Maddy Turns 4!

I hate almost two months have past since Maddy's 4th birthday party, and I am just now getting this up. This year we had Maddy's party on Sunday September 22. We rented our church's indoor playground called Playside from 2-4. Her theme this year was Dora. I knew I would not be able to decorate at her party like I would want to...actually how SHE would want me to lol, so I put up some decorations at home while she slept. I had to juggle a few close calls to her waking up, but I managed to get them hung all around her room. 

 I couldn't capture her room the way it looked in person, but you can get the idea with these pictures. She was so surprised when she woke up. We still have these hanging up today. We will probably leave them up for a really long time :)

Since we were going to be doing a lot of playing and running around I didn't want to get her a dress or an outfit that was dressier, so I ordered her shirt from Embroidered Shirts by Monica. I ordered it very early on September 11 and went with standard shipping. My thought process was when you order it asks you when you need it by and I said I needed it by Saturday September 21. I felt that was plenty of time to get the shirt done and shipped. For a $10 fee you can rush your order and it will be done within 24 hours. I did not want to pay the fee and again felt like it fell within her 7-10 days turnaround time. After ordering I began to check back with a shipping update. The week it shipped it told me it would not be here until Monday September 23. I was SO upset and mad that Maddy would not have her special shirt in time for her party. Yes, she would have it on her birthday, but it just wasn't what I wanted for her lol. After a day of being upset I moved past it and began frantically searching for a Dora outfit. Dora clothes are not as common as they used to be years ago. We checked Kohls and Target and they had nothing. I browsed around online and found Wal-Mart carried some. The day before her party we went and sure enough they did. Once we got home something told me to check the mail and to my wonderful suprise...her shirt had arrived. I was BEYOND ecstatic to see that package lol. I will probably use Embroidered Shirts by Monica for all my custom shirts. Her prices were lower than other stores/boutiques and the fact that she tries to get your package to you when you need it without having to pay a fee, unless you need it right away. Just to clarify I am not being paid to write this, just sharing my personal experience :)

 This is the outfit we found at Wal-Mart...it was just not what I wanted her to wear for her party

This is the shirt we ordered. I was very pleased with it. The day of her party I believe it was supposed to be in the low 70's weather wise. I figured she would get hot in pants, so I went ahead and put her in shorts.

We had church the morning of her party. After church her Pops took her along with my nieces back to his house to feed them and let them play while me and her Nana got the place set up. Maddy wanted cupcakes for her party, but I also wanted a cake so I asked my mom if she would do both. For the cupcakes I just ordered ring toppers of Dora. They weren't exactly what I wanted, but it was all I could find. I bought a cupcake stand to put the cupcakes in.

 Without realizing what she did, my mom chose pink and brown for the colors of the cupcakes...those were Maddy's nursery colors :)

 She was a bit shy as everybody sang happy birthday to her...

 I have no idea what I was doing here, but it definitely looks like I was having fun...and maybe chasing somebody lol

We let Maddy open her presents first, then sang happy birthday, then let the kids run wild while everybody else ate. It was a lot of fun and Maddy seemed to really enjoy herself. After we left she asked me how many more days until her next birthday. Looks like she is mommy's girl and loves to celebrate her birthday :)

The First Day of a New Beginning

The day has finally come...the day I've been waiting for since July. Today marks our first day of homeschool :) The worries I had last week were definitely from the devil! Today has been so wonderful for both me and Maddy! It is 2:25 p.m. right now and we still have a good bit of school left to go, but that's how it will be. She is napping...or, supposed to be napping right now. She is still awake, but hopefully she will fall asleep soon. This morning I did not make my 4 a.m. wake up time. I forgot that my clocks are still on the old time, so when I set my alarm for 4 I really set it for 3 am. When I realized it was really 3 am I fell asleep to only wake back up at 5:22 am. I am thankful I started getting up for work early last week because this week I was used to it. I have been a little anxious over how today was going to go, so that helped get me up as well. Maddy slept until 8:00 a.m. She started to ask if she could stay home, but that question turned into a statement that said, "I get to stay home today!" We did our usual morning routine, except I worked while she got herself dressed. We had tv time for about an hour and a half. After tv time I turned on my Pandora Christmas station and played music while she played. I had a few centers set out, but it was really just putting a few toys in spaces. She's been worried about not having centers, so I will be working hot and heavy on creating centers here at home. I need to get some trays and items for a sensory station and a water station and then some more blocks and puzzles. I also realized today that I had no incentives for when she does a great job. At school she got stickers for listening. She has not pitched one fit today and without me telling her she knew she had to clean up her "center" just like she did at school. I went into my scrapbooking box and found a sticker for her. She was pretty excited to get that sticker.

