First Advent

The word advent can mean "arrival" or "coming into view."

This advent season for us has been really special as we await the day when we celebrate the arrival of Jesus on this earth. For Ivelina, it has definitely been a time of bringing Jesus into view for her. Who is he? What's so special about this baby? Why do we celebrate this holiday that bears His name? It has been easy to get her excited about the true story of Christmas because, well, the story has a baby in it...enough said for her.

We have wondered what her past experiences with holidays were like. So far, she has been able to give us a few clues. We know that her orphanage had a Christmas tree, for we have a photo of her taken last December that shows a small one in the background. She also seems to have knowledge of Santa, and points him out in every store we visit. We are also pretty sure she received a gift for Christmas last year (a baby doll), but it seems that it either had to be shared (and she was not very happy about that) or another child took it from her. Either way, the toy was broken at some point in her old home. That is about all we know of her past Christmas experiences.

Obviously, I am on a mission to make this Christmas, her first real Christmas with a family, the best one yet! We decided that a big part of that needed to be teaching her what Christmas is all about. Along with a gazillion other folks, we ordered Unwrapping the Greatest Gift and have been reading a devotion out of it every day since December 1. Along with a gazillion other folks with littles I have high hopes for our advent devotion time each day, but usually spend it redirecting Ivie's attention or shouting at the dog or battling Ivie's urge to go mess with our nativity scene people. We have been pretty consistent and are praying that some nugget of truth is sinking in.

We start dinner a little earlier these days so we can have extra time for our advent activity each night. After dinner, we begin by taking a link off our Christmas countdown chain. Although she doesn't know numbers this high yet, she can tell the chain is getting shorter every day, and I think she is getting more excited each time we remove a link.

Next we attempt to sit on the couch together and read the daily advent devotion from Voskamp's beautiful book. I like how it clearly traces Jesus' lineage through the family tree of Jesse. After the story, we usually pray for someone or talk about something nice we can do for someone to share the love of Christmas with them. For us, we took on a little family project to bake cookies for our neighbors and friends. I thought this was something Ivelina could easily help with and have fun with too.  She loved choosing the cookie cutter and adding the sprinkles.

We also spent some time together making cinnamon ornaments. I didn't know the recipe would make so many, but I was overjoyed when Ivelina came up with the idea to give some of them away as gifts. Ahhh....evidence that she is capable of thinking of others and being thoughtful!  Yippee!

Then, Ivelina colors the Jesse tree ornament of the day and we attach it to our Jesse tree. (Our tree is made from green dollar store wrapping paper taped to the back of our door.) Then, we color our advent coloring page for the day. I'm keeping all these and will bind them together for her when the season is over.

Lastly, I usually give her two options: tell the birth story using our nativity scene or watch Promise, a new movie I picked up for $5 at Lifeway. I actually do not own a nativity set, but I made a bulletin board style one this year that Ivelina could interact with. It might not be the prettiest thing, but it is Ivelina-friendly and we like it. I tell her the story orally and have her help me put each character into the scene. She has learned about shepherds, wise men, king Herod, Joseph, Mary, manger, stables, and animals, and of course, her favorite, baby Jesus!  She is still working on pronouncing frankincense. The movie Promise is very good for her. It's about 45 minutes long, and it does a good job of telling the Christmas story, and Ivelina loves seeing John and Baptist and Jesus as babies toward the end of the movie.

It has been a delight to get the honor of teaching Ivelina about the true meaning of Christmas and why we celebrate this holiday. I am having the most fun Christmas ever just watching her wait on the arrival of Jesus' birthday. Watching her squeal with delight and jump up and down as we erected our little artificial Christmas tree, seeing her crane her neck to check out baby Jesus in the manger scene, and hearing oohs and ahhs from the back seat when she notices twinkling Christmas lights on peoples' houses has been a true blessing for all of us.

I had a small glimmer that maybe the giving and loving spirit of Advent is rubbing off on Ivie just the other day when we went to the grocery store. As soon as we entered the store, she started talking about wanting to see an orange toy. I had no clue what she was talking about so just brushed her comments off and kept shopping. As we were strolling past the pet aisle, she exclaimed "Yes, the orange toy!  Remember, Mama?"  I didn't remember, but she demanded to look at the display of squeaky dog toys, and wanted to hold the orange one. She told me she wanted to get this toy for our dog Josey and put it in Josey's stocking for Christmas. It was only $3, and it had a coupon on it. I couldn't resist her desire to be thoughtful. I gave her the coupon and two dollar bills and let her buy the toy separately at the checkout. She was overjoyed to hand the cashier money, get change in return, and hold her very own bag containing a present for the dog. I praised her for being so thoughtful and thinking of what someone (or what some dog) would enjoy.

