Sweet Jilly-Bean

Pre-Piano at Junior Music Academy

On Wednesday morning Jillian attends music class with Miss Mary at Junior Music Academy. She starts out the class with singing and dancing. The children get to play with several different instruments for the first half of the lesson. Then Miss Mary moves on to the keyboard and teaches the children how to play a very simple song.

Then we pick a keyboard and each child has their own to play. Jillian is placing pictures of 2 black crows above each group of 2 black keys and pictures of 3 black bears above each group of 3 black keys.

After they play the song they learned a few times, they get to free play on the keyboard. Jillian loves this part of class because the pianos play fun melodies and beats and sounds with just the touch of a button. We really enjoy music class and we get to go with the neighbor boy is almost exactly the same age as Jillian.

What is wrong with this picture?

Jillian does not like to fall asleep in her bed. If she is very, very tired she might actually fall asleep in bed. On a normal night though, she falls asleep somewhere else and I will transfer her there later on. On this night, she had fallen asleep outside her doorway surrounded by fun toys. In one hand she is holding a baby doll and in the other she has a crayon. The funny thing is that there is nothing nearby that would have required the use of a crayon. Hmmmmm.....

Our Little Girl is a Kona Aerials Gymnast

Jillian has graduated to Kindergym, the bigger kid gymnastics class. She is working on her stretches in this photo. Isn't she just the cutest thing? And tiny too, right? She is four years old, weighs less than 30 lbs and most 3T clothes are still too big.

In this picture she is working on her jumps on the tumble track. There is no parent participation in this class. In fact, the parents are no longer allowed on the floor and if a child walks off the floor to see a parent they are usually done with class. There were a few days, that Jillian would come see me to fix her hair. When she tumbles her ponytail falls out. We started braiding her ponytail and that fixed that! :)

Coach Sierra is helping Jill with a bridge. We LOVE Coach Sierra - she is Jill's favorite. And she is also the toughest. I am so glad we first attended Tumble Bears - this class introduced gymnastics to the little ones and taught basic skills, with help from the parents. In the little class, the coaches let Jillian do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. It was a really laid back class focused on fun as the top priority. In the bigger class, there can be up to 14 kids per 2 coaches and no other adults. So, the coaches have to be strict to maintain safety. I am thankful that Jillian had the time in Tumble Bears to bond with Coach Sierra before moving on to Kindergym, where Sierra is an awesome, very tough teacher. One class Jillian had to have a time-out and skip her turn in the rotation on bar work because every time Sierra turned her back, Jillian ran away to be ornery.

Sierra is helping Jillian with a back bend pike over. Very Fun.

Coach Nanette - this is her gym- is helping Jillian with a forward roll on the beam. We love her too - she is also great and also strict. I think this is what Jillian needs. Out of all the adults in her life; between her school teacher, music teacher and gymnastics coaches, she responds the best to her tough gymnastics coaches.

A few weeks ago, Jillian was in a mood when I took her to music class. She did not want to listen to Miss Mary. Miss Mary asked very sweetly throughout the class for Jillian to do / not to do certain things and Jillian was like whatever! When Jillian is in a mood at gymnastics she is still expected to listen and do what she is told - anything else is simply not tolerated.

Beach Day with Daddy

On Fridays, I go to work and Jeremy stays home with Jillian. If the weather is nice, Jeremy will take Jillian to Kukio to play. Fridays are a big beach day here and there are usually tons of kids for Jillian to play with. I am not much of a beach girl and when they include me, my limit is two hours and then I'm ready to go home. Jeremy and Jillian LOVE to stay all day long. On this day, they stayed over 4 hours - which is huge for us.



Jillian was sleeping by the time they got home. She slept in the car for an hour. When she woke up, Jeremy transferred her to the couch for two more hours of sleepy-time. She was so exhausted, she slept sitting up.

And then she laid down...for more sleeping. If you look closely, you can see the sand in her hair. It took us 2 showers to wash out all that sand - she must have been rolling in it. :) And I mean that literally - she gets out there on the beach and starts busting out her gymnastics moves. She does forward rolls almost everywhere we go.

Easter Egg Hunt at Home

Later in the afternoon, we did a little egg hunt at home.

Happy Easter!

This morning, after the service, our Church had an Easter egg hunt. They asked all the adults to spread out the 1000 eggs, while all the kids (about 20) waited to be released from Children's Church. Jeremy has a handful eggs he is about to "hide"...and I use that word loosely as you can see in the background. :)

Here comes Jillian...she is wearing the polka dot dress.

Jillian on the hunt.

She had to open each egg as she put it in her bucket. As you can imagine, moving that slowly, she didn't gather that many eggs. She stopped with about a dozen eggs and then moved on to help other children fill their buckets.

We are enjoying an Easter cupcake after the egg hunt. Yum! :)

I have a confession - I wasn't very nice this morning. The church likes to keep the plastic eggs to re-fill each year. When Jillian was done with the hunt, she went with Jeremy to get something to eat. I took her bucket to a table to empty all the eggs and another mom came over to do the same thing. Her daughter - who looked to be about the same age as Jillian - came up and grabbed half of what was in Jillian's bucket. Her mom said and did nothing. I shouldn't have minded - its just candy right? But, I did mind - the little girl didn't ask and she took several pieces - not just one. And it bugged me a little bit that her mother did nothing. So, I said to the little girl, loud enough for her mother to hear, "Hi! Where is your Easter bucket? Don't you have one too?" And I think I may have taken the candy back. She was starting to drop it - but I think I helped her out, it all happened so fast that I'm not completely sure. I am so embarrassed and I feel horrible - it was just candy for pete's sake! I should have let her have it. We are new to this church and it makes me sad that from now on, this family will remember me as the lady who was territorial over the Easter eggs. Jeremy overheard me and said I sounded really mean - but he was in a cranky mood this morning. He had to work all night last night - they have contractors doing some fun thing on the runway - and he wasn't really feeling up to going to church. All that to say, his perception of over-hearing the incident, may have been skewed by a sleepy fog.

Ugh. Being a mother is hard. And my competitive, mother-bear side, doesn't always serve me well. I should have just let the little girl have the candy.

An Egg-tastic Day

We colored eggs for the first time this year. I'm not sure why we haven't done this with Jillian yet - maybe she still seemed a little young last year. Anyway, she did great. I was so paranoid about spilling the dye and it pleased me immensely to watch Jillian be so careful.


Jillian had so much fun! I had pre-cooked 8 eggs for her....when she was done with the eight, she wanted to start dyeing the remaining raw eggs. I wonder if that would be an OK thing? I'm sure it would be fun if you mistook a raw egg for a cooked egg.

When I was a kid, we would color the eggs and then the next day my mom used the hard-boiled eggs for the Easter egg hunt. Oh yes, there was no candy-filled plastic eggs for us. We would get chocolate and candy in our Easter baskets, just not for the egg hunt. As I sit here writing this entry, I am listening to our daughter (who is still on her chocolate high) play, play, play in her room. She should be sleeping, she is never going to bed tonight! It may not be a bad thing to limit all that sugar.

Last week Jillian asked to do s'mores this weekend. While the eggs were drying, we fired up the grill and roasted a few marshmallows. Yum! Marshmallows over the grill take longer to roast and never get that yummy brown crispy outside. BUT, they still worked for us.

Reading Time

Jillian loves to read to Athena. Jillian brings her to her room and makes her lay down for some forced reading time. Athena is such a great sport sitting there so calmly - and if you know Athena, you know she doesn't do a whole lot of calm. However, Jillian has learned to bribe Athena with treats - and Athena is VERY food motivated. :)