Learning girl!

I am so afraid to say it out loud....but I'm going to anyways.

Lauren has been so good! She's easy to be with, super sweet to play with, loves hugging us, wants to play (very imaginatively) with her Barbies. She's often already playing independently with her toys when we get her up in the morning. She usually wants one of us to play with her, but she is getting better about doing this independently. She goes to sleep without arguing. The one thing we can't get her to do is homework. I think she's "school out" by the time she gets home. On a rare occasion she is willing to do it, but a lot of the time she is just plain too tired. Kindergarten is all day and she's always been a kid who needs a lot of sleep. She gets home around 4:30, then is still sometimes napping after school, then we wake her up for dinner, and she is ready for bed by 8pm.

She's doing awesome with reading. Today they learned "-at" words. We were watching Doc McStuffins this evening and her brother got a toy bat, and I asked her to spell it. "B-A-T!" She's really learning so much this year. We're currently trying to get a second year of kindergarten for next year, I think (and so does her teacher) that with an additional year of this curriculum, she could achieve the kindergarten benchmarks academically.

Today at her school they had therapy dogs come in, and the kids got to read to the dogs. Lauren really loved this! I got to observe a little bit and it was so great to see. They had the handlers introduce the dog and then the kids got to ask questions. Totally unprompted, Lauren raised her hand, waited to be called on, and then asked what the dog eats. She originally said, "What eat" (I think) and her teacher corrected her to ask "What does she eat". I am so proud of her! She wasn't the first child called on, so she really had to remember her question, and then voice it to a person (a woman, no less. We all know she prefers men) she'd never met before. She is usually really shy with people she doesn't know very well. I don't think she talked at all the first month of school. It can take her some time to open up, so I was so incredibly proud of her for asking a relevant question!

Her surgery is coming up, it's a week from tomorrow. I'm suitably afraid, but we're as prepared as we can be. I have a ramp for our front steps. I think I have a shower chair. Our bathroom won't be done in time (we're trying to put in a farm/sliding door because we can't both fit through the doorway to reach the toilet, it's a small bathroom that was designed terribly. It's also our only main floor toilet. The doors take forever to order and we planned poorly.) We're going to just have to take the door off. If you know Lauren, you know she's OCD about doors. She's going to have to make due with a tension rod and a shower curtain until we can get a real door installed. I'm really worried about her pain post-op. She has a very high pain tolerance, but I'm still nervous. I'm worried about the logistics of it as well! It's really hard for me to carry her up/down the stairs as it is, and she doesn't currently have a cast up to her thigh. I'm hoping we can teach her to butt scoot up the stairs. It will all work out, and some of the logistics won't be figured out until we're in the thick of it. I'm trying really hard to be okay with this!

We've found an awesome occasional babysitter! We've only ever had the kids with a non-family babysitter a handful of times. I was super worried that Lauren would be a disaster or that Ryan would freak out. They both LOVED her! Lauren literally shoved us out the door for dinner, then asked for her multiple times the next day. I'm finding myself trying to find a time to need a sitter again soon.