Getting all grown up!

Amy turned six last week. Six! She got a new bike, since she'd outgrown the hand-me-down that she had. She loves to ride her bike and is really good at it.

She's doing so well in kindergarten and truly enjoys it. She gets glowing reviews from her two teachers, Mrs. Mitkowski and Mrs. Cote, as well as a long-term substitute she had, Mrs. Steppling. They marvel at how smart she is and how they can always count on her to know what's going on. She is a hard worker - every time she misplaces her homework journal, she'll do the homework on another sheet of paper, but then when she finds her journal gain, she redoes her work. I think you can infer that she's got a bit of a need to do things perfectly.

Amy can be all sweetness when she wants to be. She can also sometimes turn on a dime and boy you'd better stand back. She is also quite generous. Cristie gave her a $20 gift card for Build-a-Bear, along with a bear to be stuffed. Amy gave $10 of it to Reed, so he could buy his own bear. Actually both the kids are pretty generous with each other, really.

Amy is a planner and she likes to know exactly what to expect. In two weeks, we're going to San Diego for cousin Katie's wedding. Yesterday morning at breakfast, she said "I think we should get up early, go to the airport, go through security, then find a place to eat breakfast, THEN find our airplane." And that's two weeks out...think how closely we're going to have to plan things when it gets closer!

Amy is working so hard at tae kwon do since she started back in February. Lately I've seen a lot of improvement in her kicks and her body control. She earned a new tip pretty quickly after starting back, but since then she hasn't gotten another one. She's taken it pretty much in stride, which is a happy surprise. Things that before would really set her off, she is dealing with a bit better, for the most part. She still has her moments, but in the last month she's definitely been doing better.

Oh and this past weekend, Amy got her ears pierced! It was a gift from cousin Nikki, and she was there for the big event, along with Aunt Jennifer, cousin Aly, and Great Auntie Wanda. We had a store full of people. I'd told Amy what would happen, but I think you can't really know what it's like until it happens to you. She held my hand for the first ear, and she REALLY held my hand for the second ear. But she didn't flinch one bit, didn't cry (though I think she wanted to). She was very brave, and the sparkly earrings look terrific.

It's so exciting to see her learning and growing. She truly is a joy and we're so lucky to have her!

Look who got glasses

When Reed had his 8 year old checkup, I was surprised to see he didn't do well with their mini-eye exam. They said he was borderline for being referred for a full eye exam. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was reading the clock from across the house, and he said he couldn't see the numbers. Wow. I finally got around to making him an appointment, and today was the day. Sure enough, he is slightly nearsighted, enough to warrant glasses. He quickly picked a pair of glasses and we returned a few hours later to pick them up.

To our surprise, Reed was excited about it and happy to have the glasses. Of course, he hasn't run into any pals yet, so we'll see what happens when other kids see his new look. Hopefully it will go easy for him.

He's supposed to wear the glasses for general everyday stuff like being in the classroom or around the house, but not for reading. We'll see how that goes.

In doing a little online research, it looks like nearsightedness can be hereditary (both Tod and I are nearsighted [or he was before laser surgery, anyway]) and they think it can also be caused by too much "close work" (i.e. reading). Well bingo, there's your recipe for glasses in the second grade! I guess in this case, too much reading is bad for you.

Lately, Reed has been very into Harry Potter. I can't recall when he started reading the books, but I think it's only been about 6 weeks. He's blown through them, finishing some in a single day (school days, no less...what's he doing in that classroom?). Even though I'm told some of the books, particularly the last few, have really scary parts [bad parents for not pre-reading the books, I guess], that hasn't seemed to bother him at all. When he was reading book 7, he said "I think for a reward when I finish all 7 books, I should get to watch the movie." So that's what we did. He enjoyed the movie so much that the next day he started re-reading the series. That was last Saturday (7 days ago), and he's read all of books 1-3, is reading book 4 at school and book 7 at home. The speed with which he goes through books is amazing. But he seems to catch all the details, even in books like these that have a lot of words that he's not familiar with.

With these glasses (for today, at least), he's happily receiving compliments that he looks like Harry Potter. Hopefully he'll continue to feel good about the glasses.

"What I want to be..."

The other day Amy had to do a “What I want to be when I grow up” thing as part of her "Star Student" poster and she was trying to sound out how to spell her answer. It started out with “sec” and I was horrified that she was maybe going to say “secretary” (my girl can do so much better than her mama started out!)….but she said “secret agent”. Then she thought more about it ended up changing it to "person who can do magic”. I think she's pretty magical already.