Holiday Fun

 

It's been a long time since I have shared any of Emily's art work. She brings drawings home every day and they are generally variations on the one above - lots of smiling, happy people. This one really concerned me, though. It clearly shows three happy girls under a rainbow and one girl, isolated, alone, under a rain cloud. I wondered whether Emily thought of herself as that isolated girl under the rain cloud. Of course, I asked her about it, and it was all very logical in her mind, "You need rain to make a rainbow." she said. And who is the girl under the cloud? "That's Rapunzel." Oh, ok. So all is well - she and her friends reside happily under the rainbow. :)

You can see a real picture of her with one of her friends in the photo below. This is from their Holiday concert this year, and the sweet, red haired girl is one of her best buds.

 

One of the great treats that Emily got this year was an invitation to attend a cookie party. Two of the moms from her school purchased a cookie party at the annual school auction. That is, two teachers volunteered to bake and decorate cookies with four kiddos. So, each mom had a daughter that participated, and then there was space for two additional girls. Emily was one of the two girls that was invited to join in. The girls had a great time, and the moms were all happy that the mess, etc. wasn't in one of our houses! The other moms were great to talk to and all eight of us went to lunch together after the party.

As for Christmas treats, Emily did pretty well this year. She had asked Santa for a dress with matching shoes (which she received), and then shortly before Christmas, she decided that she also wanted a pair of goggles, a baking set, and a bunny. Perhaps needless to say, she received the goggles (although she said that they are "boy goggles" because they are blue), and the baking set, but not the bunny! She was pretty happy with the baking set, and we used it to make some yummy vanilla cupcakes the day after Christmas.

For me, however, the big treat was the photo that we took while waiting to see Santa. It is pretty rare to get a photo of all four of us, and I think that this one turned out pretty well!

School Photo

This is the first school photo that we have had for Emily since she was two years old! As you can imagine, she has definitely changed. Much of the baby fat is gone, and she is a full-blown little girl. Emily finally had her 5-year-old check up a few weeks ago. She is up to 36.2 pounds (14th percentile), and 41.75 inches (17th percentile). Her percentages are steady relative to prior years, so she is doing well. The doctor projected that she will end up approximately 5'2" because that is about 20th percentile for women.

As for school, we were very curious about what we would learn at the fall parent-teacher conference. Because Emily is new to the Montessori school, we expected that there would be an adjustment. In general, the teachers say that Emily has transitioned well. Not surprisingly, she tends to gravitate toward the art activities, and needs a little extra encouragement to complete the language and math materials. She definitely likes to write, and practice her letters, but she seems to have much less interest in actually learning to read.

As for violin, Emily has graduated from her box violin to a real violin. She was definitely excited about the transition, but I think that she will be even more excited when she is actually allowed to put the bow on the strings. Right now, we are mostly just practicing setting up good playing position, etc. Unfortunately, Emily is often not super excited about our nightly lesson, and so it can be a challenge to actually get her to practice. I am hopeful that she will get more excited as time goes by and she sees what progress she is making.

Halloween!!

Emily chose her Halloween costume back in September this year. She was VERY sure that she wanted to be Darth Vader. I was convinced that we would buy the costume and then she would change her mind, but she never once wavered. So, Darth Vader it was!

Lucky for her, she was actually able to go trick-or-treating this year. At first, we weren't sure because she came down with a fever on Monday that lasted all week. Saturday was the first morning that she woke up without a fever and seemed to be feeling better. The thought of missing Halloween had the poor thing in tears a few days earlier, so I'm glad that it worked out.

With both girls in "scary" costumes this year, it was a far cry from the princess costumes from past years. Fine by me because the weather was not very warm this year and these costumes made it easy for the girls to wear warm clothes underneath.

 As for Emily's pumpkin, She designed the face herself - she seemed very sure of what she wanted and dashed off a picture for me in a flash. I almost got the sense that she had been thinking about it for a long time. Lucky for me, it was a very "doable" design and I think that it turned out pretty well.

As you can tell, at the end of the night we had one tired, but very satisfied little girl. She had managed to get candy, and stuff herself with cotton candy, s'mores, and chocolate. All in all a successful night.

Kindergarten

Emily was super excited for her first day of Kindergarten. She was all smiles all morning. In the photo below, she is actually trying to keep herself from smiling, but she can't do it. :)

I wasn't sure how it was going to go once we actually got her to the classroom, but she did great. You can see some of the Montessori materials behind her. She was thrilled because her classroom has two birds, fish, and a cozy little loft that only 5-year-olds are allowed to use. The Kindergarten classroom includes more than just Kindergarten kids, so there are some younger kids, too. I think this is really good for Emily, and gives her an opportunity to feel like one of the "big kids" for once.

