Woznation

Wil and Evie started preschool!  After visiting twelve (12!!!!!!!) preschools in the area, we finally settled on one mid-August and the kids are loving it.

Wil is going 9-11:30 Monday through Friday.  There are options for earlier drop-off or later pick-up, but we are starting slow.  He also does 30 extra minutes of speech at the school on Tuesday and Thursday which he really seems to enjoy.  There is another speech program through the city on Thursdays from 3-4 that we are trying out as well.  We will see which one works best for us over the next month, but so far he is loving all of them! Wil is in a class of 18, with two teachers.  I think like 14 of the kids are boys?!  He seems to get along with everyone for the most part and is adjusting well.  They do not have a strong discipline policy ( no time-outs or ‘yellows’ like last year), which I think helps Wil not feel like hes in trouble all. the. time.  All the kids are assigned a ‘helper job’ every day,  like hold the door, turn off the lights, push in chairs, etc.  One time Wil told me they switched his job to be the ‘watcher’, which I thought was a really clever way to separate him from the class to calm down, instead of a ‘time-out’.  Parent/teacher conferences are at the beginning of Oct, so we’ll see if I get any more details then. But I think its going awesome.

(This is what happens when you take too many pictures of your 4 year old on the first day of school:)

Evie goes one day a week (Fridays).  The 2-year old class is truly hilarious.  I have no idea how they accomplish anything.  But I thought it was a good introduction to sitting in a circle, listening to a teacher, and being away from me. They started with one hour and are slowly working their way up to 2.5 hours.  The first week they had all the parents stay in a room around the corner in case there were any serious meltdowns.  A few of us exchanges emails in case we wanted to meet up outside of school, which was really nice.  And a couple parents were called out to help their kids, but I was never called!  Evie looooooves school, and doesnt miss me at all :). The last few weeks have gone great, too.

The school has an awesome pick-up and drop-off policy with the little ones.  Its a giant car circle where they bring all the kids right to the door and let out one by one when you circle around.  I have a big sign with the kids names on it, so they know who to let out.  Its really convenient, but a huge downside is that I havent met ANYONE, at least in Wil’s class.  I’m so disappointed!  I was really hoping to meet other people in the area and make some friends through preschool.  I knew tons of other moms from chatting at pick-up at Wil’s old school, but pick-up here is a completely isolated experience.  Oh well.  I’m trying to make some connections through Evie’s class email list, but its still a work in progress.

The hardest part of preschool is dropping off Wil Monday through Thursday and Evie watching him go.  She wants to go to school sooooo bad, every day, and misses her brother.  But its been really nice for me to only deal with one kid and I’ve enjoyed our mother/daughter time before #3 comes along. I’m really looking forward to having a few Friday mornings to myself – but so far that hasnt happened due to waiting at school the first week, visitors the second week, and Wil being sick the third week. Go figure. I’m hoping this Friday will pan out since I planned Barney’s yearly appointment.  Maybe next Friday I can go get a massage!

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Wil at 4 years 2 months: 35 lbs (46th percentile), 41.25 inches (67th percentile), BMI: 14 (20th percentile)

Wil is a climbing machine these days!  It took him a long time to try new things at the playground, but I think watching Evie do a few things finally convinced him to give them a try.  And now he loves it!  Hes getting much better with his hand/eye coordination and is getting very confident in his abilities.  He’s brought his love of climbing home and loves to climb the outside of the stairs on the banister and climb from couch to couch on the arm rests.  Hes still big into pretending and imagination and building towers, but much prefers to be outside on the playground if given the chance.

Hes also starting to get to the point in his life where he is saying hilarious things.  One of his shows was talking about a platypus, so I wanted to show him a picture and he looked at a few of them, then asked ‘Is that a monkey turtle?’.  I loved it.  On a hot day, after we stopped the car was dripping, he asked if the car was peeing. And whenever he sees a yellow car on the road he asks if its ‘bumble bee’ (from transformers). He’s also starting to phase out ‘Mommy’ and just goes for ‘Mom’ these days. It makes me a little sad, but also shows me that hes growing up.

With his friend, Alyssa.

