One In the Oven: Fall Carnival

Two weeks before her birthday, we received a notice that Kate would be moving into the Pre-Toddler room at the CDC. At the time, I was still in denial that my baby was about to turn 1 so the notification was a bit of a reality check for me. Kate’s wonderful teachers in the infant room assured us that she had the skills (like walking and drinking from a sippy cup) and the spunk to get by in the new room, even though she’d be, at least for a little while, the youngest and the smallest kiddo in the new room. The CDC did a good job of slowly transitioning her into her new classroom. Over the course of the week, she spent more and more time in the new room, ending the week by spending the whole day in her new environment. This week marked the start of Kate’s third week in the PT room and she seems to finally be getting comfortable. When we pick her up each day she’s usually covered in dirt, or marker, or sand, or berries from some of the day’s activities—and boy, are there a lot of activities. Her new teachers are great and they do a good job of keeping us updated on how she’s doing. Best of all, she’s started napping! This is a MAJOR breakthrough for us. Although she naps well on the weekends, she was still fighting sleep while at school. However, they have a set naptime in her new room, and the combination of activities and the providing a quiet time with a little cot and a blanket has proven to be too much for our Little Bug. She can no longer resist the call of the nap. And we LOVE it. She’s much more pleasant in the evenings, and we don’t have to scramble to get her into bed as soon as we get home to try to recover from the day’s sleep deficit. Now we’re able to relax and play for a while before we have to start the bedtime process.

The CDC puts on a Fall Festival each year and this year, it fell on my day off so I was able to attend with Kate. There were lots of exciting activities for her to participate in and we enjoyed the sunshine and the chance to play together during the day. Her new teachers do a really good job of planning lots of hands on activities for the kids, and the Festival was no different. There was face painting, a pumpkin to dig in, mini gourds to play with, leaves to jump in, and other outside activities. Kate really enjoyed digging in the pumpkin guts. She’s so little that she had a hard time reaching all the way to the bottom of the pumpkin to scoop up a good handful of seeds, but that didn’t stop her from trying.