Teeth

Emily's tooth situation has taken a strange turn. With the first (and only) tooth that she lost, the adult tooth grew in behind it. Apparently this is a theme - she currently has three more teeth doing the same thing. The two top front teeth and the remaining bottom front tooth are all well on their way into her mouth but the baby teeth that they are suppose to replace are still hanging on.

As you can imagine, the baby teeth have been pushed into an awkward position by the emerging adult teeth, which she thinks is hysterical because it enables her to make the crazy smile above. We have strongly encouraged her to work on wiggling the baby teeth out and she has to some extent, but they still have a way to go. Personally, I am inclined to just make an appointment for the dentist to pull all of them, but that also seems like it undercuts the right of passage somehow.

As for other scary things, I received a note from Emily's teacher this week asking me if Emily likes to share scary stories at home. Apparently, she has been telling some scary stories at school and it has been scaring the other kids a bit. The teacher thinks that it is all pretty harmless, but just wanted to know if we were aware of this side of her personality. Of course, I filled her in on Emily's long-time love of the macabre.

A little light reading

In addition to telling scary stories, she is also interested in reading them. She came home from the book fair this week with The Collector. I had never heard of it, but the cover seems to sum it up pretty well, I think. She was so excited about it, but the people at school expressed concern that it would give her nightmares, and a couple of the kids actually said, "Bless your heart" which is the classic southern way of expressing concern. LOL.

Anyway, we started reading it before bed last night and it was pretty darn scary. When we stopped, she begged to sleep in our bed and when that didn't work, she begged Chad to sleep with her. Of course, that didn't work either and she ended up sleeping with a giant teddy bear and reading something less scary to get her mind off of things. We'll see if she is ready for more tonight or if she decides to take a break.

As for Christmas, Emily is on top of it, as always. She already has a present for Abbie under the tree, and has her Christmas list ready to go so that the elf can refer to it as needed. Fortunately for the elf, it looks like a pretty manageable list, but more about that later.

Halloween

Emily decided to stick with being a possessed doll for Halloween. She had a vision for it and we were able to get her the stuff that she needed. She wanted to look like she was sewn together like an actual doll would be and Abbie was kind enough to help her with some yarn and liquid latex. I was worried about getting all of the makeup, etc. done before school on Wednesday, but the girls got up early, worked together, and got it done. In fact, they actually had time to play with the camera and get some creepy photos before leaving the house. She wanted to take the knife to school with her, but obviously that didn't happen.

Frankly, I was pretty amazed at how much she looked like something from a horror movie. She has always liked scary stuff and she seems to do a good job with it. A couple of the parents at school commented to me that they were surprised how much she stayed in character and was really able to pull of the possessed doll act. Of course, by the time I picked her up at the end of the day, the liquid latex had come off and she looked a little less scary. Even the photo below shows that she wasn't completely creepy all day. Meanwhile, you may wonder how she came up with this idea. I really have no clue what she is referring to, but she claims that she heard a story once, a story that she thinks has been around since the beginning of time, about a possessed doll that slowly kills her family, chanting "one step closer, two steps closer, etc." as each family member slowly disappears. And, yes, Chad and I are now sleeping with one eye open! LOL.

On a lighter note, Emily continues to enjoy school. We had Emily's parent-teacher conference last week and she is doing great. We had received her report card prior to the conference and her grades are excellent. Her teacher commented,

"Emily is a child who seems to have an understanding of "make a plan, work a plan, experience the benefits from the plan." She works diligently on all tasks presented and participates in all academic tasks. She is comfortable with interactions with both the boys and the girls. Recess or brain breaks often finds her gathering all together as she runs and plays energetically or sits and spins stories for all to enjoy."

Really, her teacher had nothing negative to report at the conference, which bothered Emily because she really wanted some constructive criticism. She was actually annoyed when I came out of the conference without anything for her to work on. Poor kid. :)

Updates

Emily has been having a great semester so far. She is enjoying school and doing a great job with her work. The recently had an assembly to honor the kids that had read and taken AR tests on a sufficient number of books so far this semester. It was really nice because each kid was called up, one at a time, and asked to talk about their favorite book.

Emily was not super excited to talk in front of the whole school but she did great. She decided to discuss Dolphin Tale, which is actually a non-fiction book about a dolphin who is rescued and given a prosthetic tale. 

As you can see, the school principal is super sweet and gives all the kids hugs, etc. As for additional feedback on her work, the first report cards of the year will be released soon and our first parent-teacher conference is scheduled for next Friday, so I will have more to report soon.

