Trackcat: 4 Years + 8 months! (August 2019)

Monday, November 18, 2019

4 Years + 8 months! (August 2019)

Almost every nice day, Vivi asks to go to the beach, which isn’t that surprising since she started asking to go to the beach back in January! Most days either Janda or I, or both of us, will bring the kids down to the river. We also started going to Good Harbor during the week when it’s not busy and they both love that beach too. Vivi loves swimming and splashing in the water, but she also really loves to dig in the sand and to find little animals and just get muddy and sandy! She is a total beach baby!

This summer a little girl, who is one of Ryder’s classmates, has been spending Thursdays at her grandmother’s house two doors down. All three of the kids plays well together, but Vivien in particular has been very excited to have a little girl to play with. She is always on the lookout for Olivia on Thursdays and has been playing with her doing activities that Ryder isn’t always that interested in. It’s cute to see her playing with another little girl, especially since she is doing more of what she wants instead of (happily) following along with Ryder and the boys in the neighborhood.

Vivi is still obsessed with doing ‘activities’, which is a catch-all phrase for any art or science-y activity that I help set her up with. She often pulls out the project materials from my storage area and begs to do something. Now that she’s older, I can give her some materials and let her create how she wants. One of the last days of summer, she and Ryder made their own activity. I’m not sure what it started out as, but it ended up being squirt painting with eye droppers and paint they made for themselves out of old, mostly dead markers. It kept them entertained for almost the entire day. I even got in there and made a few paintings!

Vivien has been my super-duper garden helper this month. Our tomatoes have gone crazy and picking them involves some gymnastics, so Vivi helps me by following me with the basket so that I can climb around and get the tomatoes. I never have to ask her to help me; she always jumps right in and grabs the basket!

The most memorable thing that happened this month was a scooter accident. Vivi was outside scooting by herself when she fell and on the way down the handles of the scooter hit her face, I think. She ran in screaming and there was blood everywhere. I was catching the blood in my hands there was so much and when we got into the bathroom, she coughed and covered half the bathroom with blood! Once we could really check out what happened, we realized that she lost two teeth, the two next to the front tooth on the right. The front tooth was also damaged, but it stayed in her mouth luckily. Once the initial trauma subsided, Vivi has been ok eating and everything, so we’re thanking our lucky stars that it wasn’t worse and that they were baby teeth!