I know 2011 is not over yet. But I still wanted to list some of our accomplishments so far we made this year. It seems only yesterday that I put the 2011 calendar on our wall and now even Thanksgiving is over. Girls suddenly grew so much in front of us even we see them every day and spent almost every minutes together after their school.
OK, here are the things we have accomplished since beginning of this year:
#1:
Finally Olivia no longer wears diapers any more. YEAH!!! I know many kids took off diaper before her age including Claire but she finally did it without having a big chunk of time for the training. We don't have to buy diapers and pay school special fees since she is potty trained. A small mount of money is saved from the huge spending each month at least.
#2
It is about Olivia again. She does not use pacifier any more. She liked to suck her fingers when she was a baby and she sucked so much it even left marks on her fingers. We had to switch to pacifier and she loved it so much. It used to comfort her to sleep. But as all her teeth has come out I don't want the sucking to make permanent damage. With some of our help (I secretly cut the pacifier and told her it was broken), she finally stop using pacifier at age of 2.5.
#3
Claire made big progress in her swimming class and ballet class. She can swim by herself about 8 meters (from one side of pool to the other). In ballet class she remember the names of a lot of the moves. She can following teacher's instruction without having teacher showing them the moves. She sometimes is the leader of her class. More importantly she enjoys both very much. I can see gradually she has changed from a toddler into a girl.
#4
Claire can read by herself! Before we knew it Claire has been able to read some books by herselfl. These were mostly board books but it is amazing that how she can read by herself. At school they have a story time everyday and the teacher let one kid to pick a book and read it to the others in the class. This even she even read through The Night Before Christmas to me.
#5
Claire learned to speak Spanish. Their school has a new teacher whose native language is Spanish. Claire's class has been having routine Spanish class for a while. Often we are amazed by how much Spanish she can speak. She is just like a sponge aborbing everything her teacher told her. So far she can count 1-20, sing a couple of Spanish songs and even ask her daddy to hurry up in Spanish when he was driving!
2011 is not over yet so hopefully I can add more to the list before it ends.
