No :(

| March 10, 2017

My little girl brings me so much joy, but sometimes, she says things that make me so sad. Last night, I was lying in her bed with her after reading books and trying to get her to fall asleep. She kept reaching out to hold my arm and I said, “No, Sam!” because I didn’t really want her touching me since it makes it that much harder to get out of her bed when she falls asleep without waking her up. The next thing I knew, I heard her little voice mumbling,  “All  ever hear is ‘No, Sam…'” I wasn’t sure I heard her correctly so I asked her to repeat it and when she did she sounded so sad.

It is so hard being a mom sometimes. You try so hard to steer them into the right behavior, but sometimes, I think there can be more No’s than you realize. It is something I told her that I would try to work on. Less No’s, more Yes’s. I hope I can stick to it.

School Conference

| March 8, 2017

We had a spring conference with Sam’s teacher, Mrs. Hall, tonight. I will confess, when I saw that she requested the conference, I was a little worried. Last year, we were told that spring conferences were only if your child had issues or needed some intervention. But, when I read the form scheduling the conference, Mrs. Hall had written us a very nice note saying that Sam has made so much improvement since the fall conference, that she wanted us to come in so she could share Sam’s work and some updates.

Sam is meeting her reading level goals for this semester (she is at level I, whatever that means) and she is supposed to be at level J by the end of the year, so that is great. Her math abilities have also improved (thankfully, since math was a major source of stress for Sam). She is also apparently much more comfortable in the classroom in terms of speaking up, raising her hand, sharing with the class and things like that. Mrs. Hall actually told us that she has been found to be more chatty at her table, which is normally a bad thing, but Mrs. Hall is actually glad to see it since it means she is comfortable in class.

The only areas she needs to really work on are her spelling, the neatness of her handwriting, and staying focused in class. Unsurprisingly, Sam is a bit of a daydreamer. She’s always got something going on in her head, that’s for sure, she is very creative. The problem is keeping her focused on class. We’re working on it. How much luck we will have is anyone’s guess!

Sam’s mBot

| March 5, 2017

Mark had bought Sam a pink mBot so that they could play robot games together.  She has been bugging him about putting it together (she was supposed to do this one on her own to earn her robot badge), but when she is clearly not in a focused mood where she is going to listen to his instructions, he won’t do things like that with her. She finally harassed him enough and they got started. Mark had to help her with a few minor things, but otherwise, she did put it together on her own, with his instruction. Here she is working hard!

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The two mBots looked really cute chasing each other around while in line following mode. The pink mBot was faster (most likely because its batteries were new), but we like to think she is chasing her boyfriend, blue mBot. 🙂

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Since she did do the assembly herself, Sam earned her merit badge. She was so happy to finally have a second one.

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mBots in love. 🙂 Sam added the flower to the pink one. It is a girl, after all!

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For a while, we had the mBots dragging around some cat toys. It is cute watching the cats flip out. Apparently, Zach wasn’t too happy that mBot has his “bugs”!

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Dr. Seuss Week

| March 3, 2017

We just finished Dr. Seuss week at school. One of Sam’s favorite days is crazy hat day. Last year, I did such a rush job on her hat (she is lucky she had one) because we were all right in the middle of Joe being so sick. It was all I could do to get any hat at all put together. Sam liked it though, so no harm done, but this year, I wanted to make an extra effort to give her something she could really be happy about. I decided to make her something totally crazy that is all her. Bows, bows, and more bows! That is my Sam.

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I don’t know how she was able to see out of that thing, but she says she could.

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For stripes day, this is the outfit she picked out. Last year, she wanted stripes drawn on her face and I wondered if she would ask again this year. Yup! She did. And once again, she told me all her classmates wondered why she had “marker” on her face. Uncreative children…so sad. My girl is an original. 🙂

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