So yeah, Josey is just a dog, and some people may think it's silly to get a dog Christmas presents at all, but my girl acted selflessly and thoughtfully in the grocery store that day. It's the small victories, ya know. I was proud of her, and I have to believe that she is slowly learning to be compassionate, caring, thoughtful, and loving toward others. This Advent season has been a great time for teaching her those important things.

So yeah, she will get a few gifts this year, and she has met Santa, but we are intentionally trying to downplay all that and teach her boldly that Jesus is the reason for the season. This is a time for joy, loving, giving, and celebrating the birth of our Savior, who was really the greatest gift we could receive.

First Day of Home School 2014-15

Yup, Ivelina started her first year of home school today, August 25th. I have really enjoyed getting everything set up for her and getting her curriculum ready to go! I've been talking with her about "school" and showing her some of her supplies but I didn't think she would quite get it until today. The day went pretty well according to Jeremy. We started small and easy and will work our way up to a longer school day as she gets used to it.  

- - - - - 

The decision:
The decision to home school was an easy choice for us. Ivelina is eight years old, and if we tried to enroll her in public schools, she would be placed in a 3rd grade classroom most likely. I have taught 3rd grade before, and I know 3rd is not what she needs right now. We both decided that she needs to be at home around her closest family members learning English and working on developing at her own pace. I can't imagine her being dropped off at school with no one who can understand her and thrown immediately into standardized testing world. My husband was home schooled and speaks highly of the beauty of home schooling. I have been following several home school blogs for years now, and I have learned a lot from others about how unique and helpful home school can be. We don't know if this is something we will stick with forever, but we plan on reevaluating next summer. At that time, we will decide if we want to continue home school or try Ivie in a different type of school setting. I know not every family has this option of home schooling, and it's not the right fit for every child, but God has blessed us with unique schedules that will hopefully allow it to work for us.

Curriculum:
I decided to purchase Letter of the Week curriculum from Erica @ confessionsofahomeschooler.com. She creates her own curriculum. This set is geared toward Pre-K students. I purchased it for a very low cost, and then take what I need to Staples to be printed off for us to use. I liked this particular curriculum because it is exactly what Ivie needs: letters, numbers, counting, colors, and motor skills. Simple and fun! Each week there is a theme that goes along with the letter of the week. I am not planning on doing the letters in order because the themes will work best at varying times of the year. For example, we are doing all the letters whose themes pertain to animals first so that we can take a field trip to the zoo in September!  I am also trying a free trial month of abcmouse.com. If she loves it and if she is learning from it, we plan to use it for our computer time. Of course, I am throwing in a few of my own ideas and activities into the mix as well. Since I have a background in teaching elementary school, planning activities is fun for me!

Our school "room":
We don't really have the space to have an entire room devoted to school, but we have dedicated part of our kitchen to home school. We plan on using the back of our garage door shown in the photo to display some of Ivelina's work as well as posters when we need to.

This is Ivelina's desk. My sister picked this up for us for just $5! Ivie can choose whether she wants to work at the kitchen table or at her desk each day. Choices work well for her.

Beside her desk is her work box. I was looking for the perfect set of drawers (on wheels preferably), but I never found what I wanted at a decent price. So I bought three sets of 3 office drawers and stacked them. It cost less than $30 and I think it will work fine for us. Plus, the organizer on top is great for Ivie to keep her pencils, erasers, and glue sticks neat. Her daily activities will be placed in the drawers in the order I want her to complete them. Jeremy said that by the end of the day today, she was finally beginning to understand the concept of the work boxes. To me, it is a very visual way for her to understand how much work she has done and how much she still needs to complete before school is over for the day.

We also purchased a magnetic white board. Ours is only 2x3 ft. but it is just the right height for Ivelina to write on. It had a little ding on the corner, so I asked for a discount and got it at a great price!

Our back door is metal, so we can use it for a variety of (magnetic) purposes. Right now, I am going to try to build a calendar center on this door for Ivelina. I used to have gobs of great calendar stuff, but I got rid of it all when I stopped teaching full-time. I am looking for good deals on calendar items and plan on adding new features to this door as the school year progresses. Right now I only have magnetic weather signs ready, but we will add more features soon.

