5 Years

Can you believe LO turned 5 ten days ago? Me neither!

It seems like it was both forever and not that long ago that I was despairing that IVF was never going to work. And yet, here I am with a 5 year old and a 7 month old.

LO is starting kindergarten in the fall; we chose to keep her in the private kindergarten at the preschool she's been attending to allow her a bit longer in a smaller class of 12-16 instead of 26-28 in the local public school. Come September she will move from the pre-K class to the kindergarten class - a change in building and schedule. Instead of dropping her off any time before 9, drop off will be at 9, and pickup will move from 12:30-1 to some time between 3 and 4 (I need to look that up). It will be interesting to see how she reacts to the longer days. And by interesting I mostly mean that I think it's going to be a rough transition.

I've had LO in swimming lessons since April. She had a couple months of once weekly private lessons followed by two sessions of 3x a week group lessons. The first focused on familiarity with the freestyle stroke, water safety and fun things like how to dive to retrieve things from the bottom of the pool. The group lessons have been more intensive on freestyle stroke, breathing and endurance. Next year we plan to join the neighborhood pool so she can/will be on the swim team.

There has been a huge increase in attitude and sass over the past few months. I am not a fan. Things like repeating what we've said in a bratty voice, blowing small raspberries when we ask her to do things, blatant disobedience in doing exactly what we've just told her specifically not to do. Boundary pushing at its finest, and no shame in being reprimanded for her negative actions or pride in being praised for the good ones. It's exasperating!

But then she'll do something helpful without being asked like pick up a toy LT's thrown or clear her plate and cup after dinner and it gives me hope that something is getting through even if we don't always see it.

DH has really stepped up on doing things for and with LO since LT was born. He takes care of breakfast and getting her dressed if I've set out her clothes the night before, and I've recently stepped back from bedtime in an attempt to get LT to bed earlier. I miss singing LO to sleep but it's really going much smoother to divide and conquer since they both go to bed around the same time.  Unfortunately since most of my time is wrapped up with LT during the day thanks to her continued lack of napping anywhere but on me and now crawling everywhere I feel like most of the time I spend with LO is filled with my fussing at her for one thing or another which makes it much harder for me to see the good things going on. Attention one way or another, I'd prefer to give it for good stuff though, and try to recognize it when I see it.

We had two parties for LO - one for family, at home, and the second for friends at Monkey Joe's (a indoor facility similar to Chuck E Cheese except with lots of inflated bounce structures instead of games). For the family party I made a strawberry cake per LO's request instead of the usual carrot cake. The icing alone takes a pound of butter, but is the perfect accompaniment to the cake. The friends party was the biggest yet with over a dozen attendees. Not sure if it was the location or my managing to get the invites out six weeks in advance which helped! Everyone seemed to have a good time, even the boy who lost his shit at having to leave. Whoops!