Abigail needs to be at school at 8:30am, but Emily's class doesn't start until 9am, so she spends a half hour in before care in the mornings. On the first day, this meant that she was without Abbie and that we were going to leave her with people that she didn't know. As luck would have it, there was another little girl (also 5, I believe) who was in the exact same situation. The girls instantly clicked. Emily grabbed the little girl's hand and they walked off together as if they were best buds. Pretty cute.

Abbie and Emily are taking sports classes together this year. They do sports-specific training on Mondays and tennis on Thursdays. Again, this has been a great transition for Emily - having her big sister there to watch out for her.

I bought them matching tennis outfits, and they both really like being together at school, seeing each other at lunch and recess. Its just been really great for both of them. Also new this year, Emily has started violin lessons. I think (in retrospect) that she is a bit too young for it, but she wanted to start and Mrs. Perry is just going very slowly with her. It'll be fun (probably years from now) if the girls can actually play a song together.

Slowly, but surely, I think that Emily is making progress with her letters and numbers. She seems to be getting the idea of sounding out words, etc. As for numbers, last night before bed she decided to count to infinity. As she got into the hundreds (with some help) she said, "110 . . .111 . . . googol?" I said, "No, I think that there are a few numbers between 111 and googol." She said, "Ok, I'll count all night. I promise." :)

Vacation

Emily had a great family vacation this year. I was most concerned about how she would do in the car, but she was perfectly content. I think that her car seat is much more comfortable than Abbie's is, which makes a big difference on such a  long trip.

Emily was very excited to go to Grandma and Grandpa P.'s house so that she could see her cousins and have other kids to play with. Little did she know that it was the weekend of the local fair, which of course means rides and cotton candy. You can tell how absolutely thrilled she is to be on the Merry Go Round.

There were also kids to play with at our friends' cabin and she enjoyed that, too. Our friends' daughter is three now and Emily spent a fair bit of time "teaching" her things and trying to help her with stuff. She seemed to enjoy the opportunity to step into the big sister role for a few days. The town near the cabin is the self-proclaimed Turtle Racing Capital of the World. As such, every Wednesday during the summer they close Main Street for a couple of hours to set up games and turtle races for the kids. Our turtles didn't win, but I think that Emily had fun anyway.

As for the rest of the trip, Emily did a great job being (mostly) patient with us. She did get to enjoy all of the fishing, s'more eating, amusement part rides, and aquariums that Abbie got to enjoy, but she also had to sit through lots of long meals with foods that she would never imagine eating. Needless to say, we pretty much brought yogurt and PB&J with us everywhere we went.

Finally, just as further proof that our quiet child is always listening, we ended up with a fly in the car shortly before we arrived home. It was really irritating, and at one point I thought that I heard Emily say, "F**k." I asked her what she had said, and she replied, "F**k." I tried to gently explain to her that f**k is really a big person word and that she shouldn't say it. She must have felt bad, I guess, because in trying to explain herself, she said, "But I said it to the fly . . ." Chad and I found that pretty funny (although it might have been the delirium associated with endless days in the car . . .).

Bad Guys

Emily and the boys at school continue to be obsessed with "bad guys." The boys are very interested in Star Wars and Emily has been pretty interested in it as well. Apparently, the boys are all on a "bad guy team" and Emily is the only girl that they let on the team with them. That being said, I think that boys and girls interact very differently, and I don't think that she is always sure what to make of their behavior, which leaves her uncertain as to whether they really like her or not. This has created all sorts of complexities in her brain and many of our morning trips to school are filled with discussions about her role in everything. Personally, my hope is that once she starts at her new school in the Fall, all of this bad guy will sort of just melt away.

Emily has also developed a sudden interest in learning how to swim. Prior to this, she was content to wear her swim vest in the pool, but lately she would rather go without it. I think that we may put her in swimming lessons in the Fall, but for now, she is practicing her own semi doggy paddle stroke in our pool. She doesn't really want to put her face in the water, and she isn't really sure how to hold her breath, so this makes it difficult for her to really make much progress. I think this is where swimming lessons would be really good for her.

