A Big Week for a Big Girl

Finally. It was Rowan's big week, what she'd been waiting a very long time for. The first week of preschool. Rowan has been talking about preschool, pretty consistenly, since last year. I started talking it up this summer at some point and, this week, it finally came.

Rowan, who normally sleeps in until 9:00 or so, was a bit disgruntled when I woke her up before 8 to get to school by 8:45, but quickly woke right up, dressed herself in her green butterfly dress, ate breakfast, got her backpack all ready, allowed me to take a few obligatory "first day" pics and we left. And she loved it. With Rowan's active imagination, it's a bit difficult to know what happened in reality and what happened in her imagination. But I'm pretty sure she sang songs, read books, painted and played with her friends. And judging by her conversations with her imaginary friends during nap time, her teachers said lots of "por favor" and sang a specific song called "Bienvenidos Aqui".

Rowan also rediscovered dolls this week. Never one for dolls before, when we moved to our new house, I kept her dolls in a box since she, not even once, ever played with them. But lately, she'd been carrying around tiny dolls (part of her doll house set) and calling them her babies, cuddling them, pretending to be their mommy. She even occasionally did this with stickers from her Little Einstein's book. So, I went downstairs and found a tub with some dolls in it and brought them up. And life has changed completely. One doll quickly became her favorite. She named it Clarissa, after a girl in her class. Then the next day she named it Polly Pocket and the next day it was Lucy. Well see if a name sticks or if she just continues to name it whatever works that day. Today she brought Lucy to Target with me and I indulged her by letting her bring in her baby doll stroller and walk around Target pushing her baby stroller while I pushed the cart. And, I have to say, it might have been one of the cutest things I've ever seen.

Tate and I are enjoying our new time together. Building with blocks, reading books, playing just the two of us. He continues to be obsessed with monkeys, dogs and milk. He loves music, dancing and being tickled and thrown in the air. He doesn't say a lot, but his favorite words are milk, hold you and woof woof (and, of course, Mommy, Daddy and RoRo).

Tonight while we were dancing around the kitchen, Tate discovered his shadow. I'm not really sure how it took 18 months, but unlike Rowan's sheer delight when she discovered her shadow, Tate did not like it. Not at all. He looked at it, looked at me and his eyes widened. I showed him how his shadow moves when he moves, how my shadow moves when I move. He seemed okay with it for a minute, but when we walked out of the room and our shadows came along, he was, again, unhappy, So, I turned off the light and figured I'd save it for another day.