Emily also had her annual check-up recently and she is still on track in terms of her percentiles. She is now 49.5 inches tall, which puts her in the 26th percentile. So, apparently all the PB&J that she consumes seems to be doing the trick.

Also big on the radar screen right now is Halloween, which is only one week away! Emily has had many costume ideas over the past few weeks. At first she was going to be "Bat Girl Gone Bad," whatever that means. Then she was going to be, "A Goddess Who Attracts Boys and Then Sucks Their Insides Out." LOL. I don't know where she comes up with this stuff. Anyway, her most recent idea, which I think that she is sticking with, is "A Possessed Doll." I am not exactly sure what that entails, but we'll find out soon because this is the last weekend to find a costume!

One month in!

Well, Emily is one month into her new school year at her new school. So far, she really likes it! She finally feels challenged and likes the other kids, so things are going really well. She has a long school day - we aim to drop her off at 7:30am and pick her up at 4:30pm. Her school day actually ends at 3:15pm, but then most of the kids stay for Homework Club, which is great because it means that by the time I pick her up, her homework is done for the day. Despite the long hours, Emily seems to be excited about her days and she seems to be doing well in class.

At the university pool

One of the things that has been nice about being in a lab school at the university is that they have access to the entire campus and definitely try to take advantage of it. One day for P.E. they went swimming in the university pool, and another day they went on a walking tour to see the set up behind one of the home football games. They have also gone to watch one of the girls' volleyball games, and we have free tickets to some of the other sporting events on campus.

So, school is going well and violin is going well. We are back to weekly lessons, which is good because now Emily has new material to work on rather than just "treading water" as we did all summer. Speaking of summer, I realized that school started so quickly after our travels that I didn't get a chance to post any photos from our trip. Here, at long last, are a few highlights:

Butterfly Conservatory at Niagara Falls

We spent a few nights at Niagara Falls, which I thought was lovely. Emily didn't seem too impressed, even with the tour behind the falls, etc., but since we have been home she has talked about it and seems to have fond memories. The Butterfly Conservatory was a big hit, though, and she was able to get a few of them to land on her.

Ithaca is Gorges

She seemed pretty happy with our stop off in Ithaca. It was rainy a lot of the time, but we did get a chance to tour Cornell and do a little walking in the gorges.

During our stop in Virginia, she was lucky enough to go to the Air and Space Museum with Uncle Greg. She also scored a donut from Duck Donuts, and a manicure and pedicure. Quite the life.

Relaxing in the gardens at the Biltmore

We also made a short stop in Asheville and toured the Biltmore. They had the Chihuly glass exhibit going on, which was cool. As for the tour itself, Emily started to fatigue towards the end, but I think that she had fun. We met some friends there, so she was definitely happy to have another girl her age to pal around with.

Finally, we were able to see just a little bit of the Smokey Mountains on the way home. We would have loved to have spent longer, but we just ran out of time. What we did see, though, I think that Emily really liked.

All in all, probably nothing as spectacular as last summer's trip out west, but still good to do. Yesterday Emily told me that when she grows up she wants to own an RV so that she can take her two kids (yes, apparently she has decided on two), around the country to see the things that she has seen, just without the hassle of having to stay in hotels. So, clearly, all of the travel that we are doing is making an impression on her.:)

Back to School!

Today is Emily's first day of school for the new year. She was very excited and was up and dressed with her hair done before 7am! She had some nervous excitement, but she also had a very good idea of what to expect. Her new teacher invited all the kids to visit the classroom on Sunday to pick out their seat, their cubby, etc. Also, on Monday afternoon we went to a pool party with a bunch of her classmates. She had a blast.

Of course, it was possible that all of her excitement would have disappeared by the time I picked her up, so I definitely wanted to wait for the official report before posting. It turns out that the day was great. It sounds like they did some work, but also had a fair bit of recess time. Also, she was very pleased because all of the kids with summer birthdays received a small gift (pencils, a slinky, and a homework pass). Perhaps needless to say, this is the first time that she has ever received a birthday present at school so that definitely scored her teacher a few brownie points.

Abbie has not started school yet, so there was a good chance that she would still be asleep when Emily left the house for the day. Accordingly, she made a point of wishing Emily a good first day before bed last night. As luck would have it, Abbie got up and ran outside just before we left this morning. Emily was so excited - she ran to Abbie and gave her a big hug. Yes, it is very blurry, but I was able to quickly capture the sisterly love. :)

Summer!