Of course, we had to have space to store all my "teacher stuff." When I quit teaching full-time, Jeremy installed these shelves for me in our garage. They hold all of my children's literature. There is a shelf with buckets of supplies like crayons, markers, and glue sticks. I have a one tub of literacy materials, one tub of math stuff, and one tub of science goodies + other random goodies. Then I have another small shelf with boxes of craft supplies.  It's perfect because this wall of school stuff is right through our garage door and we can easily access it from Ivie's school space.

Our schedule:
I am going to be responsible for all of the planning, prepping materials, and record keeping. Jeremy is going to be handling most of the execution M-Th. I will teach on Fridays.

I start the morning with morning routine, breakfast, and a Bible story from The Jesus Storybook Bible.

After Bible time, we will do our calendar activities and then move on to the work boxes. I will have to leave for work at around this time M-Th, so Jeremy will be taking over for work box time. We will focus on one letter each week. Each drawer will a have letter, math, reading, science, or motor skill activity that needs to be completed.  Many of the activities for each letter will be super fun for Ivelina; they involved food and computer time and books on CD. Some of the activities I suspect she will resist at first: counting and puzzles. So, I will make sure to mix it up where she has some high interest and some not so high interest things to do every day. Some activities will be repeated throughout the week. Some will just be completed once. Once she finishes all the assignments in each drawer, she will be done for the day.

We will also have speech therapy appointments throughout the week too. There may be other therapies and medical appointments added in as we go, but we are hoping to schedule most of those for the afternoons.  The beauty of home schooling is that we can be flexible and make these appointments without having to worry about Miss Ivie missing precious school time.

- - - - -

I was so worried when I left this morning that Ivie would pitch a fit for Jeremy once she realized she could not play with her stuffed animals and blocks all morning. She asked about them a few times, but overall she did well for Jeremy. Later when school was over she was pretending to be the teacher for her stuffed animals. (sweet!) Before nap time, she kissed Jeremy and told him she loved him and wanted to do school again tomorrow. (double sweet!)

I am SO excited to see Ivelina learn. She has such a curious mind, and she is picking up on things so quickly....especially language...and medical stuff. I think with the time and attention we will be giving her she will thrive!  That's my prayer at least.



Thanks for reading,

Shelly

Home Two Months - An Attachment Update

Wow! Ivelina has been in our NC home for two full months. She has dramatically altered our routines, our priorities, our hearts, and our energy bill (ha!). We cannot imagine our little home without the bundle of spunkiness, sneakiness, and laughter that is Ivelina.

I posted a looong time ago about our plan for attachment. We had a plan that we held loosely. We knew that we had a few pretty strict boundaries in our attachment plan, but we also had many gray areas that we knew we would just have to "wait and see about." You can read my post from June here.

This post is a little update on our bonding and attachment progress. 

We aren't going anywhere
One of our guidelines was "No Daycare or Babysitters" and I'd say this is going very well. Jeremy and I working opposite schedules is a blessing in this particular area. Ivelina so far has never been without one of us in charge. We think this is great as she needs ample time to get used to that fact that we are a constant in her life. We are not just two random passing care takers that may or may not abandon her. We are not going anywhere (not without her at least).

Work
I went back to work part-time soon after we arrived home with Ivelina. Jeremy went back to his full-time work schedule as well. Normal toddlers cry when their mama or daddy leaves them to go to work, but not our Ivie.  At first when it was time for one of us to go to work, she didn't even notice. It really meant nothing to her if one of came or went because she wasn't attached to us emotionally at all. After two months, she is now beginning to notice when we come and go, and she sometimes shows emotion over it, though she doesn't cry. We make a point of telling her, "(insert mama or taty) is going to work now. (He/she) will be home after (insert daily activity). Do you want to give (him/her) a hug and kiss?" Occasionally at night when I am lying with her as she is falling asleep she will ask if I have to go to work the next day. If I have to answer yes, she usually makes a sad face and says (translated) "Taty will stay here." I say yes and she seems happy and relieved to know that one of us will always be here with her. Some days she asks about me when I am gone in the morning, some days she doesn't. It's the same when Jeremy is gone at night.We are very thankful that our schedules have allowed us to always be with her and we are glad that she is getting accustomed to us going places but always coming back.

