« February 2007 | Main | April 2007 »
March 30, 2007
Piggytails
Katy is a very girlie girl. She loves it when you do something nice to her hair. It may not be easy to see her piggytails here (squint really hard!). After her mom fixed her hair, she went to check herself out in the mirror many times and touching her hair accessories just to be sure they were still in place. They didn't stay up there too long. Afterall, Katy is an active two-year-old.
Katy's mom started a new job a month ago. It was a life-changing experience for everybody. Because the new job is farther, so her mom must go to work early in the morning to find a parking space. Katy gets to spend time with her daddy in the morning. It was rather chaotic the first few weeks, but we think she loves spending time with him as she often pouts when daddy drops her off at the daycare. In the afternoon, her mommy will pick her up and take her to the park when weather permits. She loves that.
It has been quite a mixed experience taking her to the park. At first, she wouldn't try anything. A week later, she would do all sorts of things and that made her daddy very pleased. This past week has been a struggle as she only wanted to swing and nothing else. And she only wanted the baby swing. When there weren't too many babies around, it wasn't so bad that she stayed in the swing for half an hour or so. But when there were kids waiting and you tried to explain to her the necessity of sharing, you got big tantrums to deal with. It was a disaster on Wednesday. The next day when we returned to the park, Katy reluctantly obliged when being asked to get off the swing. She didn't seem to fully enjoy the park that day but she at least got to play some. I can see the trouble looming in ten years.
Katy has been learning letters from her daddy. Her favorite letter is S. When she recognizes an S at the store, she will happily announce, "My S! My S!" She also learned a few words here and there. Today she told her daddy, "I need chocolate." Yes, she said chocolate and I am afraid she learned this word from her mommy. She also called our orange cat Erik a jaguar and we know it is from Diego. She gets mad when you try to correct her. She says "too" as in "I love you too." So when you tell her you love her, she replies, "Too." She likes to wave bye-bye to everyone when she walks away and people often wave back including those scroungy high school kids.
The daycare lady's parents came to live with her not too long ago, so Katy has this Grandma who spoils her over there. According to the daycare lady, if things don't go her way or someone did something mean to her, she would go to Grandma and cry. And Grandma would ask the kids in the room, "Who made her mad?!" Honestly we have a very mixed feeling about this. It is very nice that Katy is well loved and this daycare is like a home environment, but I am afraid that she won't adjust well to school when Grandma is not there to protect her. Whenever Katy leaves the daycare, she will make sure to say good-bye to Grandma, but not necessarily the daycare lady.
On a side note, about this new job that Katy's mom has, yes it pays better and has better benefits. But in this day and age, benefits don't come free, so after most is said and done, her mom brings home about $300 biweekly, which is just enough to cover Katy's daycare at $145 a week. Yes, you read that right, $300 (ok, $316) every other week. We want to maximize the benefits because we want to lower our taxes. And we didn't really purchase all benefits available to us. If we did, we would be writing a check to the employer. Sometimes you wonder what the future holds for Katy. You don't want this country to turn into a socialist state (well I don't), but the current trend is definitly not the way to go. Anyway, the big plus of this new low take-home pay is that it seems to stop Katy's mom's spending on frivolous stuff.
Posted by Mike at 10:15 PM | Comments (0)