Tag Archives: daycare

The Girl In The Yellow Shirt

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My 3-year-old daughter has an arch-enemy on the playground: “The Girl In The Yellow Shirt.” Callia is always honest with me about whether or not she got into trouble or did anything bad at the daycare. She always tattles on herself and then apologizes to me and anybody else who was involved, without being prompted. The other day I went to pick her up and she had a report for me: she’d gotten into trouble.

It all comes down to what seems to me to be a personality conflict between Callia and someone she keeps referring to as “The Girl In The Yellow Shirt.” No name, no other details.. no notion of who this person is. She was wearing a yellow shirt and she was trouble. It took a while for me to get the whole story out of her.. but Callia and I talked about how we treat and deal with other people & that was that. Lessons learned and all is good.

Today, when I picked her up Callia declared that she’d gotten into trouble and was bad. One of the teachers came over and said that she was very impressed.. that a girl had hit Callia and she didn’t retaliate – she just told the girl “NO! Don’t hit me.” and walked away. Callia chimed in saying it was (who else?) “The Girl In The Yellow Shirt.” Uh-oh.. recurring problems with this chick.

I was curious, though.. so I had to ask, “was she wearing a yellow shirt again today?”

“Yes.”

“Two days in a row? Yellow shirt?”

“Yeah.”

“Really. That’s weird.”

“She’s mean.”

“I guess so..”

I’m not sure if this girl even exists.. and I’m not sure which scenario would be better: imaginary enemy or real enemy who already has picked out a trademark Super Villian outfit. Either way, I’ve got my eyes open and I’m lookin’ for yellow.

Pizza Lady Attacks Squirrels

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Jaycee at daycare always writes notes about Callia’s day. Today we got:
“After all that talk about pizza, she ate more of the salad! We went on a buggy ride. We found a worm and threw acorns at the squirrels! :) ”

Out of nowhere, the daycare girls started calling Callia “Pizza Lady”. I’d show up to take her home and they’d call out, “See ya, Pizza Girl! Eat a slice for me!” (I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I’ve been trying to stop asking women questions that start with the word “why”.. I think it’s just for the best.) Turns out, Callia had been talking about pizza lately.
This is also the first I heard about throwing things at squirrels. Although I don’t generally condone violence (and rarely ever call for genocide), I do believe all squirrels should be destroyed.

First, they’re just rats with cute tails. That’s reason enough. On top of that, they love to gnaw their way into your attic just to scurry around and drive you nuts. Add to that the fact that they’re the single most pervasive network of evil spies on the planet.. and any and all squirrel poaching you may do should be considered fair and reasonable no matter how much the disease-riddled rodents may suffer.

My mom first clued me in on the squirrels. When we were kids, she told us that we should behave because her “little squirrels” out there would report back to her with everything we did. Thing is, mom always did hear about the stuff we’d do. “A little squirrel told me..” she’d say.
Damn the squirrels! I vowed years ago to dismantle their network and grill up each and every last one of them. I’ve made some progress.. but there’s just so many of them at Vanderbilt.. and they tend to frown upon gun-play on campus.

I’m glad tohear Callia is on the right track with this squirrel thing. Acorns are pretty light-weight if you ask me.. but in her defense, she hasn’t had the proper firearm training she needs to be packing heat yet.

what a cutie

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Callia has so many clothes.. thank Megatheos for grandmothers. Today, I dressed her up in a onesy and a denim thing that looks like overalls with a skirt bottom & she was stylin’. With her crawling around, though.. the skirt kept hiking up on her. The girls at daycare gave me junk about it on her sheet of daily notes: “Callia looked so cute today! But she was tickled constantly because she was showing so much leg!”

Laura had the day off, so she came in and had lunch with me and a few friends at work, then we went to play with our little snuggle machine for a bit. Any time work starts sucking, I’ll just walk over to the daycare and play with her.. that makes the day so much better. I go over there A LOT. It goes a little something like this:

“Hey Chad, this is really important: blah-blah-blah-blah-blah..”

“Uh, huh. I’m going to take a break and go see my kid, because that actually matters. Bye!”

A good friend came to the house to baby-sit so Laura and I could go out tonight. We went to the Bar Car for the hilarious comedy & had a really fun time. Dirty gin martinis make everything better.

mobility!

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Sometimes the ladies at the daycare write little notes about Callia’s day on her info sheet. Here’s what they wrote today:

“She had a few broken up Cheerios and loved them. She laughed a lot today =).”

“Got stuck by a chair when attempting to crawl. It was funny – but of course we moved her after a chuckle!”

I’m just glad they’re having a good time at my baby’s expense! She is funny though.. and mobile.

A few weeks ago, we started practicing to crawl. When a ball would roll away, she’d lean forward and reach but wouldn’t move her butt to go after it. If it was out of her reach, she’d get frustrated and cry.. so I started leaning her forward until she was on all fours and would move an arm forward.. then a knee.. then the other arm.. then the other knee.. until we got to the ball. We’d do that back and forth across the floor. She started doing it a little bit on her own, but didn’t go into a full blown crawl.

I started an intensive exercise program with her to help get her moving around. She has always been frustrated when laying face down.. she just doesn’t like it. Laying flat on her back, she would play or take a bottle or just watch you, but she’s never been comfortable flipped over the other way. So, we practiced rolling over, pushing herself up, doing sit-ups and standing from a sit. She’d hold one of my fingers in each hand and pull on them to sit up or stand or whatever. We’d do 10 or 20 sit-ups in a row, and then move to another skill.

Now, if you set her down on the floor she’ll move 6 feet before you know it. She doesn’t crawl full speed in the traditional fashion, but she scoots around by pushing herself up and sitting back down.. kind of inch-worming across the floor. You can’t just set her on the couch and expect her not to nose-dive off of it anymore.

I also tried to get her to clap. I’d do it and then move her hands for her and make them clap. Then I’d clap. After a few minutes, she’d start clapping with me.

Soon, we begin heavy weight lifting training and learning how to mow the grass.