Emily has been having a busy, but fun summer so far. Before we left for our summer road trip she met a girl in our neighborhood that is her age, so she was able to entertain herself with lots of play dates. She is very social and seems to have an easy time meeting people. For example, there is a band shell near the house that we are renting in Minnesota. It is right on the lake and has concerts every night during the summer. It is easy walking distance from our house so we like to check it out when we can. The other night we went to see a Caribbean band and Emily was thrilled to join in with the people who were dancing. Almost instantly, she found two girls her age to dance with and they had a blast. Here are a couple of short clips:

At one point, many of the adults decided to form a conga line that wound around the seats. As we watched forty-plus people go past us, imagine our surprise when we saw Emily and her little friends near the back of the line. I tried to get a video, but there was no way to really capture it.

She is looking forward to attending summer camps next week as a way to get more time with kids her age. Her camps next week are forts and American Girl (yes, we brought Ann with us just for this camp). She is actually going to do American Girl camp the following week as well. Other camps this summer include a Magic Tree House camp and a Pixie Hollow camp. 

In the meantime, we have been spending lots of time at the mall. Of course, rides are always a must, but this year we had a practical mission, too. We needed to get Emily her new school uniforms. She starts school a few days after we return home and her uniforms need to be monogrammed beforehand so we are planning to get it done before we leave Minnesota. We have purchased everything that she needs, but it'll likely be next week before we get a chance for her to choose her monogram style. Eventually I'll post a photo of her in her uniform, but in case you are curious, she will be wearing navy blue jumpers with white polo tops. We have lots of flexibility to choose the brand that we like best and we ended up going with Lands' End. As you can imagine, she looks very cute! 

As always, Emily likes to make us laugh with her one-liners. I don't think that she always anticipates that what she says will be funny to us, but once she sees the reaction, she is pretty pleased with herself. We were in the car on our way to Minnesota, about an hour or so down the road when she said that she needed to go to the bathroom. As you can imagine, we hadn't planned on stopping so soon, so we asked her how long she could hold it for. "Until I get to the bathroom," she responded. Ha, Ha! Good to know! 

She's 8!!!

Emily celebrated her 8th birthday yesterday, although she says that she doesn't feel any older. As for having a birthday party, she decided that she would like to wait and do that later this summer when we are in Minnesota. Instead, she picked out what she would like to have for meals on her birthday. She chose some ooey-gooey cinnamon bread for breakfast and a fruit salad with pineapple, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, apple and mint for lunch. For dinner, she just had more cinnamon bread and more fruit salad.

Overall, she had a busy day. We opened presents in the morning, then she and Abbie played with one of neighborhood girls. After lunch, I took her to her friend Garrett's birthday party, which was a pool party (his official birthday is June 6th). They definitely looked forward to seeing each other and, according to Garrett's mom, Garret had been talking about seeing Emily for the entire week leading up to the party. After swimming for a couple of hours, I told Emily that it was time to go. Garrett asked if they could have a play date sometime. I said they could and he responded, "How about today?" LOL. Apparently he didn't want her to leave!

At the end of the day, I interviewed Emily about her day. Here is what she had to say:

Today, it is back to summer camps. Last week was tennis and swimming. This week is art in the Americas in the morning and sports in the afternoon. I think that next week she is back to tennis and swimming again.

Pill Bugs

Apparently Emily is very desperate for a pet. Lately, she has had a big interest in pill bugs and they seem to have a big interest in her, too. One day at school, she had a pill bug crawling on her hand when it suddenly decided to have it's babies. So, she had the mama pill bug and all five of its little white babies on her hand. She was so excited. I said, "Are you sure they were babies? Maybe it just pooped on you." But no, she confirmed that they were crawling around and her teacher helped her put them into a container with some dirt.

Lovingly showing off some of her bug friends

She was so inspired that she came home, put some dirt into a plastic container and started hunting for pill bugs to add to it. A few days thereafter, we ate dinner outside at a restaurant that had easily accessible flowerbeds. As we ate, she began her search and ended up coming home from the restaurant with thirteen more pill bugs to add to her dirt. She added sticks and decaying leaves to give them some excitement. This was a couple of weeks ago and she has been diligently checking on them, spritzing the dirt with water, and leaving old banana peels for them to eat.