Here is her city she made. She was so proud of it. 

I do plan to make a quick wal-mart run to pick up some things we need right now..such as paint and stickers. At 10:30 I had a meeting and whenever I have a meeting I send her to her room with her computer and games...that sounds bad, but it's not a punishment by any means. She knew after my meeting was over we would be going outside to play. My meeting was pretty quick. I clocked out for lunch and then I fixed her hair and off we went!

I can already tell I will get SO much more time with her. I think she was in disbelief that mommy was working but could still go outside and play with her. She only wanted to swing while we were outside and then after about 30 minutes she wanted to go inside to finish playing.

After playing a few more minutes it was time for lunch and for me to go back to work. We had chicken noodle soup that I made last night. I let her watch a little more tv before turning it back off. I reminded her she had play dough that she hadn't played with. That sparked her interest.

She kept saying she was going to make a butterfly, but she also had gum in her mouth that she kept focusing on on top of the fact that she was getting sleepy. She did real good with gum. I feel more comfortable letting her have it now because she just sat there and chewed up a storm on it. I had to cut her play-dough time short because we were cutting into our "afternoon meeting" time. For our afternoon meeting we talked about what day it was, she put up the number for today, and we talked about what the weather was like today. After doing the calandar stuff I introduced our theme of the week...Thanksgiving and Turkeys and the letter Tt. I read her a book called "What is Thanksgiving?" It talks about how Thanksgiving is a day that we give thanks to God for His love. She had a hard time paying attention because she was so tired, so I may need to just move all learning until after nap time. I will be done with work at 4:19 p.m. today, and that's working 2 hours OT. We have a total of 4 hours OT to work for the week so I will work another 2 hours over tomorrow to be done with it, then I will be done with work around 2 p.m. unless I can get up at 4.

This is the book we read, but the picture cut off the What is part. We have the same kind of book for Christmas and Easter. 

Maddy ended up taking a pretty long nap. I ended up waking her up at 5:10 p.m. because I needed to get some art supplies at the store. She was in a great mood when she woke up. We got home around 7 p.m. from the store and we read the "What is Thanksgiving" book again and then discussed how Thanksgiving and turkey start with the letter Tt. We are going to make an alphabet book by the time we are done, so we worked on our Tt page. I found the template at ABCjesuslovesme.com. Ideally we would have decorated it with things that start with Tt, but I am already going way over budget just trying to get started so we used some of our new supplies. She really enjoyed this activity. I didn't know how much fun it would be for her even though she did this at daycare, but she really enjoyed picking out her decorations and gluing them on her Tt. 

She wanted to do more art...I wanted to do more art, but by this time it was close to 8:00 p.m. and I was getting sleepy. I still have to clean :( I decided instead of starting a new art project we would work on writing. It may be a little early to start this for her, but  I figured since she knew how to make straight lines we would work on making Tt. She did VERY well for her first time!

She struggled with the little t, so she only wanted to try it once. She needs bigger lines to work with, but I was still proud of what she could do. She found all the t's on the bottom on her own.

