A visit with the Ducks

This morning when we dropped Brianne off at daycare her teacher informed us that since she is the second oldest in her class, and she seems to be increasingly bored with the little ones, that they are going to let her start visiting the Ducks class! That would be the next class up (she is currently a Tweety Bird and started as a Baby Bird).

Her teacher took us the Ducks room and showed us around and told us about a typical day with the Ducks. They have a more structured day with actual activities like craft time, story time, sing-a-long time etc. She said they will start to use crayons and do puzzles and crafts like gluing cotton balls to paper haha. And they all eat lunch and snacks at their little tables in their little chairs and start learning to drink from real cups...

And all of this is so wonderful because we assumed she would be slightly behind since she is was a preemie but it seems like she is right on track with her peers, or even a little ahead in some cases. But, I of course, I immediately see a whole new world of danger for Bri. Glue? We have been trying to get her to color, and she will scribble for like 2 minutes, then the crayons end up in her mouth (and for some reason its always the same red crayon, must taste better than the rest or something). I can do the math, crayons in mouth will lead to glue in the mouth... and I just know that will do wonderful things for her digestive system. And she has entered the climbing phase so I can see her climbing all over the little chairs and falling off them, or getting hit/bitten/scratched/knocked over by the older kids, drowning on a cup of water, choking on her lunch because she won't be strapped into a high chair and thus will not be able to sit still for longer than 2 bights at a time...

I need to just embrace it, she is growing up and with that comes danger, but I'm not really willing to accept that just yet. This is exactly the reason that I still rock her to sleep every night and will continue to do so until she tells me she doesn't want me too. Don't judge me for still rocking her to sleep, it's actually more for me than for her. I have already given up the intimacy of her morning bottles and snuggles and I would like to hang on to this last piece of babyhood for as long as I am allowed.

And just one more I would like to reiterate how smart Bri is. Yesterday her daycare teacher told us she loves the "10 Little Indians" song and will do all the hand motions along with her. So when we got home I sung the song and sure enough, she busted out with the little motions and was dancing all around. She also has a new love interest - Cookie Monster! And this morning, she asked me for a cookie and I was reluctant to give her one since she just ate breakfast, but I did and she took it to the living room and opened her book to Cookie Monster's picture and proceeded to feed the cookie to the picture of the Cookie Monster! She's a baby Einstein!!