A couple nights ago I asked her how they were doing. She got a bit sad and said, "I think I might have to let them go. I was looking for them and I saw one that was dead." I agreed that they might be better off in nature. It was tough for her, but last night she emptied out the container so that any living pill bugs could crawl to better places. Fear not, though, she immediately refilled with new dirt, went to another area, and began a new pill bug collection. Perhaps these will fare better. :)

Other than excitement with pill bugs, Emily is anxiously awaiting the end of the school year. Next Thursday is the official last day, but I think everyone is already checked out. They had a field trip yesterday and have a day of games tomorrow, so clearly the transition to summer has already begun. Of course, from a weather perspective, summer has long since arrived and the kids are regularly in the pool on the weekends. As for summer camps, Emily and Abbie will both start with a tennis/swimming camp, which will give them the chance to swim in a much bigger pool with a real deep end. I think they are both looking forward to that.

First Lost Tooth

Emily with her dear friend Garrett a few weeks ago

Emily is less than two months away from turning eight, and believe it our not, she just lost her first tooth yesterday! We had been getting very close for awhile, though. Over the past few days it had been looking pretty gross, positioned sort of on its side in her mouth (I decided to spare you by not posting a photo of it). I wasn't quite sure what was holding it to the gums, but she insisted that she couldn't get it out. She went for a routine cleaning yesterday and the dentist wasn't sure how it was still hanging on either. He put a little numbing cream on her gums and gave it a tug. It came right out and she was so excited. In the meantime, her adult tooth apparently got tired of waiting, so it decided to grow in behind the baby tooth a couple of months ago. We joked that she had become a shark with two rows of teeth. The dentist claims that, with the baby tooth out of the way, the adult tooth will magically slide forward somehow. In reality, though, all I can think about is the impending orthodonture required to get all of these misaligned teeth into their proper spots. Sigh.

Anyway, Emily was very excited to leave the tooth fairy the tooth and also a note that read,

"Dear tooth fairy, 

Will you come once a week? 

I need someone who can help me, like you.

Your friend,

Emily"

Apparently, she has some friend issues at school that she would like the tooth fairy's help with. When I volunteered to help she told me that the tooth fairy probably had more experience, so she would be a better option. Alrightly then. As you can imagine, the tooth fairy took the note and the tooth and left two dollars in exchange. Emily wasn't very impressed, though, because one of the kids at school gets ten dollars per tooth - ridiculous!

Other than the tooth excitement, Emily is anxiously awaiting the end of the school year. She has done very well this year and made a lot of progress, but she hasn't been too thrilled with the kids (too many boys) and the perceived lack of rigor at her new school. She has often complained that she isn't being challenged, which of course is a terrible thing, so we are going to try a different option in the fall. A school that still has small class sizes, but seems like it will be more rigorous, and has a lot more girls than her current school. She is definitely looking forward to the change.

As always, Emily keeps us entertained with her wit and humor. In addition, she often comes up with some interesting observations. Lately, she has been thinking a lot about time travel (who knows why). One night at dinner she announced, "Even if you go back in time, you are still going forward in time." Basically, the idea is that if it was in your future to go back in time, then when you actually do it, you are still progressing forward through your life. I hadn't thought about that before, but apparently I don't spend as much time on time travel as she does.

She also told me one day that she wished that she could know all the things that were going to happen in her life so that she could always make a plan in advance and be ready for things as they come. I tried to tell her that if she knew everything that was going to happen then life wouldn't be as good because there would never be any surprises. To this she replied, "There are no good surprises. Things only get worse. It is all a horrible nightmare." I'm not quite sure where all of that came from, but I assure you that she is actually a happy little kid (perhaps with a flare for the dramatic)!

One other piece of wisdom she gave us today was this - she said something to the effect of, "I put the good things in front of me and leave the bad things behind me." That is good advice. I told her that I was going to have to start practicing that one! Again, I swear that she is a happy, peaceful kid, but she does also seem to have an old soul that peeks through from time to time.

Adventures

Yes, it has been a long time between posts, but Emily has had a month of firsts that I think are worth sharing. First of all, she attended her first Trophy Festival this year. This is the event where student play for a teacher other than their own as a way to get their feet wet with performing and to receive feedback from someone who may have a different style of teaching. At the end, everyone who performs goes home with a small trophy.

Emily chose to play Twinkle Theme, although she has many other pieces in her repertoire these days. Most recently she has completed May Song and begun learning Long, Long Ago (for those of you familiar with the Suzuki system). All in all, it was a good experience for her and the teacher that she played for was very complementary, which I think helped build her confidence.

