Making a spectacle of herself

Amanda had an eye appointment a week or so ago, and the doctor said she should get glasses. Her left eye is starting to turn in, and he said we could do a patch but start with glasses and see how she does in 6 weeks or so. The glasses came in last week and we picked them upon Friday. It's interesting how glasses make a little kid seem more grown-up (don't you think?) Anyway, it's not the greatest picture, but you get an idea of her cute, spectacled face.

I measured her the other day and she has grown another inch by my estimation, and she is gaining weight, too. I had taken in the waist on some of her little shorts but they seemed to be getting tight, so I took them back out and they fit fine. It's exciting to see her growing! Her next doctor appointment is at the end of the month, so I'll have official stats then. For now, 3' 2", and I think around 31 lbs.

She had a pretty good week last week, except for movie day last Thursday. When I picked her up, Ms. Amanda said Ms. Nancy wanted me to see her the next morning. *sigh* I asked Amanda what she had done that was naughty, and finally got the story that Brooklyn hit her, so she hit Brooklyn, and Ms. Nancy had to stop the car and Amanda got moved to Ms. Boidee's vehicle. Hard to say who hit whom first, really, but I told Amanda it was not ok to hit. If someone hits her, she should tell Ms. Nancy, but not hit back. Ms. Nancy said she has been 100% better about talking back, but was hitting a lot. I didn't know it was even a problem, but I told her that Amanda knew she'd be in trouble at home if she hit anyone. Ms. Nancy also asked if I could maybe buy her flip-flops as she was really dying to have some, and that's why she wears her tennis shoes with the fasteners undone, and her sandals the same. I told her I'd tried but couldn't find any her size. I found some that I thought would work, although they're size 9 (she's in an 8-8 1/2), but I only let her wear them around the house as they don't fit well enough to go outside. I went to Target and checked, but the sizes there started at 10 or 12. I had checked K-mart before. The gal at Target suggested I try Wal-mart, but it was too hot to make another stop, and the gal had found a clearance pair of sandals with Hello Kitty that Amanda liked because they make the flip-flop sound, especially when I cut the back strap off for her (since she was wearing them today with the strap underneath, instead of on her achilles' tendon, when I picked her up from school).

I picked her up Friday afternoon and the afternoon gal said that Amanda was good for Ms. Nancy but had been naughty for her, saying no and talking back. I asked, isn't there a naughty chair, does that help. She said, well, yes, she guessed there was, but then she went on to give examples of her naughtiness. I'm listening, but my brain is saying, "The child is naughty, experiences no consequences, and you're expecting her to be ... less naughty? You obviously do NOT know this child!" I told her that I have found that I need to keep on top of Amanda's behavior, and she might want to try making her sit in the naughty chair and see if that helps. Good grief - hel-lo?!?! Reminds me of one morning early on when I took Amanda to daycare, sat her at one of the tables and was getting her breakfast from the counter where the cook places the plates. One of the teachers said to me, "She has a really hard time staying in her seat, she gets up and runs around when you leave." I just said, oh, ok, and took the food to Amanda. I told Amanda she should stay in her chair while she was at breakfast, but my brain was thinking, "Don't you have procedures for these situations? I have a hard time getting her to stay in bed at night. How about I handle that, and you handle what she does when I'm not here to do anything about it?" I really wasn't sure what she wanted me to do with that information, but I did try to reinforce the thought with Amanda (and that's probably all she wanted, but it came across kind of crabby). We've come a long way since then, of course.

Things I hear a lot:

My hair getting long (3-5x/day, especially in the bath tub)
These are flip-flops, hear them? (10-20x/day since purchasing them yesterday)
I'm your sunshine (5-8x/day)
Mommy always come back (1-2x/week)
What are you doing? (Usually right after I tell her what I'm going to do, for instance, removing the back strap from her new "flip-flops")
How did you do that?!?! (1-2x/week, when I do something spectacular like open a package - I wish I could think of a real example as it struck me as pretty funny. I told her it was magic, not that she knows what that is, but I found it amusing.)
I'm going to be 5, and I'm going to have birthday cake (whenever someone asks her how old she is)

I was stressing about how to make a cat cake for her, since my first cake was a cat cake, courtesy of my Aunt Ardith. I finally found a design online, so now I just have to make it. No problem, right? I'm looking forward to trying my hand at Mom's tradition of homemade (does a cake mix count?) decorated cakes, designed and cut from sheet cakes, frozen, frosted with fluffy frosting and decorated with candies and licorice. I hope I'm equal to the tradition! If not, I have a couple of years to practice before she becomes much of a critic, so that's good.

Her hair is getting long, of course - you just can't tell unless it's sort of combed out like this:
That picture is from July 16th, and this next one is from the 17th. Her hair doesn't look long in this one. The hair paraphenalia (wow, I didn't realize how hard that word would be to spell until I started it - I'm sure it's not right, but it looks ok so I'm leaving it) is from Aunt Barb, and once Amanda discovered it, she really became interested in fixing her dolls' hair, and hers (and mine). And she can put her hair and mine in a ponytail, and does a pretty good job! Maybe I just haven't hung around many 4- to 5- year olds - I think it's amazing, but maybe every little girl can put her hair in a pony tail and wrap the ponytail holder 3-4 times? (She barely has enough for a ponytail in the back of her hair, but succeeds in getting together enough so that there's a tiny ponytail when she's done.)
This is just a cute picture of her at work in her basement playroom. She's not coloring, though. No, she's methodically removing the wrapper from each crayon, denuding them (notice the pile of wrappers in the trash and the naked crayons on the left side of the container)).
Swimming with her cousins Abby and Shayla at the hotel for the family reunion. There was lots of chlorine in that pool! My eyes hurt just remembering. She loved it, though, and wanted to be with Abby and Shayla all the time (and they wanted to play in the deep end part of the time, so she had to settle for Mom). This isn't a great picture, but I include it to show you the small owie in the middle of her forehead. That little owie has, due to her interference and some heat rash, become a large series of red welt-looking marks on her forehead. I covered it a bit by her bangs in the first picture on this post as it looks so bad!

I can't put a bandaid on because she sweats it off, and I think it added to the heat rash. And I can't figure out how to get her to stop scratching it. I put her bangs in a ponytail holder this morning with instructions to leave it in, to at least keep her bangs from adding to the heat, but when I picked her up, no ponytail holder. I walked into daycare this afternoon and the first teacher I saw said, "What happened to Amanda's face?" *sigh*