There have been several times throughout the day that she would tell me she loved me on her own and out of nowhere. She used to tell me she loved me, but this was different. She was sincerely happy. At the end of the day she asked if I would teach her some more things when she woke up...melted my heart. I thought the hardest part, aside from teaching her, would be waking up. That is definitely a struggle for me, but today I found the hardest part is wanting to give her a full 8 hours of fun things throughout the day, instead of just a few hours. I want to give her more of me. I want to be able to do several art projects throughout the day. That's the thing with us humans is no matter what we're given we always want more. I can tell you me and Maddy have prayed for a year that God would give us more time together. As we prayed I really had in mind that I would be able to be a full time stay-at-home mom. I know without a shadow of a doubt that God called me to pull Maddy out of daycare and homeschool her. I have been on cloud nine today and have thought all day about this and I really think God needed me to go through everything I have with daycare and me longing for her to be with more, so that when this day came I could fully appreciate it. I also know that God must be up to something good with this homeschool thing for the devil to try to mess with me over it. I can tell that this will not only be a fantastic bonding moment for us, but it will also allow us to really study the bible together as a family and give us prayer time together.

The only thing I have to really figure out now is when to clean. I used to spend my lunch time cleaning up around the house, so it was pretty easy to stay on top of. I now take my lunch time to give Maddy some time outside. I guess I will have to do some before bed and then finish the rest up in the morning. I know I am completely exhausted, but it's something I wouldn't trade for the world!! I hope you all had a great weekend and a great first day back to work :)

The Last Day

The day has finally come where me and Maddy say goodbye to her daycare. It will feel so weird to walk out of those doors knowing we will not be back. Maddy has shown mixed emotions over no more school. When I first told her about staying home for school, she was beyond excited. Every day she would ask me how much longer. When I decided to go ahead and bump up her last day I started talking about staying home for school all over again, but she wasn't as excited about it as she was before. I will admit I panicked yesterday thinking I made a huge mistake in pulling her out of daycare and began to pray. Yesterday was an all around bad day and I think the devil was trying to get to me. I feel so much better today and KNOW this is what God wants for us. I asked her yesterday if she wanted to stay home today or go to school and take dance one last time. Surprisingly she opted for school...she NEVER opts for school. It's funny because the three years she has gone to daycare she has always been so clingy and refused to let go. Most days she has been pried off me with a huge frown on her face once they finally got her to let go of me. This week, however...her last week, has been completely different. They have a new teacher in there that actually reminds me of me. She is super sweet and Maddy absolutely loves her. This week Maddy has washed her hands and told me she wanted to go to the table this teacher was at. The teacher would welcome her on in and get her started on their art project and Maddy would instantly let go of me and go to the teacher. Talk about a shocked mom lol. Today she didn't want to let go, but I think she was having fun with the teacher lol. I decided to bring my phone in with us this morning to snap some last pictures of her school. They turned out blurry because Maddy was bouncing all over the place. Oh! This morning I told her today was her last day and she was super excited and said, "And then I get to stay home forever, and ever, and ever!!!"

I can NOT get my pictures to go to my photo stream from my phone. The whole point of this post was to share the pictures I took of her on her last day. As soon as my technology wants to cooperate with me, I will post them :)

Her official last day of daycare was Friday, November 8. She keeps talking about when she sees her friends again, so I know she does not understand still. She seemed to have a GREAT last day. Her first week of homeschool will be Thanksgiving themed and I do plan on posting throughout our week. Home school has definitely taken over my blog. I would appreciate prayers that this transition will be smooth for Maddy. I hope you all have a great weekend!

Schedule

By the time you all are reading this we will be on our final countdown until Maddy permanently stays home. Right now we are roughly two months away from that time. Two months seems like a long time, but when you think about lesson planning and all that good stuff it really isn't that long. I decided to sit down and try to make out a schedule for us last night. I came up with a tentative schedule that will work great if I can keep my end of the schedule up. Here is what Maddy's schedule will look like. I tried my best to keep her in the same routine she is used to at school:
7:30-9:00-Wake-up time (I will not get her up at any set time...just whenever she wakes up)
9:00-10:00-Breakfast/TV time
10:00-11:00-Outside
11:00-1:00-Free choice
1:00-1:30-Lunch
1:30-2:00-Wash hands/Afternoon meeting
2:00-4:00-Nap
4:00-4:30-Snack
4:30-4:50-Circle Time
4:50-5:00-Music/Movement
5:00-5:45-Outside
5:45-6:00-Free choice

As you can see it looks like a typical daycare schedule. Her lunch is about an hour later than I wanted it to be, but since she gets to sleep in later than she would normally for daycare I think she will be ok. Obviously if she gets hungry before lunch time I will feed her. Our schedule will vary from day to day because she isn't always going to get up at the same time.