She has also become more interested in making sure that she is ready for Kindergarten. She has started working on her upper case and lower case letters in her Kumon books, and she seems to be more interested in writing in general. Her letter recognition seems to be coming along, and my hope is that she will have more opportunities in school this Fall to really put some of the pieces together. Sometimes, when we are trying to convince her to take some quiet time, we'll tell her to look at a book, but she usually responds with a semi-annoyed, "But I can't read!" I think it may bug her a little bit, particularly when she sees Abbie reading all the time, so it would be good if she could start to make some progress on this.

Other than school and swimming, Emily's summer has been filled with countless birthday parties. It is amazing how many summer birthdays there are at her school and there has probably been an average of a party a week for the last couple of months. Emily is always thrilled to go to a party, but I think the parents are starting to get tired of having the same conversations with each other over and over. :)

Happy 5th Birthday Emily!

Emily was very excited to celebrate her 5th birthday this morning. She has been waiting for this one for a long time and this is the first year that she has been really interested in having a giant party and inviting all her friends.

(At school this morning with her Birthday Girl pin)

Said party took place this past Sunday at The Little Gym. We invited lots of kids from her school and had a pretty good turn out with roughly 17 kids showing up to play. The deal at The Little Gym is that the kids get to run around, bounce on stuff, knock stuff over, play with a giant parachute, and basically just wear themselves out.

At the end, there was cake and juice. The cake became a pretty big deal. She elected to go with a Star Wars cake. Yes, one of the kids in the class has actually seen all the Start Wars movies, and yes, his mother has fully admitted that it is totally inappropriate. :) Nonetheless, Star Wars fever has spread through the class and all the kids are obsessed with it. Emily felt that it was important to get a Star Wars cake because she knew that "all the boys would like it." Yes, apparently we are already concerned with pleasing the boys - lovely.

 

The totally unforeseen issue with the cake, however, was that the faces on it were all edible. However, there weren't enough faces to go around so there was all this concern about who was going to get a face and who was just going to get stuck with plain old white frosting. Of course, no self-respecting five year old just wants white frosting. I mean, really, how lame. Ha! Anyway, most of the kids took their disappointment in stride and we survived.

Emily received some gifts from her friends that we let her open on Sunday, but we have made her wait until today to open the gifts from family. About two days ago she said to me, "Did you get me the spiderman costume that I wanted?" Um, she was serious about that? Oops. So as not to have a replay of the Christmas disappointment when she didn't get her Elsa doll, I quickly jumped on Amazon yesterday and ordered her a spiderman costume. I paid almost $4 in shipping to get it here today (not bad), but I just got a notice that it won't arrive until tomorrow (you get what you pay for, I guess), so we'll see how that goes. 

There are other presents that she asked for which she will get today, and hopefully she will still remember that she wanted them. I suspect that she will because the other day she asked me why I let her say her birthday wish out loud last year. She was totally blaming me for it not coming true. That is, if I had warned her to keep it quiet then it would have worked. Thinking that there was no way that she could possibly remember what she had wished for a year ago, I asked her to tell me again what it was. Of course, I remember what it was because I caught it on film. Well, she hasn't seen the film in almost a year, but she was able to recall her wish almost word for word. So, if we are in luck, she will remember that she also asked for an electric toothbrush and a chemistry kit for making potions (yes, two totally random items). Fingers crossed. 

The other big news for Emily is that she had her official pre-school graduation a couple of weeks ago, complete with cap, gown, and diploma. Very cute. She will still be there for the summer, but she is definitely very excited to head to kindergarten this fall.

Artistic Expression

Emily has been an absolute joy lately, and now that she is approaching 5 she is becoming more interested in letting Dad help her with things (which has been good for everyone). She continues to be incredibly creative. She likes to “write” books. She conceptualizes the story, draws all the pictures, has us write the words for her as she dictates, and then she staples the pages together and brings them to school for the teachers to read to the class.

She continues to take pride in her artwork. She often disappears into the playroom for some length of time and then emerges with her latest work of art. Here, she became very interested in drawing the pirate on her Band-Aid box. Many of the boys at school are fascinated with pirates, and some of this has rubbed off on her. Of course, when she emerged with this little gem, I was pretty surprised at the attention to detail – the plume, the hook, the ruffled collar, and the sash are all in place.

She also likes to dance and we often catch her in the living room, just letting the music take her little body where it needs to go. :)

We recently had Emily’s parent-teacher conference, and they feel pretty confident that she is ready for kindergarten (which is fortunate because she will be attending Kindergarten at Abbie’s Montessori school next year). When I told Emily that her teachers thought that she was ready, I was surprised as how happy, and proud she seemed. Perhaps there was a doubt in her head? Who knows. Either way, she is definitely looking forward to transitioning to Abbie’s “big kid school.” She has already spent a day visiting there and seemed to enjoy it. Also, I think that Abbie is looking forward to watching out for her little sister and “showing her the ropes.” They will get to play together in aftercare, which I also hope will be a good thing for them.