Wil loves the show Daniel Tiger.  Its based on Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and its an amazing show.  Each little episode is its own little ‘social story’, which was recommended to us when we were getting Wil evaluated for speech/frustration/acting-out.  And there is usually a little jingle that goes along with each lesson (“Use your wooooords, Use your words!”).  And Wil LOVES them and sings the songs he learns from them!  And sings them to Evie. Its so amazing.  Evie was frustrated and throwing things the other day and he goes up to her and starts singing ‘Lets taaaaaalk about it’ to calm her down.  Daniel Tiger is a better parent than I am.  Forget ‘2 hours of screen time a day’ when it comes to this show.  Wil is allowed to watch as much Daniel Tiger as he wants.

Wil and Phil do this silly thing at bedtime where they both lay perfectly still in random places around the room right before I come in to say goodnight to Wil.  Then when I walk in, Phil counts to 3 and they both sit up and go ‘HELLO’. (I told you it was silly).  Anyway – when Phil was away on a work trip earlier this week, Wil hung out in his room by himself while I was putting Evie to bed – but still laid down and did his ‘1-2-3-HELLO’ when I walked in the room. I thought it was hilarious and awesome.  I hope he continues to do it forever.

Evie at 2 years 3 months: 30 lbs (80th percentile), 35 inches (72nd percentile)

Evie is a crazy person. (Were you expecting to hear anything different? Like all of a sudden she likes to read books quietly in her room or something? Nope.) She has reached the point where she says ‘I do it all myself’ to just about everything.  Its always hard in the moment, but – she DOES do it all herself.  And as I mentioned earlier – shes already climbing circles around Wil – so its not really a bad thing.  Shes an impressive lady. Char tells me stories about Phil on the playground — and how other mothers would come up and be like ‘Umm, your son is climbing on top of the swings’ and she would just nod and say hes fine.  Well, thats totally Evie.  Shes climbing up on the 12-year old stuff and other parents look at me like shes/I’m crazy, buts shes totally fine!  I swear.  Shes got it.

But man, if shes in a bad mood — Watch out. She likes to throw things and hit when shes angry and does not respond well to discipline.  She hates time outs and absolutely refuses to apologize.  If you tell her shes not allowed to do something (like play with fire?!), she throws herself to the ground crying like you just ripped her heart out.  There were a few days earlier this month where she just hated everyone and everything.  There was no keeping that girl happy.  Maybe she was sick?! I reached the point where I just wished she would vomit all over me or something, because then, at least, I might find a little empathy in my heart to take care of her if she was sick.  Day after day of her just constantly screaming and yelling makes you start to lose your compassion.  I know that seems like a ridiculous thing to say – like I know shes 2 years old and I shouldnt really let her get to me that much.  I obviously try to comfort her.  But shes a mentally exhausting person.  I think its kind of appropriate that my friends smartphone auto-corrects ‘Evie’ to ‘Evil’.

She has transitioned to a ‘big girl bed’ like a champ.  Well – its just a mattress on the floor for the time being, but I thought it was going to be a disaster.  I thought by giving her her freedom, she would never actually sleep!  But she proved me wrong and never fought it once.  She still sleeps in the crib at night – but we are hoping to get her a bedroom set by the time #3 is here (even though he’ll be in the pack-n-play in our room for the first few months).  Shes showing all the signs of being ready to start potty training, too.  But I’m not sure if I have the time or energy to undergo that endeavor before the baby is born. I think its probably better to wait until after we make that adjustment, then hopefully potty training will be a piece of cake.

Evie is just so on top of things.  Her speech and communication astounds me.  Shes counting and doing ABCs.  She figures out exactly what things are and what their purpose is or makes well-informed, but hilarious, guesses. (I cant think of a good example right now.  She thinks coasters are frisbees? And throws them are the house).  Her favorite show these days is ‘Tumble Leaf’ with Fig the Fox and his catch phrase is ‘I figured it out’ and Evie repeats that all day long. (Between Fig and Daniel Tiger — I barely need to parent.  Its great.) I have a kids mode on my phone that features a talking alligator who she calls ‘Guy’.  “I want Guy” she says and knows how to work all the apps better than I can and loves to take selfies and record songs.

