah-ha! I thought so! Miss Amanda's class has fewer kids (10-12 I think) so she will get more attention, and I know she has skills to work on, so I wasn't offended at all. She just needs to have consistency, so no more changes please! Miss Amanda is very nice. I wish I would have had a chance to observe her, as I did Miss Nancy. I could take some time off work - an hour here or there - and maybe will.

She did have a potty accident over naptime on Monday, the day of the change, but I think that was due to how tired we were from the Easter drive to Kansas and back and the excitement there. She had an accident today over naptime, also, but Miss Amanda said it sounded like she was having a bad dream. Miss Amanda went over and woke her up and she was crying, so Miss Amanda reassured her that she was at school and everything was ok. She often wakes up crying. I shouldn't say often - I think it's almost every day. I'm usually up when she wakes up. She will wake up crying and come and find me, and I will give her a hug and say, "Good morning, Sunshine", and pick her up and take her to the easy chair in her room, where we will rock. She will stop crying, take her hands away from her eyes, give me a huge grin and say, "Good morning, Sunshine!" Hopefully soon I will be able to ask her what she is crying about. Dawn had warned me that Shane had "night terrors" for quite awhile when they got home, and Amanda had woken up in the night crying and wanting to go to the bathroom for maybe the first month and a half, but she sleeps through the night most of the time. This morning she woke at 4am but went right back to sleep until 6.

When I pick her up from daycare, she is so excited! I can't remember if I noted this before. She has the biggest grin on her face and says, "Mama!", long and drawn out, and we share a huge hug, and she tells anyone who happens by, "Mama! This my Mama!". Definitely a "fill your tank" with happiness moment! Last week she started calling me "Mommy", with the air of enjoying a new word. She would repeat it and say it quite often, just to use the new word. I'm sure she picked that up from daycare conversations. It sounded funny to me, but she was not to be dissuaded. We were at church for a dinner/missionary update and before the dinner we were playing on the playground equipment outside. She was calling me "Mommy", and I started calling her "Amandy", but the sarcasm was beyond her and she even started calling herself Amandy, so I quit that. I haven't noticed it as much this week - once or twice maybe. Or maybe I've gotten used to becoming "Mommy".

I noticed that she had totally ceased calling herself "Leila", although I don't know when it really stopped. I know she was using it quite frequently March 9th, as my sister Lynnette was here and found herself calling Amanda "Leila" (and kicking herself for it - it's surprisingly hard to call a child the name you know her by when she refers to herself as something else - or at least, it surprised Lynnette). I couldn't pinpoint the last time I'd heard "Leila". I had mentioned to a few people that she had stopped, and then Sunday night, we were having supper and talking a little (mealtime conversation is sometimes pretty sparse), and she was replying to something I said about herself as "Amanda" when she stopped and looked at me and said, "Leila!", pointing to herself. Then she said, "Amanda Leila!", so I repeated that, and that was it. I haven't heard "Leila" since then. We'll see!

Easter was a lot of fun. Mom and Dad kindly agreed to detour through Omaha and let us carpool with them to Enterprise, KS (3 hours from Omaha, 5+ hours from Hoskins/Norfolk). I wasn't sure how tough it would be to have my first "road trip" with Amanda be a 3-hour one, so I suggested the carpool. Thanks, Babushka and Diadushka! Grandpa sat with Amanda in the back seat and was great to Amanda, entertaining and helping with the cheerios (when he wasn't asleep). =) Mom and I enjoyed singing along with Amanda's car music, even listening to it when she was asleep sometimes. It was a bit nerve-wracking to be in my sister Patty's house and not know what Amanda was getting into at every moment. Sometimes Abby (age 9) would be entertaining her, but she got tired of it at times. I told her she had to let me know when she went off duty! Brittany (17) and Meagan (19) (I hope I'm getting these ages right) were great, playing with Amanda and watching over her. It didn't help Patty, as they are her helpers, but she was a great hostess. Once, Amanda did escape watch and when I was trying to find her, Patty told me she was downstairs. Yikes! The steep stairs that I told her "No" to! I ran over, saying, "Oh no" and she said, "Yeah, she fell but Brittany caught her". Brittany's account was that Amanda was a few steps from the bottom and Brittany was ironing when she saw Amanda start to fall and so Brittany dove over to catch her. It's quite dramatic in my head. Brittany gets the "Save of the weekend!" Amanda was very good in church, and enjoyed the egg hunt they hosted in the basement classrooms. Patty also had an egg hunt at the library (she had rented the community center below for our dinner and is the driving force on the library committee, and since the library is in the same building, she was able to use it also.). Patty supplied eggs with candy as well as presents in the kids' baskets (Amanda loved her velcro butterfly watch!), and Grandma also brought eggs with candy and some with coins! Aunt Lynnette had sent some gift bags for the kids as well. Perhaps next year, I'll make a contribution....

Amanda enjoyed so many Easter egg hunts, in Kansas and in Omaha the weekend before. After Easter, she would mention, "Eggs?" hopefully every so often. Reminded me of when Meagan was little and one year she had about 5 different birthday parties. She thought she was going to have birthday parties all the time!

"Tyotya" (Aunt) Barb brought her dogs down for the day, and Amanda was quite drawn to and scared of them. The other kids were gathered around and they gave Amanda the leash of the little dog, Paco. I think she had picked up on Barb telling them to sit earlier, and she latched onto that with a vengeance. She was shouting at Paco to "Sit! Sit down! Sit down doggie!", but if Paco turned in her direction with his friendly face she would drop the leash and jump back. It was so funny. I started taping it and was laughing so hard I was crying. Later that afternoon, Barb had the dogs tied outside of the back door, and they were sitting, watching the door or just looking around. Meanwhile, Amanda is at the back window shouting at them through the glass, "Sit down, doggies! Sit down!" "Sit down!". I told her they were ok, they were sitting. She just looked at me and returned to her task of keeping the dogs in line. Too funny.

She is really making strides on her language. It sneaks up on me, as you can imagine, I don't notice day to day. She sings along with most of the songs, and the other day she was singing "Make new friends", one of the songs on the CD. I don't even realize she has learned these songs, and then they just appear while she's playing around the house. She amazes me with the things she has learned, and how quickly she picks up on things. She was trying to get up a ladder on the playground equipment, and I showed her how to turn her hand the other way and hang on underneath the lip of the platform (hard to describe) and she said, "Oh, ok" and proceeded to have no problem, that time and the next 20 times she climbed it. I was driving home Monday and was turning onto 120th street, going through a green/yellow. I said "hang on" as we were turning sharply, and from the backseat, clear as a bell, I heard, "You need to stop..." I think she was repeating my admonition to her when she was being naughty (multiple times, no doubt), but it was funny timing! And such a complete sentence! She speaks in complete sentences, but sometimes lacks the articles, part of the sentence structure, wrong tense or person, etc. ("Mama take a shower?", "You done" instead of "I'm done" or "All done", etc.). Anyway, something about that sentence "You need to stop" really struck me. We made a joke about it all night. I'd say to her out of the blue, "You need to stop!" and she would repeat it back to me, emphasizing the "YOU need to stop", and back and forth. She's so smart and entertaining to be around!

I got her pictures taken at JCPenney's portrait studio last Friday night. I'm excited to get the pictures and also to give them to family so she can take her place in their house (although if they are as organized as I am, her picture will end up on a pile and not make it onto the wall, but best intentions, etc...)

It's past my bedtime! And I think I covered most of what I wanted to mention to cover the last weeks that I haven't blogged. Happy Easter! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)