I continue to be amazed at Emily’s emotional maturity. Apparently, she is a natural Yogi (or something) because she seems to have taken very naturally to the deep breathing techniques that they taught her at school. Apparently, they taught the kids that when they are upset they should imagine that one thumb is a flower and the other is a pinwheel. Then the kids can “smell the flower, and blow the pinwheel.” The result is deliberative, deep breathing. Emily has used this technique both to calm herself down when she is upset and to help herself fall asleep. Also, earlier this week she and I were caught driving in some torrential rains that resulted in massive flash flooding. It was definitely stressful for her because the rain was loud on the car windows and we kept having to turn around to avoid flooded roads. I heard her singing in the backseat, but I didn’t think much of it until she said, “I’m singing a song to calm myself down.” I asked if that was something that they taught her at school, but she said that she just thought of it on her own. Very cool.



Witty Remarks

(ready for her Valentine's Party)

Emily has been sick a lot lately. She was so sick this week that we took her to the doctor with a fever over 103 on Monday. We actually called on Grandma and Grandpa C. to stay with her this week because she really needs to rest and recuperate. This morning she finally seems to be doing better and she is really excited about going to school for her Valentine's Day party. She got herself all dressed up and ready to go before I left for work this morning.

When she is actually feeling well, she is actually a pretty witty kid. This past weekend, I was at Best Buy with both girls. Abbie came running up to me, asking me if I would buy her a complete set of Harry Potter movies. When I said no, Emily declared, "You're mean, mom!" So, I explained to her that the best moms aren't the ones that say yes to everything. The best moms are the ones who have to make hard choices, and don't always give kids everything that they want. Without missing a beat, she replied, "Then I want the worst mom." Alrighty then.

I could tell Emily was feeling better this morning because she quietly listened to Abbie complain about how art class is no fun anymore because the teacher won't let the kids talk. Then she said to Abbie, "So, its OK that its not fun. Look, Abbie, you're getting older now." Apparently she has decided that life gets less fun as you get older. I just thought it was funny that she was giving Abbie advice with such an all-knowing tone of voice. Funny.

Holidays

It is hard to believe that it has been almost a month since Christmas. The time seems to be flying by. Just to give you the official holiday update, Emily had a great time (for the most part). She asked Santa for very little (some dresses and some goggles) and she got everything that she asked for. Well, almost everything. At sort of the last minute she decided that she wanted a singing Elsa doll. When she saw that Santa didn't bring her one, she just calmly said, "Oh well, maybe next year." Poor little thing. Imagine being 4 and planning to wait a whole additional year for your singing Elsa doll. :(

Anyway, below are her fancy dresses that she got. In the first picture she is standing in front of her "castle" that we built and then she decorated.

Every now and then we get glimpses into how interesting her brain is. She thinks about lots of stuff and we never know what she is going to say next. One night, a couple of weeks ago, as we were talking to Abbie at dinner about friend-related issues at school, Emily (who often pipes up with helpful advice) pointed out that all the kids should just try to be nice. We thought that was a very good point and we told her so. Then she said, "If they aren't nice then Santa won't bring them very many presents. Like me, he didn't bring me very many presents." I'm sure that the sound of my heart breaking was so loud at this point that it was actually noticeable to those around me. I asked her if she thought that Santa was trying to tell her that she wasn't very nice, and she thought he probably was, so we talked about how its not about the number of presents. Rather its about getting presents instead of coal. She seemed to think that this was reasonable, so I tried to conclude with, "We just wouldn't want you to think that the number of presents says something about how nice you are. We wouldn't want you to make that mistake." She looked at me and said, "But mistakes are how we learn." Of course this is something that we have tried to impress upon Abbie - this idea that it is important to try and to make mistakes and to fail sometimes as a way to learn and grow in life. Apparently, Abbie isn't the only one who has been picking up on that message over the past few years. We had no idea that Emily had been paying attention all this time, so her comment stopped both of us dead in our tracks.

Anyway, between the Elsa doll disappointment, and the stuff about Santa thinking that she isn't nice, we decided to get her a singing Elsa doll, which oddly enough had fallen in price from $100 pre-Christmas to $28 post-Christmas. Imagine that! She was pretty happy about it and did a little happy dance that I wish I had been able to capture on video. So cute!