As for another first, Emily has finally gotten her first exposure to some real, substantive snow in at least two years. We are spending spring break in Keystone, and as we were driving up from Colorado Springs, we started to see minor, intermittent patches of snow on the hills along the road. She said, "Is that SNOW??? That's CRAZY!!!" We just laughed, knowing how much more snow was in store for her. As you can see, when we stopped off in Breckenridge for lunch, she was just thrilled! 

Being here ever witty self, when I asked her, "What is that stuff?" she replied, "Powdered sugar, of course!" As usual, she is good with the one-liners. Last month when were were talking about delaying the celebration of my birthday until the weekend, I said "I can stand being 39 for a couple more days." To which Emily immediately responded, "Yeah, I don't need an old Mom." :)

As you can probably imagine, Emily's next notable first is her first time skiing. She took ski lessons on our first day in Keystone, and by the second day she was a natural.

Looking adorable in her gear

She and I skied the bunny slope in the morning, and I was able to get some video of her in action.

Of course, as soon as she watched the video, her only comment was, "My turns are too small." She got a chance to remedy this in the afternoon when all four of us went down Schoolmarm. This is a 3.5 mile, family friendly trail. We didn't know exactly how Emily would do, but she was incredible and I think that she really enjoyed it. Perhaps needless to say, I was by far the weakest link, but she was kind enough to wait for me. :)

As for the rest of the week, we'll have to see if any additional firsts arise. I think that today we are all going to take it easy, although the girls may con Chad into some ice skating this afternoon . . .

Eve of Enchantment

Family photo

Earlier this week, Emily's school hosted their inaugural Eve of Enchantment. It was a fine arts event with all sorts of singing, dancing, and artwork on display. Many of the students performed in groups with the other kids that are in their music class. Emily did that, but she also elected (as did some of the other kids) to work with a mentor over the past few weeks so that she could do a solo performance as well. She decided that she wanted to do ballet, so the school found someone who met with her one-on-one for three separate sessions so that she could choose music and learn a routine.

Working with her mentor

At the time of the performance, I think that she was pretty nervous to perform alone in front of everyone, but it seemed to go pretty well and when it was over I think that she was glad that she had done it. She has a very serious look on her face, but there is one point in the video when she looks over at us and gives us a little smile - so cute. :)

Overall, school continues to go well (although I think that Emily wishes that there were more girls in her class). Violin is also moving along and Emily will be participating in her first Trophy Festival in a few weeks, so we are preparing for that.

The only thing that remains unpredictable about Emily is the stuff that comes out of her mouth. One day, completely out of the blue, she said to me, "Mom, I don't want to celebrate your death (referring to my funeral). Can I just not do that? Can we just have Abbie handle that, or something?" I told her that it would be fine if she didn't attend my funeral and that, yes, we would just have Abbie handle it. Then, she said, "Mom, I don't want you to die. How about if I die five minutes before you do?" I told her that plan didn't sound like much fun for me. She replied, "Yes, it does because then we can be ghosts together." Then she said, "Mom, if you ever die, can you promise to haunt my house?" "Sure thing," I said, "I'll be sure to haunt your house for you." LOL.

Christmas Catch-up

It has been awhile since my last post, so I guess that I need to get you caught up on Emily's holiday season. In short, it was a good one! She definitely enjoyed the time off from school, and all of the usual routines that go along with the holiday break, which usually involve food. Most important to her, there were desserts galore - her advent calendar, frosted cookies, desserts with ice cream, etc.

Although we did not go ice skating this year, we did get a chance to see Santa and Emily was very clear about her list - an American Girl doll and a giant giraffe were two of the big items. Perhaps needless to say, Santa came through on everything. The giraffe was too big to wrap, though, so it was just standing in the living room waiting for her on Christmas morning. She was so excited when she saw it (it is taller than she is) that she practically started hyperventilating. As for the American Girl doll, it looks just like her and Emily has named her Ann. As you can see Emily and Ann also now have matching PJs. :)

Emily also had her first public violin performances (the same performances that Abbie had) during the break. She accompanied the group on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Lightly Row, and Jingle Bells.

Now that she back to school, we are back to the usual routine. She continues to do well at school and received a number of awards during a lower school award ceremony this week - one for creative excellence in art class, one for athletic excellence in P.E., one for her performance in social studies, one for obtaining the most AR points in her class, and one for exemplifying engagement (one of the school's core values). She tried to play it cool, but I think she was happy about it. Although, that night I did find her entry in her journal in which she wrote about the awards that she received. She said, "My mom was so excited, but I was NOT!" Ha!