Big milestones for the end of 2010

1. After listening to Maia chattering on about words and letters on a drive home from downtown, I went into the basement and pulled out my old Guided Reading materials (left from my days teaching first grade) and brought them upstairs. We pulled up some Level A books that we found online, and, sure enough, Maia was able to read them! It was a big day in the life of a Hecker-Genisio girl: today was Maia's first day as a book reader! :) I'm thrilled beyond words, and so proud of her. We're going to add this into our daily routine as often as she likes; between dinner and evening snack, I'll help her out with her own reading, and at bedtime, Brian will continue with their novel reading routine. (They are starting Harry Potter in a couple of days; Brian got her the whole series in a box set for her birthday. Shhhh, don't tell her until Sunday!) Sounds like a great plan!

2. Eli's second tooth came in this morning, and now he can officially sit up on his own. He's getting so big!

2010: Kicking Butt and Taking Names

From Christmas 2010

I'm doing our 2010 retrospective post a bit early; looking at our schedule over the next week or so, I'm not sure when I'll be able to sit down and ponder what this year has meant to us. So, now is as good a time as any.

1. Of course, Eli Hecker Genisio's arrival at 5:04 AM on August 7th was the biggest moment of change for our whole family. It's a joy to know him--he's got a huge personality and a lot to say, and I think that the world is lucky to have him. :)
2. Maia began preschool, where she gets twice-weekly opportunities to learn from the wonderful Ms. Mariann.
3. Maia's writing her name and working on sounding out other words (both in reading and writing). She's been through an explosion of literacy skill development this year.
4. Maia's happily drawing people, animals, nature scenes, and buildings; the easel in our playroom is getting some excellent use.
   
5. Potty training: ugh, thank goodness it's over. What a milestone!
6. Brian and Maia read the following books together over a year's worth of evenings: Stuart Little, Mary Poppins, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Beezus and Ramona, Ramona the Pest, Junie B. Jones, Winnie the Pooh, and a whole bunch of others.
   
7. Brian began working at SRT Solutions early this year. This seems like "home" for him professionally, and he truly is kicking butt and taking names.
8. Along the same lines: Brian wrote and will soon have published his first technical article.
9. Brian and Cara both ran 5Ks this year--Brian in the first half of the year, and Cara in the second.
   
10. Cara earned certification as a DONA doula. Accordingly, she's searchable on a national website and was able to raise her fee. Woot!
11. Cara attended the births of six babies this year (other than Eli's).
12. Cara attended a professional conference in Milwaukee and proudly represented the Lamaze Family Center at a meeting at U of M Hospital, where she got to stand up in front of a room full of labor nurses and answer the question "What do you guys teach about epidural?" on the spur of the moment. (Gulp.)
    
13. Cara prepared for and achieved an un-medicated, medical-intervention-free birth. This achievement should also be listed under the category of "huge achievements by Cara's labor support team"--Jo, Stephanie, Brian, Chyrisha, et al.
14. Cara is exclusively breastfeeding a 22-pound boy. Not a drop of formula.
15. Our family got to spend hours upon hours of wonderful time with our amazing friends Jen and Steve I, Jen and Steve II, Stephanie, Julie, Marybeth, Meredith, Rich, Kathleen, Charlie, Katherine, Drew, Stephanie, Aaron, Harper, Esme, Rachel, Maeve, Katie, Allison, Sam, Charley, Isabel ... and that doesn't even include preschool friends! Phew!
16. Family. Sisters, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins. We can't put into adequate words how much our extended family means to us.
17. Health. We've had a couple of colds this year ... and that's it.

Thank you, 2010. Moving on to 2011!

A day in the life of Maia

1. Wearing a lovely purple velvet princess dress and Rudolph antlers at preschool this morning.

2. At preschool, we found out that she was wearing two pairs of underpants. When Brian asked her this morning if she had put on new underpants, she wasn't lying when she said "yes." (She dresses herself in the morning these days.) She'd just neglected to take off the old pair underneath.

3. Learning how to say "Goodbye" in Arabic from her favorite waiter at our Lebanese restaurant of choice downtown. Her "ma'a salama!" upon leaving the restaurant was fantastic.

4. She thoroughly beat Brian in a round or two of Go Fish! this evening, and was happy to say "I kicked your butt, Daddy!" repeatedly.

I was taking a little trip down memory lane through our blog earlier this evening, just remembering some of her first year milestones and watching old videos. She started with sign language words at eight months and said her first spoken word ("Hi!") when she was nine months old. Here we are now, just shy of her four year birthday, and today she wrote her first comic book. In the story, she's the main character, and she is confronted by a "mean, sick goblin" who's up to no good. She throws orange juice on the goblin and that's the end of him!

I love this person so very much.

Mr. Big

Remember that band from the early 90s? Mr. Big? How cheesy were they?

Anyway, Eli had his 4-month appointment with our family doc today, and all is well (as always). He weighed in just shy of 22 pounds (21 lbs. 14 oz.), and he's 28.5 inches long. His growth curves are continuing on just as they always have--"100th percentile" (statistical nonsense, still). The doc said she'd be surprised if he slows down very much--she put her fingers around the bones of his ankle and said that he's a big-boned guy who's likely to stay very big indeed.

He's taking his sweet time to reach the milestone of rolling over, which is no concern; he'd just prefer to roll onto his side and stop there to chew on his hands for a while. His hand control is ahead of the usual pace, while rolling-over is behind it ... and such is the life of being an individual rather than a statistic. :)

He got two immunizations and was none too happy with that, but he's asleep now and will hopefully sleep for a while. We shall see!

Our emergent writer

Maia's gone through a little explosion of growth in the reading, writing and drawing departments over the last couple of weeks. As a part of her imaginary play, she'll write notes to other characters in the story that she's crafting; usually, she's Mary Poppins, and those of us around her are playing other roles in that film/book/drama combo. Eli is usually Michael Banks, and I'm often Jane. Daddy gets to play the role of Bert.

This morning, just after our Sunday AM pancake breakfast, Maia was switching roles back-and-forth between herself and Mary Poppins, sending notes through the mail (which involves putting them in Mona's crate, for some reason) and reading them out loud. I've attached a photo of a couple of the notes and a drawing.

From Maia's writing

Back when I was an elementary classroom teacher, my favorite subject to teach was writing (it was the area in which I had some specialized training), and so I get a particularly gratifying thrill from watching Maia go through the process of becoming an emergent writer here in my own house. She's pretty adept at writing most of the upper-case letters of the alphabet without reminders, and of course she's been writing her name for many, many months now. She knows the sound-letter correspondences, too, and when she's writing a word, she'll do that emergent-writer thing of writing down the first and last consonant sounds in a word and nothing else. So, for example, she'll write the name "Mary" as "MR" (or, occasionally, "MRE" if she's paying attention to vowel sounds). That's enough to represent the word for her. She tracks left to right across a page, and top to bottom, and she'll often add her own lines to the page first before she writes down the words.

I love watching this unfold before my eyes and to have it be so self-directed on her part. She's enthusiastic about writing ... there's no "Hey Maia, why don't you write Mary a letter?" from us. So cool. :)

Something to remember

Eli likes to hold hands, as most babies do. When he's feeling particularly lovey and cuddly, though, here's what he does: he'll put his palm against mine and then begin to weave his fingers in between mine, in an honest-to-goodness snuggly hand hold with interlaced fingers. Then, he'll look into my eyes and talk quietly for several minutes.

He's a kid who's really fond of his Mama.