Wil and Evie are each others best friends and have such a blast together.  They love holding hands and racing down slides.  They have a new game where they take turns pretending each other is ‘the baby’ and cook food to feed ‘the baby’ in their kitchen.  There are still days where I find myself saying things like “DONT EVEN LOOK AT EACH OTHER” — as I place them on opposite sides of the room and try to go to the bathroom real quick before they kill each other. “No tackling each others heads” is another favorite saying of mine. True brotherly/sisterly love.

These two are seriously fantastic.  As challenging as this summer was – I’m really grateful that I got to spend so much time with them.  I’m glad I was the one to be a constant in their lives as we made so many big changes.  I’ve been so impressed with the kids ability to adapt and go-with-the-flow.  Their enthusiasm and excitement made it easier for me to accept all these changes too.  Thanks kiddos.  Love you guys.

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At the end of July my whole family got together in bloomington to meet and celebrate new baby Cole. It was really nice to only be a few hours away for a short weekend trip like this.  We were able to leave thursday night and go back sunday afternoon – phil worked some overtime during the week and didnt even have to use vacation days for the trip.  Something like this from Baltimore would have been much more involved, and we would have lost much more sleep. This trip was a piece of cake!

Its always a blast getting together with my siblings and its getting really fun for all the cousins now that some of them are old enough to play together. Can I also just say that Phil and I are pulling ahead in the ‘whos providing the most grandchildren’ race.  Andrew and Jessie are WAY behind (as are all the Wozniaks).   I’m really excited that#3 and Cole will be so close in age so they will each have a playmate at future reunions. (Also — Maggie and I agree that maybe “#3” is a fine and awesome name for a child?  Its like a code name.  He’ll be the next james bond? Anyway…)   Cole is an adorable little chunker — it was so fun getting to spend time with a new baby again before #3 comes.  Especially such a happy laid back little guy like Cole! Phil and Maggie are naturals and make a great parenting team.  The kids were really excited to pet his feet and sing him songs.  I kept trying to reinforce that baby brother would be here soon and be tiny like baby Cole – they were really excited — but were equally excited about all the baby toys like the bouncer and play mat.  It reminds me to get some of that stuff out now so the kids get used to it again and willing to share with the baby when the time comes.

Cheers to family!

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So this is awkward…. I’ve seriously had so many other things on my mind that I’ve wanted to post, that ‘Having baby#3’ has been pretty low on the list.  And now here I am, 7 months pregnant, and just getting around to mentioning it on here.  Its a boy 🙂 And we’re really looking forward to his arrival.

This pregnancy has been rough.  We decided on baby #3 right as we decided phil would start looking for jobs in the midwest, and they both happened simultaneously (which we are very very grateful for!)  But it made things challenging.  My first trimester, I survived on bagels and ginger ale, and clenched my teeth to not vomit most of the day,  all while Phil was making multiple interview trips.  Then came the actual move — maybe it was the stress of moving, or stress of leaving my job to stay at home, or the physical issues of moving, or the living in btown away from phil for a month, or the lack of sleep, or all the logistics of getting set up in a new place, or the million of other issues that we have dealt with in the last 7 months — but my body can feel it.

While pregnant with Wil, I remember being  impressed that a body could be so awesome. Then with Evie, I could appreciate pregnancy so much more since I finally understood what was on the other side.  But with this one, Its not quite as magical. There is nothing really beautiful or glamorous about this pregnancy.  My body hurts. Its tired. I’m just hanging on until its over.  (With my first pregnancy, they were also telling me to eat more milkshakes because I wasnt really gaining weight. Lets just say with this one, they are not pushing the milkshakes.) I’m hoping as things wind down these last few months, I’ll be able to reflect and appreciate this pregnancy a bit more, especially since it will be my last one.  But truly, I just want him to be here.

A lot of people think we’re crazy taking on this much in one year.  More than a handful of people have asked if this baby was planned, haha.  (Answer: Yes).  But we figured we’d rather deal with all the riff-raff of moving and pregnancy this year — then feel settled and complete with our family in the years ahead.  Plus we wanted the kids to be close in age and we are totally in the ‘diapers and carseats’ mode right now — why string it out? I think it would be harder to go back to the infant years after the other kids were older and more independent.

So there you have it.  Only two more months until his arrival!  Now if only we had a name for him…

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