Kylie wakes up at 6:00am every morning. She does a great job of turning on some lights and occupying herself. I get up at 6:30 and after getting dressed, I leave my bedroom at 6:45 to see what the munchkin is up to.
Some mornings, I'm greeted with an elaborately dressed little girl who is in the midst of pretend play.
Other mornings, Kylie is engrossed in some craft involving her foam stickers.
Every morning is different and every morning is a creative adventure.
We've been going to Adventure Landing Water Park off intermittently all Spring and Summer. Kylie mostly likes to play in the wave pool. She would walk through the Pirate Ship (pictured below) with its jetting water everywhere just enough to get my head soaked and wash away any sunscreen. Then she would be done and move on. I could not entice her to try any of the water slides.
But today the wave pool was closed. She hemmed and hawed about trying a water slide. So I simply swept her up, plopped her on one of the yellow-green slides and pushed her.
Luckily for me, she loved it.
I was able to sit on a pool chair with my feet dangling in the cold water while little bit climbed these 6 stairs and went down these slides for about two hours.
Going down the slides was easy. Getting past this torrential waterfall was trickier.
She did belly slides at the slide at the base of the ship.
She loved the red slide
and even tried the bigger yellow slide twice. She bonked her head on the side of the slide the second time and didn't want to try it again.
The only downside to the afternoon was that Kylie decided to check out the opposite side of the Pirate Ship without me. I saw her make a dash for it and went tearing after her but quickly lost her. This is the part of the pirate ship that I don't like. There are lots of interesting alcoves to explore and you can "exit" the ship in all four directions. And two different directions can lead you out of the park. I ran up to the very top of the thing and looked down for five breathless minutes until I spotted her. I told her to "Stop there wait for me!" (which luckily she did). We sat and had a chat about how Mommy gets scared when I can't see her and about stranger danger. Then we went on to playing.
All in all, it was a great afternoon and I was tickled to see the munchkin finally have fun on those slides!
I think Karen and I were just as excited as Kylie for her first day at school. I loved snapping a bunch of photos before we left home.
Sweet pea picked up some fallen flowers for Momma and I.
I simply had to take a few more photos as we waited at drop-off.
When I picked her up, Kylie said she had lunch with a "very sweet brown-haired girl". Today Kylie learned to insert her straw in her Capri Sun juice box by herself (she had to demonstrate again when she got home). She mentioned that Ms. Kirby worked with the 4-year olds and that she read them a story with a panda on the cover and an eagle on the inside. Kylie stated that she did some sorting practical life work. She explained that the snack today was carrots, grapes, crackers and water but that she was too busy for a snack. She said she didn't do any work with a mat during school and that she played in the sandbox during playground time.
This was a large amount of sharing for Kylie; last year she would usually grunt and say, "I'm not ready to share yet" when I asked her about her day. Thanks for sharing Kylie! We appreciate it!
Here in Jacksonville Florida, kids started back to school. Kylie had a 20-minute, meet-the-teachers event this afternoon. I plan to post more about that tomorrow or the next day. I had purposefully planned to take Kylie to the zoo this morning. It was wonderfully bare of people and it seemed like we had the zoo all to ourselves. We were there about two hours until we were ready to wilt from the heat.
This "groovy chic" picture cracks me up.
The dinosaur exhibit has moved on to another zoo but the stingrays were back.
I've had several folks tell me how tall Kylie has looked in the last few days. I couldn't agree more. She's shooting up all of a sudden.
Kylie and I have been making up some swim classes for the past three days. It seems like all we've both done is swim, swim, swim. Even though I grumble just a bit sitting by the side of the pool in 93 degree temps, it's all worth it when I see her swim like she does in these two videos.
Her swim coach has been the best. She combines the perfect amount of instruction and discipline with fun and play. I usually have to have one very short talk with Kylie during her lesson to remind her to not splash her coach nor to "go" before her coach says to go. I feel like it's my job to make sure that she shows the proper respect for her coach and to help bring Kylie back to her best behavior for her lesson. Usually I make this one reminder in my "mom voice" kneeling at eye level by the side of the pool. It is usually all Kylie needs to get back on track.
In this first video, Kylie swims to a pool weight, bobs up for breath and dives down to get the weight. She loves to dive for pool weights and would do it for hours if we let her. She does a couple of side breaths in this swim.
On this second video, she swims a lap--25 yards. She was getting tired by the time we filmed this and she opted to do back floats instead of side breathing which is perfectly appropriate for her age.
I'm so incredibly proud of my little swimmer.
I have a pile of Kylie's artwork sitting here by my scanner. Hopefully I'll get to it this weekend and show you a couple of nice drawings she has made. Until then, here are a few of my recent scrapbook pages. You can click on the picture for the credits.
Here's a page with pictures and memories of Kylie swimming in April 2010.
It's been too long since Kylie and I had a morning at the beach! We got up early Saturday and were at the ocean as the sun came up.
Kylie tried to catch some fish with her net.
She played with her boat
and her rolling, floating turtle. She would fill it up with water and then fling it.
Then it was time to get serious and do some body surfing. She started by sitting in the sand and have the waves lift and twirl her around.
After a while she was ready for deeper water and some excellent surfing.
I'm so proud of my little swimmer! She loved it!
See the boat in the distance on this picture. It's part of our beach re-nourishment project. They dredge up sand off the ocean floor and pump it back to the beach. It's a project done by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers. Beach renourishment occurs about every five to six years to maintain our beaches. The project is scheduled to place approximately 735,000 cubic yards of sand along a total of about six miles of shoreline. They were working on our section of the beach on Saturday and it was a very cool endeavor to watch.
After about 2 1/2 hours, kiddo started winding down and we made our way home.
It was science week at Kylie's school this past week. The focus was on experiments. I was impressed with two of the simple experiments they did. The first is pictured above. Kylie took an empty juice bottle to school. She got to fill it with water and then change the color of the water with food coloring. Then the teacher poured in some type of oil. The kiddo thought the oil would mix like the food coloring did and was intrigued when the oil kept floating to the top. Pretty cool experiment!
The second experiment was very simple. Each child got a black piece of construction paper. They they got to pick out a toy. Kylie picked out a plastic pizza slice. The kids put the toy on the construction paper outside in the sunshine first thing in the morning. Before lunch, they took the paper and toy back inside. The background of the paper had faded while the toy shape stayed the darker black. They called it "sun prints".
Friday was science show-and-tell day. I told Kylie she could either take her Alex Toys Shrinky Dinks Kit, Jewelry and show the what the shrinky dink looks like before it is baked and then after. Or she could take some of her Dinosaur Magic Capsules. After much deliberation, she chose the magic capsules. When I picked her up on Friday she proudly announced "I had the coolest show and tell of all the kids!"
and show the what the shrinky dink looks like before it is baked and then after. Or she could take some of her 
. After much deliberation, she chose the magic capsules. When I picked her up on Friday she proudly announced "I had the coolest show and tell of all the kids!" 
