4 Year Old Visit

I haven't posted in forever, I know. I couldn't figure out a way to get back into it, but today Penny had her four year old well-visit so I decided I could write about that. She weighs 30 lbs and is 39 inches tall.  This means that she will probably be in high school before she is big enough to ride in a booster seat. Ha! She seems to be doing fine. She had to have 5 shots: the Measles/Mumps/Rubella, the Chicken Pox, the Hepatitis A, the Tetanus, and the Polio vaccines. They were going to do Hepatitis B as well, but discovered she'd had it already in Florida (which is on a different schedule than Alabama). She also had to have blood drawn for a lead test. Troy is home to Wiley Sanders which is a lead company. Anyway, she was not a happy camper. She already had a fever before bed. Normally she's fine until the next morning when she wakes up with one, so it definitely kicked off earlier than usual. Then again, that was an awful lot of shots. They said she's done until she turns 11 though. She already told me she doesn't want to go back to the doctor when she turns 11!

She had her vision and hearing tested today. Both were just screening tests, but they found that she had some trouble with her left ear. Since I have a hearing loss, they went ahead and referred her to a audiologist. We have that appointment next Wednesday. I'm hoping it's just fluid or something. I'll keep you posted. I hope to post more regularly now that I've officially started back. (Yay!)

Narrative

Talking in third-person narrative. From what I can gather, I don't think this is very common, but it's something Penny's been doing forever. She knows how to talk normally, and uses the correct pronouns most of the time. What I mean is, she isn't making a mistake because she hasn't learned the right words. I can't recall her going through a phase where she didn't use pronouns correctly. Quite frequently though, she talks about herself in third-person as though she's narrating a story about herself. For example yesterday on the way home after dance class she took a sip of water from her cup that had been sitting in the car and had gotten hot. These were her exact words:
"As she was taking a sip of water, Penny realized that the water was too hot. She decided that she was not going to drink any more of it."
See? It's like she's living inside a book.
Sometimes I try to mess with her about it. She'll say something like, "Penny wants some ice cream." And I'll say, "Really? Penny wants some ice cream? Well, what do you want?" And she'll say, "I want some ice cream, Mommy," like I'm the biggest idiot ever. I mentioned this habit to her pediatrician and she just basically shrugged. So, I figure either she'll outgrow it, or become a novelist when she grows up. I'm just trying not to give her too much fodder for her tell-all memoir.

Lunch with Friends

Today we had lunch at our friend's house. Their daughter, Ally, is Penny's best friend and they have sooo much fun playing together. Their birthdays are 2 days apart, though Ally is a year younger. Ally has always been very quiet around me, but recently she's started talking. All of the adults were at the table talking, while the girls were back in Ally's playroom, which is also the jacuzzi room. The spa is kept covered and latched, so that wasn't any concern. However, as we were sitting there, Ally comes back into the dining room and directly over to me to say, "Miss Sam, Penny needs your help." I was thinking Penny just wanted me to come play, but I found it odd that she'd send Ally to come get me (and odd that Ally would agree to do it). I walked back there, and found that Penny had climbed up the step ladder and pulled herself the rest of the way up on top of the spa, and then couldn't climb back down. I was so proud of the two of them for working together to get her some help like that. It was cool to see the communication there on many levels. Now, why she didn't just holler, "Moooommmmyy" really loud, I have no idea.

Pollen Counts

Oh my goodness the pollen put a wallop on our family this past week. Two weeks ago was my Spring Break, which we enjoyed tremendously by doing absolutely nothing at all. It was glorious. But then, right at the very end, we all got the sniffles. Penny woke up late Sunday night/early Monday morning with a 104.5 fever. That was very frightening. She was breathing very fast and labored, almost like a dog panting. I called the doctor on-call that night and we got the fever down, but a trip to the doctor's office confirmed that she had a sinus infection and what looked to be the beginnings of pneumonia. It hadn't really "flowered" yet into her whole lung, but her doctor could hear reduced breath sounds. Anyway, she got antibiotics and has been doing progressively better this week. Right as she was getting better, I was getting sicker. I ended up canceling all my classes for the week because I had a fever and cold symptoms and was just generally miserable. On Thursday, I went in to the doctor with a sinus infection. Tray's been sick too, and we are all just so, so ready to be well again. Penny drew a picture of pollen on her chalkboard. She made a bunch of yellow scribbles and told me that she really doesn't like pollen. Me either.

PreK

We enrolled Penny in a pre-K program for next fall. She'll be attending Park Memorial Methodist, Mondays-Thursdays from 8 to 12. There are no public-school preK's in Troy or Pike County. The only secular option is a local private school (of the no-people-of-color-allowed variety), but classes are all day, everyday, which we felt would be too much since she's never been to school at all. In fact, that's the main reason we are trying to send her to pre-K at all: the kindergarden options are all full-day no matter what, so we figured we'd better get her used to going part time this year. So, anyway, that left half a dozen or more choices of church schools, and we liked Park the best of the two we visited. I think she'll really like it there. Plus, her bff Ally will be going there next year too (although she'll be in the 3yo class). Park doesn't have a kindergarden though so we'll be going through the decision making process again next year. Joy.

Webpage Updates

I updated my webpage a little bit. I know I could make a much fancier one using a web page developer, but it's fun to try to write it myself. If you can't tell, I discovered Google Webfonts. I am addicted. Help. :)

Bee Sting

Yesterday Penny received her first bee sting. It was a honey bee that had somehow gotten into the house. She said, "Ow, Mommy something poked me." It swole up a little, but was completely gone in a hour and now you can't even tell where it was. I didn't even give her any medicine or anything. So, there were no lasting effects, but she was relentless last night asking me all about it. Why did the bee sting her?, she wanted to know. I told her because it thought she was about to squish it. She said, "But I wasn't going to squish it." I told her that I knew, but that's what the bee thought. Oh, but we must have gone 18 rounds with that line of questioning. She was totally offended that this bee had stung her.