Sleep
Sleeping arrangements have changed for us over these last two months. Ivelina began sleeping beside our big bed on a little children's cot that Jeremy's mom gave us. That thing is wonderful by the way! I would sit beside her and rub her back or hold her hand. After one month, she started to point to her big bed at night which is in her bedroom. So, we decided to move the little cot into her room. She has been sleeping in her room, which is right across the hall from our room, for a month now, and she is doing very well with that. She is still on her little cot for now. One of us always stays with her until she falls asleep. She occasionally has night terrors, and I am quick to get in there with her to comfort her and get her back to sleep when she does. Many families choose to co-sleep with their little ones. While I'm sure this is a wonderful practice for bonding, it just wasn't quite right for our particular situation.

Ivelina has always had a very hard time falling asleep. Some nights we could tell she was so tired, but she would toss and turn, kick her legs, and shift around for more than an hour before finally falling asleep. So, we are now using Melatonin to help her get to sleep. It works wonders for her, and she usually sleeps 10+ hours a night (most nights without interruption). Her night terrors and decreasing as she is becoming more and more secure in our home.

Touch
 Another one of our attachment guidelines was "increase physical touch." We both have found different ways to do this. Sometimes it is intentional, but some of it has just happened naturally.

Taty's Physical Touch Activities:

• "spider hands," which is basically a wild and crazy tickle fest
• "luka" This is the word Ivie uses for a swing. This involves him picking her up by her arms or legs and swinging her around. They do this out in the yard all the time.
• "Conche" This is Ivie's word for horse. Basically he gets on all fours and she rides on his back and directs him which way to go. 
• Hugs + kisses
• Holding her while they go down the slides
• Letting her chase him at the park and chasing her too, which usually ends in Jeremy picking her up and twirling her around.  
• Occasionally giving her a bubble bath and doing the nighttime routine
• Reading books side-by-side on the couch
• Engaging in fun play with whatever baby dolls, blocks, or stuffed animals she has out at the time.

My Physical Touch Activities

• Night time routine: I usually do bath time, which involves a lot of touch. This involves me soaping her up, rinsing her, shampooing her hair, putting lotion or powders all over her, dressing her, brushing her teeth, and drying/brushing her hair. Ivie typically enjoys the nighttime routine.
• Painting her toe nails
• Sitting beside her reading books
• Spoon feeding her sometimes when she is having trouble with a certain dish. 
• Taking walks together, holding hands at times
• Sitting close watching her favorite TV shows or Youtube videos or movies
• Taking care of her boo-boos by washing them, adding ointment, and applying Band-aids

Ivelina is still very stiff when we try to hold her in any way. Her hugs are stiff too. She often hugs head first into my belly. At times when Jeremy is sitting in the recliner she will want to sit with him, but I don't believe she has ever willingly came up to me and asked to sit on my lap. If I ask her if she wants to she usually says no and prefers to sit beside me. It'll be a major break-through for me when she just crawls onto my lap on her own volition just to be held.

Getting out of the cocoon
We are slowly but surely introducing Ivelina to new people and places. With people, we are still mostly focusing on her meeting and getting to know family members. In the beginning, everyone was mostly coming to visit us, and that seemed to go over pretty well. Now Ivelina has been to both grandparents' homes, and she enjoys taking little trips for a visit. We do allow her to give hugs to our family members. Occasionally she will want to hug or talk to some random person, but we are always close by and I explain to her that we don't need to hug or talk to every stranger. She has met most of our neighbors, and has played with a few neighborhood children. I remember when she first cam home, she would just run into a neighbor's yard and start climbing on their toys. She has quickly learned that each family has a home and each child has his/her own toys and we have to ask or be invited to go into their yard to play.

Regarding places, Ivelina has been to eat at Dairy-O and Chick-fil-a. We haven't tackled a restaurant with wait staff and wait time for food yet. She has been to the grocery store a few times. The first time was just to pick up one thing. The second time was for one thing. Then, all three of us went for a full shopping trip just the other day. Ivie sat in the cart and loved looking at all the different foods. She oohhed and aahhhed all over the store, especially when we rolled past all the ice cream!

She has also been to the library. We have actually gotten into the routine of going every Saturday morning right when they open. She loves it! She went to the consignment store with me to drop off some stuff, and she went into Staples. She went to work with me just so I could make some copies and she met a few of my co-workers. She of course loves the park too!  She gets a little nervous when we drive on the main highway because it is so stinkin bumpy where we live. She gets scared of the bump-bump, bump-bump sounds. She also doesn't like riding in the car at night, which she has only done twice. She thinks the dark is a little scary. Just today Ivie went on her first hike at the lower cascades @ Hanging Rock State Park. Fun times!

We were ankle deep in cold water and Ivelina was hanging on to me for dear life!

