the Paladinos

Funny Girl

Thursday, August 16, 2012 by Leslie Paladino

I’m way behind on my updates so we’ll just do a few together while I’m on a roll.  I still have to go back and do Gabby’s recital video from June (yikes!) and our summer pictures.  Those will have to wait for another day. 

Our Gabby girl has such a unique way of playing that I thought I would include some pictures of some of her favorite things to do right now. 

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Gabby’s favorite show right now is Doc McStuffin’s.  It’s a Disney Jr show with a little girl who has a magic stethoscope that can bring her toys to life and then she fixes them in her clinic when they’re injured.  So cute!  So Gabby has opened up a “clinic” in her room and taken on the roll of Doc.  This little setup is Hallie (supposed to be a hippo) who assists Doc and checks in patients. 

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Lamby complete with a pink skirt Gabby colored, cut out and taped on her. 

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Doctor bag printed from online, magic stethoscope and a doctors head lamp that Gabby drew and cut out. 

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Posing with all her helpers, Hallie, Lamby and Stuffy (which is supposed to be a dinosaur but apparently is a whale here). 

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We took Gabby to see Brave which of course she had to come home and recreate.  The princess in Brave has red curly hair and since we don’t have any red curly wigs (which she really wants) she had to create her own.  :)  This is a daily ordeal in our house.  Her play has to be very specific and if we don’t have the character she’s thinking of paper can fix that!  She is constantly printing or drawing things to tape to her Barbie’s or in this case her head. 

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She put this little outfit together all by herself.  Love the socks and heels.  And I guess her posing is leftover from dance class.  This is her favorite pose right now. 

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Mommy and Daddy holding hands.  I think she was pretty generous with Michael’s hair in this picture.  :)

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Gabby and Peter swinging at Gramma and Grampa’s house. 

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A ball wearing a little hat.

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A rainbow and rain of course.

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Peter was bothering Gabby one day so she made this sign to hang on her door to keep him out.  I love the sad face she drew for Peter and the arrows to make sure he knows he is not supposed to open her door.  I know it’s not a nice sign but I loved her creativity. 

Update on our Kindergartner

Thursday, August 16, 2012 by Leslie Paladino

Gabby has been doing so well at school. Last week we started dropping her off in the car line instead of walking her in. Surprisingly she has done so much better with that. That first morning I dropped her off she just jumped out of the car, waved and yelled “bye Mom” and ran down the sidewalk. I wanted to cry all over again watching her run away but am so glad she was happy to go to school.

She’s always so excited when she gets in the car to tell me something special that she’s saved up from her day. It usually starts before she even has the door open with “guess what” or “I have a surprise to tell you.” One day it was telling me that she got left on the playground after going in to the bathroom and coming back out to find her class had gone back without her. The Gabby I knew would have immediately panicked and started crying. But the new mature, grown up Gabby just calmly (according to her) walked in with another class and followed them until she found her room. So proud of her! And today she told me all about meeting Miss Arkansas.  She came to their room to read to them (how cool is that!).  Gabby was so excited and had to come home to dress up like her of course.

So far I’m loving kindergarten for Gabby.  The staff at her school is so sweet and they get to do so many fun things with field trips or events at the school.  So blessed to be in a great school!   

I think everyone has heard this story already but I’m going to retell it here to keep a record of it. She discovered two Sunday’s ago that one of the boys in her class, Michael, also goes to our church. My Michael and I were actually talking about it the next morning and saying how glad we were that she had a friend who was a boy and that she hadn’t started going boy crazy yet. She had been playing new games like police with Michael which was nice to hear since she would only play princess games in preschool.

That afternoon she came home from school and told me that she told Michael that she “wants to marry him someday.” She said she thinks he’s handsome and that she loves him. This was VERY shocking since she’s NEVER talked about boys that way and you can imagine how quickly my feelings changed about her playing with boys now. :) I tried to remain calm and said “you probably like Michael because he’s a good friend, right?” She replied “mmhmmm, he’s a really good friend.  And he’s handsome.  I think his hair makes him look handsome the most.” 

But since then we haven’t had any more mention of Michael.  I occasionally ask about him and I don’t think she’s been playing with him as much.  I probably scared her off after our little talk about just liking boys as friends and not thinking about marriage right now and that little boys just want to play and not talk about marriage, etc.  I might have taken it  a little overboard when I started talking about dating someday and the kind of man she wants to marry.  :) Oops.  What can I say, I was on a roll. 

I’m sure we’ll have more of these incidents pop up and we’ll just have to get used to that.  We probably take it a little too seriously but at the same time she has such an innocent little heart that we want to protect and don’t want her to give away to every boy she thinks is handsome.  Maybe next time we need to try praying instead of panicking.  :)

We also had orientation at church this last Sunday to introduce Gabby to the big kids area upstairs.  She’ll be with kids K-5th grade I think.  I can’t believe we’re starting to leave the nursery behind and moving up.  Definitely a lot of changes for us right now and a lot to get used to! 

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A Day in the Life of Peter

Wednesday, August 15, 2012 by Leslie Paladino

I thought this video accurately captured what Peter has been up to while Gabby is in school.  Peter will start PK3 two days a week at Lifeway Christian School tomorrow.  We got Mrs. Ostrand again.  Yea!  That’s who Gabby had 2 years ago.  It’s hard to believe that he’ll be the same age she was when she started there.  She seemed so big at the time but he’s still just my baby.