All the boys in the house have various stages of a cold. Alex is doing better, but Will and James both feel "yucky".  Will told me he was sick and couldn't go to preschool–that is sick!

Speaking of preschool, on Tuesday they had their Valentines Day party. It was supposed to be last Thursday but snow caused the school to be closed. I had wondered if they were doing to do it…maybe Thursday of this week?  So Will went and when I picked him up the teacher told me how since he didn't have Valentines in his bag he helped her pass out other things and he had a great time. He didn't even think about the Valentines we had for his classmates until he saw them at home and said "Mommy, we forgot these!"

How did all the other parents know they were going to do it Tuesday? I guess now that I think about it a bit more, it makes sense, but really–I was the ONLY one who didn't think of that? I felt like there is some parenting code that I'm missing out on sometimes.  And then to see how some people went all out with candy gift bags! I was glad a few others had the same paper Valentines you fold in half (and you could tell how many boys were in the class–half of them were Car related)!  The other thing that surpised me was how many of the kids could write their name already (one even wrote Will's name on the card!!!). This hasn't been something we've really focused on. Will can recoginze his name and we have played around TRYING to write it, but it's not something we force or make an issue of. (Usually, we work on the 'down-up-down-up' of the W. Instead he does 'up-down-up-down' and ends up being "Mill".) 

So I'm curious, for you parents out there (or Heidi, in your work with kids)–do you remember about what age your kids started writing their name?  I'm not worried or stressing out about this, just feel like it's another thing in this parenting gig I'm trying to figure out. I don't want to be a pushy mom, but if it is something we should be working on, we can do that!