She was a bit hesitant of the steep steps, but Taty held her hand to help her. She did great!

We have not tackled church still. Jeremy and I are taking turns going each week. We honestly don't know when Ivelina will be ready to attend, but we sill think it will be a while.

Routine
We have learned quickly that Ivelina is much more pleasant and compliant when knows what to expect. She will do almost anything happily once she gets into the routine of it. She knows when certain things are supposed to happen and she reviews that with us all day. She even likes to review with us what will happen tomorrow. Routine and predictability are so important to her. For that reason, most of our days are the same, but she does well with interruptions as long as we give her a heads up. Here's our basic daily routine:

Between 7:30am - 8:30am:  wake up, used the bathroom, get dressed, straighten the bed, wash face/hands, eat breakfast

8:30a.m.-10:00a.m. - supervised playtime with blocks, Play-Doh, stuffed animals, Legos, coloring books, or puzzles. She is not allowed to get toys from the garage during morning play time. I'll explain later. Mama or Taty are playing with her during this time.

10:00a.m. - bathroom trip, then take a walk in the neighborhood with either Mama or Taty and the dog. Come back home and ride the trike.

10:30a.m. - snack

11:00 a.m. - 12 noon - More play time. Sometimes we encourage her to play independently. Whoever is home starts fixing lunch.

12:30 p.m. - bathroom trip, lunch, right now the three of us are usually all home for lunch because this is the time I arrive home from work.

1:00 p.m. - 2:00p.m. - bathroom trip, nap time. Ivie gets to choose one toy from the garage to rest with. The rules are she doesn't have to sleep, but she does have to stay quiet and stay on her bed. If she is not quiet, the baby doll gets taken away. She is very used to this routine, and doesn't balk at all about nap time. She actually naps about 50% of the time.

2:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. - Ivelina gets to choose one group of high-interest toys from the garage. These are the toys that make a huge mess and these are the toys that she typically displays obsessive behaviors with: the wagon of baby dolls + accessories, the box of doctor stuff, the tub of Barbie dolls, and the bag of My Little Ponies. She has free play time for 2.5 hours. This play time used to be incredibly obsessive. In other words, she would stare at a baby's eyes in a trance-like state or just pretend cry for an hour. Ugh!  We realized that her play was a little more negative when she had free-reign with so many toys, especially the baby dolls, so that is why about a month ago we limited them to after nap time. If her behavior goes downhill, we put the baby dolls away and do something different.

4:30p.m. - clean up and choose one toy to keep out while we watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood.

5:00 p.m. - Bathroom trip, then watch Emergency! (her favorite TV show). I watch some with her but also cook dinner during the hour.

6:00 p.m. - dinner time. When we finish, she can play with her one toy while I clean up the kitchen.

6:45ish- take a walk and/or ride the trike outside

7:30-8:30 - nighttime routine:  take Melatonin, take a bubble bath, use lotion or powers, PJ's, dry hair, brush teeth, dry ears, body spray, choose some books to read on the couch with either Mama or Taty, watch a Youtube video of babies (only if her behavior has been really good during bathtime), and head to bed with her nature music playing and her swimming fish nightlight on.

That's our day!  Of course, on Fridays we throw in a park visit and on Saturdays a library visit. Occasionally, we head to visit a family member or family comes to visit us. We save most of these trips for after nap time. It's working pretty good for us so far. Our next big transition will be the transition into a home school routine. I'll be blogging more about that later.

Two things
Two things happened recently with Ivelina and myself that I thought were sweet and really good signs of attachment. 1.) She and I were walking around the block when a man pulled out into the road several yards behind us on his riding lawn mower. Ivie was immediately frightened, but she bolted to my side and grabbed by hand tightly. I told her it was ok, and explained to her that the man was nice and told her what his name was and what the mower was doing. She has since then sat on a riding lawn mower and is not quite as scared now. I thought it was great that she grabbed my hand when she was scared though.

2.) The other Sunday morning it was my turn to stay at home with Ivie while Jeremy went to church. It was rainy and dreary outside, so I suggested that we watch Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs. We cuddled up on the couch with Ivelina under her weighted blanket to watch the harmless Disney movie. I never realized how creepy that Disney movie was until I was watching it with Ivie! When the queen was mixing up her spells and shrieking and turning into the old hag, Ivelina inched closer and closer to me and finally threw her arms around my neck and held on tight for the entire hag scene. She was practically climbing on me, and I was happy to hold her. She wanted to keep watching the movie. Then at the end, good grief, the dwarfs are chasing the hag up a mountain during a lightening storm with their pick axes raised, and she basically falls off a cliff and dies. Despite the creepiness of that movie, Ivelina enjoyed it and held onto me during the creepy parts. Thanks Disney & Grimm for helping aid in our mother-daughter bonding moments. lol!


