Mine, Mine, Mine, But His First

            I tend to be pretty possessive. Not so much about things (although like the typical American, I do like my stuff), but about people. They're my friends, my family, my kiddo, my man. I think it's partly because I like to take care of people and to be there for them. If they have a problem, I want to fix it. I tend to invest in people, and the more I invest in them, the more I think of them as mine.

            For the most part, this works for me. However, there are some times when it just doesn't work. For example, when they have a problem I can't fix, this doesn't work for me. If something is yours and it's broken, you fix it. But sometimes, your things (or people) that you want must to fix, you just can't fix. That's when it helps me to remember that the while the people I love are mine in a sense, they belong first and foremost to Someone so much greater than I. What I can't fix, He can if He so chooses. Why do I struggle so much with surrendering them to Him? I can't seem to handle losing control for even one minute even though it means that they'll be taken much better care of. In fact, it's often easier for me to surrender my own problems to Him than to surrender the problems of those whom I love, my loved ones.

            How much greater is His love for them than my own? He is their creator, and what He created was good. Yes, we messed it up. But it was good, and He wants it to be good again. That's why He provided a redeemer "Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith." For those I love who love Him as well, He works all things together for good. Now if only I can remember that. . .

Sincerely,
 

Kites, Ladybugs, and Lollipops

While my dad may have been a little less than thrilled that I chose not to "use my degree" in the typical way, I have loved "using my degree" to teach The Kid. I put "use my degree" in quotes because so far I think most of what I've done with The Kid has been common sense stuff. You want your kid to learn the alphabet? You show them the alphabet and train them to recognize letters.

With The Kid, we began by singing the ABCs because she loves to sing. For a while, since it was hard for her to produce the letter names in the song, it was mostly just her hearing me and others sing the ABCs. I used it a lot while we were potty training her. She never wanted to stay on the potty long enough to actually go, so I told her she had to stay seated while I sang through the ABCs. She usually made it till about the letter p before she started going. ;)

Next, I made flash cards of all of the letters. I know flashcards are to some outdated and believed to teach by memorization apart from true understanding, but honestly, she's two. She's not really going to grasp the alphabetic principle right away. By using the flashcards, The Kid was able to see the letters easily and get used to working with them. After going over the flashcards once, she began to ask to "do my ABCs." Since the only letter she remembered was a, after saying "doesn't know" to several cards, she began to take the cards herself, point to them, and mimicking my tone of voice say "What one is that?"

Last week we started to work on individual letters. I started with the letter k because before they moved to Staten Island, her mother had her enrolled in a mommy and me preschool. In the preschool, they were making an ABC book and had covered a-j. For k, we made a kite. She picked up on the letter really well and now recognizes it and can tell you what sound it makes.

This week we worked on the letter L. We started by reading The Grouchy Ladybug. We made a lady bug, but The Kid decided that her ladybug was going to be a friendly ladybug not a grouchy one.

I love how she put the dots in straight lines.
Can you tell her mother and I are just a little OCD?
 We're training her well.

 Next we made a lollipop. This one was  a lot of fun because she got to squish paint with her hands. She loved it! She also colored some k and l pictures. Obviously, she liked the crafts a little bit more.

We also started reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and making our very own alphabet coconut tree. I order a bulletin board tree cutout on Amazon. I also found someone who had made a pdf of the letters which I printed out and laminated so they would last. So far we have k and l on our tree. However, The Mom and I decided that we should backtrack and recover the letters she learned in mommy and me preschool because she doesn't remember those. She can identify a and sometimes b, but that's really it. So next week, we'll be covering a. I'm sensing some apple crafts.

 

Sincerely,
 

Introducing. . . The Kid, Or How I've Spent the 3 Months Since Graduation

            Last summer, I was a nanny for the cutest little two-year-old on the face of the planet. I mentioned her here and began to refer to her The Kid, or The Kiddo. Toward the end of my time with them, The Mom told me that they were looking into buying a house on Staten Island with a basement apartment for a live-in nanny. While they knew this would be a pretty big change for me, they wanted to offer me the position because The Kid and I got along so well. So I prayed about it and talked about with my family. While I knew I could make more using my degree in the public school, a position was not guaranteed, and I did love The Kid quite a bit. After a few months in which The Family interviewed another nanny and I completed most of my student teaching, they offered me the position and I accepted. So, the day after officially finishing my college coursework, I moved into my new apartment, and two days after, I started my new job.

            I've been here three months now, and I can officially say I LOVE my job. The Kid is brilliant, hysterical, and adorable. And I'm only a little biased ;) Considering most of my time is spent with this wee one, she'll probably provide me with a lot of the material for this here blog. So I thought I should introduce her. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you already know A LOT about The Kid. Hopefully, I'll be able to share some of the longer funny stories on here. For obvious reasons, her picture won't appear here, but I'll tell you a bit her. She'll be three in June, she loves singing, dancing, Disney, swimming, and Adele. So we spend our days singing, dancing (to Adele), watching/reading/playing/dancing to Disney, and talking about when it will be warm enough to go swimming. We're also working on learning our alphabet and counting. Have I mentioned she's brilliant?

I may not post pictures of her, but I can post pictures of what she does to me, or in this case, makes me wear.

Apparently, the green St. Paddy's Day shades weren't enough. We had to add the bunny ears.

Sincerely,