January 2017 Update
This month has flown by! We had a relatively calm month at home and got to enjoy lots of family time together!
During the first week, we got quite a bit of snow. We took the kids down to Riverside Park to play in it. Aly was so excited that it was snowing, so we thought for sure that she would love the chance to play in it. I also thought that Fynn would be miserable in it and I’d have to snag a picture of him quickly before he retreated to the safety of my arms. Boy were we wrong! Aly acted as if we asked her to roll around in mud. She barely wanted to move in it. Fynn on the other hand, loved everything about it. He was toddling all over the place exploring it, and if he fell down, it didn’t bother him at all! The funniest thing was that Aly was so concerned about Fynn “going into the ocean.” She kept yelling, “Fynn’s going to go into the ocean!!” and would cautiously try to go after him to stop him from going near the water (that was 50 yards away).
One random thing to note this month is the amount of people who think Aly and Fynn are twins haha. Several times a week I have someone ask me if they are! They sure do look alike, even if they are 2 years apart!
The rest of our month was filled with doctor visits and school tours. We’ve been busy!!
And we just ended the month with Tio Kevin coming to visit for the weekend. We can’t wait for them to move here!
Fynnlan Seeley
-Fynn is seriously afraid of all pop-up books or books with stuffed animals attached to them. I think it is so funny to watch him react to them! One day, he kept asking for a particular pop-up book, so I couldn’t resist. Check out the video below.
-Fynn LOVES trains. He asks me to build train tracks daily, and he understands when I ask him to go find Thomas!
-Fynn dropped his morning nap this month! So he is now taking one afternoon nap, and it is so nice to have them napping together again!
-He is learning how to feed himself with a spoon, and he is also getting a lot better about taking small bites. I think I am getting close to being able to just put a plate in front of him and not monitor each bite haha.
-Fynn understands most directions that I give him. It’s so fun seeing him get so big!
-We’ve had a hard time with Fynn this month because he is quite aggressive. He constantly wants to pinch, bite, and pull hair, and he thinks it’s funny when we discipline him. So we are trying to be consistent and praying he grows out of it quickly!
-He moved up out of the baby class at BSF! He is loving his new class and teachers.
-Fynn is an eating machine. He eats all day long, and we have to tell him when he is done eating! He must have an amazing metabolism to still be so tiny haha.
-We had Fynn’s 15 month checkup this week. He is finally on the charts for his weight!! He’s 19 lbs 15 oz and 29.25 in.
Alynne Tiffany
-One big thing that has been happening with Aly this month is our preschool search. I want to take a few minutes and write about the process here in NYC because it is so crazy and I want to remember haha. So NYC has been working on a very progressive initiative to provide free pre-k for all children in NYC. Over the last several years they have greatly added the number of seats available to kids, but even still it is quite difficult to get good spots. Placement is done on a lottery system, but there are different priority levels within that. First, siblings get priority (which automatically puts us low on the totem pole). Every household has one school they are zoned for and they receive top priority to get in that school. Unfortunately our zoned school is not great at all, so we will not be going there. From there, everyone is assigned a district. There are 6 in Manhattan. So the next priority level would be schools in your district. But again, others that have siblings or are zoned to that school would still have priority over us. And so everyone can tour different schools and then you rank them by preference. The city then takes that and assigns you to one school (hopefully on your list), and you can accept or decline that. So that’s the process, phew. We started touring a couple schools in the Fall, but this month has been the bulk of it. We’ve been going to 1-2 schools a week, and my head is just swimming! I’ve found a few schools that I really like (like an amazing dual language school!), but most of them only offer 18 seats. So at this point, I think we are done with touring and researching. I think I’ve done my due diligence in being thorough and informed, and from here it is in God’s hands! We will find out in April what school she gets placed in. So if you think about it, say some prayers that God would place Aly in the right school, as we are already nervous about this upcoming transition!
-After we had played in the snow, I was reading a book to Aly where the kid made a snow angel in it. I asked her why she didn’t make a snow angel, and she said very seriously, “Mami, did you know that there is grass under the snow?!” Ohhh Alynne, our city girl.
-One of Aly’s favorite words right now is “scraggly.” She uses it for anything and everything. Most often though, when their dinosaur becomes deflated, she exclaims that it is all scraggly!
-“Mom can you do me a favorite?”
-Aly loves everything to do with NYC transporation, and she amazes me at how much she knows. She can read all of the buses (There’s the M101!) and she can tell you how many minutes for the next train, whether or not the train is going downtown or uptown, and if the train is express or local! She is quite the New Yorker!
-Aly calls scissors, “snissors.”
-Aly only wants to wear dresses and skirts these days, and it is a struggle to get her to wear anything else! The only way she will is if she knows that every dress she owns is in the dirty clothes.
-Speaking of being such a girly girl, Aly loves high heels, but she calls them “up shoes.” I think it is so precious! One day she was walking around on tip toes, and said, “Mami, look! I’m wearing Up Shoes!”
-When we touring a school, Aly introduced herself as “Alynne” for the first time!
-Aly has memorized my cell phone number!
-One afternoon after I put Aly down for a nap, I heard her emphatically yelling. I thought she was yelling “Fynnlan!!” So I went in to check on her. When I asked her what she was yelling, she said, “I was yelling ‘Pigeon!!’” Apparently a pigeon had landed on the AC outside our window and she was trying to shoo it away haha.
-Aly has a clock that will turn green when she is allowed to get out of bed in the mornings. It is set for 7:45, but one morning Aly woke up at 7 needing to use the bathroom. I know it was already 7, but I was still so tired so I told her to go back to bed until her clock turned green haha. I quickly fell back asleep, and then at 7:40, I hear a very distressed Aly crying out, “My clock is never going to turn green!!” Haha, poor girl!!
-Finally, Aly has the biggest heart. She is naturally so caring for others, and I love getting to hear her prayers each night. It’s like getting a little glimpse into her heart. A couple nights ago this was her prayer:
Lord, please help Fynn to learn not to pull hair. I know he’s just a baby, but help him to learn. Thank you for BSF and thank you for sending Jesus to wash some of our feets. Thank you for our friends even though I didn’t want to eat dinner when they were here. Help me to listen and obey. Amen.