My schedule is what I'm most concerned about. For those who really know me, they know I am in NO way a morning person. If I could sleep till 9 or 9:30 everyday that would be awesome by me.
4:00-7:30-Work
7:30-7:40-Break
7:40-9:40 Work
9:40-10:30-Lunch
10:30-10:45-Work
10;45-10:55-Break
10:55-12:55-Work

Provided I don't have overtime and can really keep this schedule, I will be done with work everyday by 12:55 p.m. I tend to have quite a bit of overtime, so for those overtime days I will either work an extra two hours, or I go ahead and log out and then come back after dinner to finish my last two hours. I really hope my manager will allow me to start work every day at 4 a.m. and I am able to make myself get up. It would be awesome to get to spend the rest of the afternoon with Maddy or to actually be able to clean and cook during the week instead of saving it all for the weekend. I am going to try to start this schedule now to get used to it, but I have NO work right now so I am having to wait until I can get some more work before I start this routine. Anyways, that's our tentative/goal schedule :) Hope you all are having a great day!

Two Week Notice

Maddy turned in her two week notice at school today. She actually had a rough morning. I woke up at 5:32 a.m. feeling pretty rested. In fact, I could not go back to sleep. Why can't that happen when I have to work? I eventually did fall back asleep and when I heard my alarm going off, I woke up to find it was 8:23 a.m. We have to leave by 8:30. I started to just let her stay home, but I had to turn in her dance fees and I wanted to get this two week notice thing over with. So we quickly got ready and headed off to school. She was in great spirits in the car. When we got to school, however, she refused to go in her class. She stood outside and when I tried to pick her up she ran from me. I did get her in her room thank goodness and her teacher whisked her away to make a bat.

I had been dreading letting her school know she would no longer be going there. I knew they would ask a bunch of questions and try to convince me to stay and all those good things. I just wanted to tell them and be done with it lol. Sure enough I told the director I needed to talk to her. I know she thought it was about a problem I had with a teacher like it has been in the past. Trust me, there were plenty of things I could have said about the teachers Maddy has but there's no point in doing so when you are just going to pull your child out anyways. I instantly started to tear up as I began. My exact words were, "I have some bittersweet news to tell you." It is bittersweet for me. I've mentioned them in other posts so I won't mention them here. She asked me where I was going to take her. I just told her I had an opportunity come up where I would be able to homeschool Maddy. She wouldn't take just that answer...she wanted details. I told her I had an opportunity to homeschool/tutor other kids with a friend, which I do, but do not want to discuss that right now. She asked me how many kids we would have and where I would get my benefits from, etc. I felt like I was being interrogated and essentially I was. I don't think she believed me and I really feel like she thinks I'm sending Maddy to another daycare. She made me promise if it didn't work out to call them first to see if there was an opening for her before I sent her anywhere else. I have to turn in a handwritten letter this afternoon to confirm the two week notice and put the dates. Maddy's last day will be next week. I originally was going to have her only go through Wednesday of next week, but since I just had to throw away $60 for dance I decided she would go through Friday which is her dance day. I am so excited that she will get to stay home with me even though I am a little nervous. Maddy has been very excited about staying home for school as well. I don't think she fully understands yet that her days at her current school are numbered, but she is about to find out. We will count down each day until it is stay home with mommy time.

Since I am pulling her out earlier than I had anticipated, I am going to have to scramble and get the rest of her curriculum together. I think I am going to use some of her daycare themes and combine it with the christian curriculum I found online. I don't want to purchase curriculum right now because I want to look at what I'm buying first. I hope to post each week what we are learning about and have some cute pictures of crafts we do. Let the countdown begin :)