The Jones Girls

I am doing flash cards with Savannah to help her learn to spell and sound out letters and words.    Tonight I video taped her reading her flash card words.   This was the first time I presented these word flash cards to her.   She can read 2o words now.   She is also sounding out words and learning how to read words such as my, by, see, etc.  This is what she can read now:

White
Brown
Pink
Red
Purple
Yellow
Orange
Gray
Blue
Black
Green
The
Am
We
Have
Is
Little
I
A
To

Maryssa is pigeon toed.    Her pediatrician referred her to an orthopedic doctor.  We met with him today.  

He evaulated her and said her knees and ankles are straight and the hps are causing the legs to move inward causing the pigeon toe.  He said that babies that are born from a mutliple birth can result in hip displasia.  Hip displasia is when then hips form outside of the sockets and require surgery to correct.  He took Xrays to check her hips.   Thank goodness the Xrays showed no hip displasia.

 He said in the old days they used to use braces and special inserts in the shoes.   They have done studies which show that they braces and special shoes don’t help.    So no braces or special shoes for Maryssa.   He said she will hopefully grow out of it but if she is still pigeon toed she will learn to  acclimate herself to it.

This week is Parent Teacher Conference at Savannah’s school.    This means all of the kids get out of school early all week long and they get Friday off.    Savannah’s late bird class has been moved to early bird and that has been a real pain.  Friday I took all of the girls to Disneyland and we had lots of fun!!

I met with Savannah’s teacher today.    Savannah knows all of her alphabet by site and sound.    She knows most of her shapes except for cylinder, rectangle and cone.  I will work with her on those shapes.    She can count to 26 and she will be required to count to 30 by the end of Kindy so I would say she is doing great with her numbers seeing that she has only been in school for a couple of months now.

Savannah knows how to spell and read most “word” colors.     She also knows her colors by sight too.

The teacher says she is doing great in school and to keep up the good work!!  I am so proud of my sweet little Kindergartner!!

I try not to bother too many people about Savannah’s school fundraisers, especially with this terrible economy.

However, our school is doing this really cool fundraiser with See’s Candy.  When I think of See’s Candy, I know of 2 people who are devoted fans of the yummy stuff…my mom and my sister Rosanne.

The fundraiser will raise money for the art program for Savannah’s school.   It enriches their music and choir program as well as liberal arts.    School funding has taken this away from the kids so it is up to PTA and us parents to raise the money.   

The candy orders have to be turned in by Nov. 10th and the candy is delivered to us on November 24th.   I remembered Rosanne is coming down here for a few days to visit during this time and I asked her if she would be interested in purchasing some candy.  She could have it when she arrives down here.

I sent her pamphlet of the list of candy products for sale.   She gave it to mom to look at.    Low and behold, God Bless their hearts, they provided orders from about 8 people and they also ordered themselves.     They purchased about $180 in candy.  Thank you so much Mom and Rosanne for opening up your hearts and helping Savannah’s school.   We truly appreciate it.

Love you xoxoxoxo

I picked up Savannah from school today.  She proudly showed me a pink button pinned on her shirt.   She smiled and said she got an award for having perfect attendance at school.    I hope she can continue the trend.  I would love her to have a perfect
attendance by the end of the year.   

Way to go Savannah!!   She is really doing great in school and making friends such as Tess, Lauren, Emily and Summer.  Summer can be a bit mean and tells Savannah she can’t be her friend sometimes.   I think I am going to talk to Summer’s teach about it…this needs to be mentioned to Summer’s mom, I think.

I had a meeting with Maryssa’s speech therapist, special ed preschool teacher, and the school psychologist about seeing if Maryssa should be in the special ed preschool for speech therapy.   She is doing pretty well and they said that she is too advanced and doesn’t quality.  That is music to my ears.

They did recommend that I put her in regular preschool so I am going to do that starting in January for a couple mornings a week. 

Maryssa will continue to go to speech therapy twice a week for 1/2 hour each day.  

Maryssa had a bad couple of weeks with meltdowns and general bad behavior.  She is over it now.   I guess it must have been a phase for her.

Today I took the girls to get Christmas Holiday portraits done.   Our appointment was at 3:00pm at JCPenney’s Photography studio.    It took me over 2 hours to get the girls ready…hair up in pin curls and dressed in their beautiful Christmas dresses with tights and new dressy shoes.

I made this appointment almost 2 weeks ago and the photographers have called me twice this week to verify we wanted the Christmas Holiday background and to confirm our appointment.    I reserved an hour appointment for photography.

We arrive and the photographer said she wasn’t ready for us.   She did not have the background put together yet and could I please turn their TV on and play a Disney movie for the girls while she sets up the studio.    So I did that.  She asked if I could come help her put the background together.  She had no idea how it was supposed to be put together.   So I helped as best as I could.   In the meantime, my girls have been intently watching the Disney movie for over 20 minutes.

We finished doing the background and then I had to get the girls unglued from the TV.  That was difficult.  Of course they didn’t want to go get pictures now because I interrupted them watching their Disney movie. 

Needless to say, the girls didn’t cooperate with the photo shoot.  It went horrible.   Not one good shot!!   Everyone was crying and protesting.  I was frustrated.  The photographer didn’t know what to do, so she pulled out a baby rattle to try to appease them.  Ummm, a baby rattle?   Give me  a break!!   She didn’t know how to position the girls and asked me to give her some ideas.   I was not impressed and very annoyed.

I cut the photo shoot short and told her this was going really bad.  We didn’t get one good shot.    I packed up the girls and headed out.  The photographer took me to the register and offered me a free photo sheet and appologized saying that she wasn’t ready for us.   I told her I was frustrated because it took me over 2 hours to get the girls ready and now I would have to reschedule and do it all over again.    I asked to speak to her manager.  Then the bomb drop…she said she was the manager!!    My mouth hung open in disbelief.    Not good at all.

When I got home, I called the manager at JCPenney’s and she had the district manager of photography call me.  I spoke to Nicole Medina and she apologized for the whole experience.  She said the photographer was very good and had 3 years experience being a photographer for JCPenney’s and that she became manager of photography for our JCPenney’s just a couple of weeks ago.    She offered me a few free photo sheets.

I had to reschedule our photo shoot for this Saturday.  We will also do a family portrait also.   Hopefully it will go much better than today…