Two months home and she is a different child than she was when we picked her up at her orphanage on June 5th. Adoption has been a messy and beautiful thing for all of us!

Things I'm Getting Used to

As a first-time mom for one month now,  I'm getting used to:

always having a blob of pink toothpaste in my bathroom sink.

the green crayon marks on my kitchen floor.

a gazillion girly flip flops strewn about my house. (How can an 8 yr. old who has only been home for one month have more shoes than me anyway?)

the booster in my back seat and the fact that my passenger seat will forever have dirt on the back of it from her propping her feet up there as she rides. 

tip-toeing around my house and putting everything on silent after 8:30 pm every night.

doing laundry. Every. Single. Day. How can one extra person multiply our laundry like this?

never getting to listen to K-Love anymore in the car because we are listening to Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho on repeat (her favorite song).

reading Richard Scary's Word Book. Every. Single. Night. Good thing I love that book!

reviewing our daily schedule over and over and over multiple times a day. And tomorrow's schedule too.  The girl likes to know what's going on and what will and will not happen next!

watching her fall asleep with her quilt all tucked up around her like a mummy and her thumb in her mouth.

her hugs and her European kisses (one on each cheek).... all while she still has a mouth full of food.

waking up to her be-boppin' around our bedroom

sitting up late on the couch with Jeremy talking and laughing about all things Ivie. She has invaded our conversation and our lives, and she's all we talk about!  We love it!

I'm getting a little more used to this mom thing these days.

first hurts @ home

 

HOME

Yes, it has been a loong time since I blogged. Something about adding an eight year old to the family made blogging a little less of a priority for a while. Hopefully, I will get around to backtracking and writing about our pick up trip and the first week home, but for now, here is the cutest photo of Jeremy and Ivelina. Our next door neighbor had a few extra outdoor toys and gave us this little trike for Ivie to play with. Everyday, we take a walk around the block and she points out all the toys in each yard. (Sometimes she runs into said yard to play with the toys b/c she doesn't understand yet what is hers and what is not.) Thus, she was delighted with this gift! 

Everyday she rides we push the trike up and down the street. This morning she took a little fall off the trike and got her first real boli (hurt) since being home. I was curious about her reaction to really getting hurt. She sometimes expresses her emotions in opposite ways. For example, we've seen her bang into something pretty hard and just giggle about it. She's doing this less and less, and today I was pleasantly surprised that she actually cried when she scraped her knee and elbow. She left the trike for Taty to carry home, and she walked to me with little tears on her cheek. 

I took her to the bathroom and made a real big deal about the boli. I gave her the full medical treatment: peroxide, cool cloth, & Band-aids with Neosporin. She called me Chichoo Doctor, which literally means "man doctor."  lol.  Yeah.

Tonight after bath time and an application of new bandages, we were sitting on the couch trying to read through an alphabet book, but not much reading was getting accomplished.

Conversation Translated:

Ivie: "ow...this hurts here." (pointing to knee)

Me: "Yes, Ivelina got hurt today"

Ivie:  "Ivelina was driving and then fell" (imitating how she was steering and then toppled to the right) Then she puts her hand to her forehead in a dramatic fashion "whew...ouch...Ivelina cried"

Me: "Yes, Ivelina cried"

Ivie:  "Slow, slooow, be careful. Gently. Don't do that, bicycle! Don't hurt Ivelina!"

Me: "Yes, you need to go slow down the hill"

Ivelina: looking like she's gonna start crying again, "Ohh...I don't want to drive the bicycle tomorrow." Scrunching her nose up and shaking her head no.

Me: "Okay"

Ivelina: "Give me a hug"

Me: "awww....sweet girl. Hug!" 

Ivelina: "Doctor, ambulance, whheee-ooo wheee-ooo, whee-ooo. Mama Doctor, bandage, medicine"

Me: "I don't think you need an ambulance."

Ivelina: "ohhh, give me a hug!"  *hug*

Ivelina: "Mama, cereal tomorrow for breakfast?  Peanuts tomorrow?"

Me: "yes, cereal and peanuts tomorrow"

What sweet moments right before bedtime. I'm sure she will dream about trikes and ambulances tonight....and maybe cereal and peanuts too!