That seems like an entirely different life now - I'm old. I love my girl. She is helpful, pleasant, clever, a hard worker, goal-oriented and a great big sister.
• She loves lists, drawing, playing at the neighbor's house, swimming, cooking and organizing. She loves to clean and help decorate or do crafty projects with me and teach family home evening. She is always interested in my vinyl business and is concerned that I get my work done, too. She always wants to help me.
• I had parent teacher conferences yesterday and her teacher couldn't be happier with her. M is way ahead of the curve in the class and has straight A's. Mrs. Murphy was telling me how sometimes she tries to be funny and sarcastic with the class, and a lot of the kids just stare at her, confused. M however gets her jokes every time and throws the sarcasm right back at her. (Have I mentioned I love my kids' teachers this year? Because I do.) She has lots of friends right now, even though there's a bit of the "she doesn't want to be my friend" or "so and so was mean to me" etc. that happens in third grade. M was excited to go to school this morning in her new clothes and accessories (Thanks Grandma!) and even had me curl her hair.
• She is in LOVE with anything and everything zebra right now. Her birthday present was a big canvas print of a zebra for her room - she loves it. She is totally drawn to
• She is in synchronized swimming 2x a week and tries to practice stretching (goal = splits) at home. She's been in piano for a little over a year now, and though she hasn't progressed as quickly as I would have hoped she really tries to get her 20 minutes of practice in daily. "MOM set the timer!" "How many minutes left?" She likes to play primary songs and do her favorites over and over. She's playing Teach Me to Walk in the Light right now.
• Every once in a while she comes up with some zingers that crack us up. The girls and Daddy were playing Monopoly the other night and A was winning - and gloating. M got mad at her and snarked something about rubbing their faces in it like a dog (what was it honey?) . A couple of weeks ago I had spent the day rearranging A's room, which M was totally jealous about when she got home. She yelled at me that it wasn't fair because her own room looked like "a hideous troll". Hilarious. 10 minutes later she had cleaned her room up and reorganized some things herself and was happy as can be about it.
• She is great with J, playing with him, making sure he's got breakfast, packs his lunch often, carries his backpack for him and is basically his second Mommy. She's the one who picks him up from his classroom every day and make sure he gets to the bus.
• M is a great eater and likes a great variety of foods. She is not a fan of mushrooms or sweet potatoes, and rarely chocolate, but she loves salad, carrots, grape tomatoes, spinach, chips and salsa, and all kinds of soups. She will get up and make herself an egg in the morning - which she would rather have than the pancakes and syrup that her siblings are addicted to. She chooses gatorade over soda when we go to QT. It frustrates me that she's the one who tries to eat so well and that she's going to be the one who will probably struggle with weight, versus her sister.
• This girl needs her SLEEP. She is a bear when she stays up too late, but is the most pleasant ever as long as she gets to bed on time. • She is very much a reward-oriented person and loves to earn behavior bucks at school. She totally understands the idea of earning her way and is quite vocal when she sees her siblings getting away with things . I guess you could say she's a natural conservative who doesn't tolerate entitlement...lol
