Katie Loves School!

Here is the makeshift classroom area Katie set up in her room.  She has her white board all set up, her "sight" word cards and her good behavior tickets (on the blue chair).  She often has her stuffed animals out on the floor as the students, but they aren't pictured here.

She is currently stating that she'd like to be a teacher when she grows up, or maybe a waitress.  She enjoys teaching things to people, and she really enjoys taking people's "orders" at home and then bringing them food.  She gets really confused sometimes because she wants to be both.  So we tell her to be a teacher during the day, and moonlight as a waitress at night!

Cute Katie!

Katie's dresses hang on a high upper bar in the closet.  I have to reach above my head to lift the hangar off the bar.  When she chooses a dress in the morning, she normally has to ask for help from Jeff or me to get the dress.  A few weeks ago, I noticed she was appearing with dresses on and hadn't asked for help.  I didn't think much of it, assuming that she was now tall enough to reach the bottom of the dresses and sort of pull them down off the hangars.  Imagine my surprise when I walked into the room one day to see this:

The first thing I did was check if she had her indoor heels on, and wondered if she had ever clambered up there with them on.

Jeff told me a cute story this week.  Katie was being impatient about something, and Jeff told her she needed to wait two minutes.  So she immediately starting counting seconds:
"OneTwoThree, FourFiveSix, SevenEight-"
"No, Katie, you're counting way to fast.  Like this.  One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi."
"Okay, Dad.  But I like boys better, so I'm going to count Mr. Sippi!"

Additional uses for the cup!

A couple of weeks ago, I went downstairs to get laundry, and Kyle informed me he was training to be a ninja. In particular he was training to use the Bow-staff, and it was very difficult as he was failing at the spinning throw. I gave an appropriate, “That’s great, etc., keep on practicing, etc.” response and went upstairs to put the laundry away.

Kyle then comes in a few minutes later and asks if he could please use the new baseball cup we had just bought him! Sometimes the bow was spinning around to his front and hitting him. He was so serious about it! Totally adorable.

Later I was getting dinner ready in the kitchen while Kyle was playing Wii, and he points out how handy having his cup on was since sometimes he gets really energetic and might whack himself a little with all those fast, sweeping arm movements. He turns to me, and whacks himself hard in the crotch just to show me how well protected he was! It was really cracking me up.

The very best part of this story to me is how he only used the cup during one baseball practice and one game. After the game (2nd wearing), he let us know he didn't want to wear it during baseball anymore because it was just messing his game up! He did spend about a quarter of field time "adjusting". So much so, that within about the first 5 minutes of game time, my Mom leaned over and whispered to me, "Why is Kyle pulling at his pants?"

Stuff

Life is moving along WAY too fast!

Katie is learning to read in school. Just small simple words, but it is a relief to see how much interest she has in reading. Kyle, who reads fine now, was just not interested when he was younger and had me in a panic at one point. Anyway, she'll do great in Kindergarten since she's already learning sight words at the end of pre-school.

Katie is just utterly delightful now that she is five. It seems age five is just great all around. Although she can still be difficult and stubborn, it is much less frequent and less intense. And tantrums are usually followed by an apology! Hope that's how it is when she's a teenager! She has also picked up a new game that I used to play as a girl. I know this will delight my sister, Kim - she likes to walk around on all fours pretending to be a dog or a cat. She meows and barks and whimpers while shuffling around on the ground. I used to drive Kim crazy doing this; it makes me laugh to think about it. Anyway, most of the time it is pretty cute, but I do see now that it can be annoying sometimes. And she does something I never did - she licks my hand every once in a while. Eew! She's also made me put her hair in side ponytails every day last week for school - so she could have floppy dog ears.


Kyle has been busy getting better at handball. He had a rough time this year since he had a male teacher that didn't sympathize with his constant emotional outbursts at school. He also just started baseball, and that is toughening him up, too, since they finally play a more "real" game with outs and such instead of the T-ball version last year, letting everyone get on base, always getting to home and never getting an out. When Jeff was explaining to him that he might get called out, etc., Kyle said excitedly, "Oh, so there's going to be an emperor at the game!?"

Cute things

• I was reading a story to Katie about a bird named, appropriately, Swallow. But Katie had only heard of the swallow that you do with your throat, and kept interrupting - "What's the bird's name?" "Why is it named that again?" "Mom, that's not a name!" "Mom, you're reading it wrong - Swallow is NOT a name!" I finally changed the name to Sara for the rest of the story because she wouldn't let up!
• Katie made a decoration for school, and I was carrying on about how much I loved it, and said I would keep it forever. Her eyes lit up and she squealed in a kind of mad but happy delight, saying, "Really? Forever? Like, until we're all dead?"
• At night, I was singing a lullaby to her, and she got this goofy look on her face and started using her hands to conduct my singing, all the while making these silly eye rolling gestures and such. I was trying not to laugh, but gave up and couldn't sing for so long because we were both laughing so hard.
• We went to the church service on Christmas Eve. We sang the opening hymn, and then the pastor made a few announcements. One of them made the members of the congregation applaud for a few seconds. As the clapping died down, Katie said out loud, "Oh, is it over already?"
• I took Kyle to Universal Studios where we were waiting for the Waterworld show to begin. A voice came over the loudspeaker stating,"The show is about to begin. If you are still waiting for members of your party, please go the side entrances." Kyle got excited and started looking around, "Wait, Mom, is there a party?"

Katie Update

Some things that must be told about Katie:

I love that she calls ballet, "ballelet" with an extra "luh" in the middle. So cute.

She has learned the Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe speech to help her pick between things she can't make a decision on (for example, does she want the pink plastic ring or purple - ah, how to decide?). It cracks me up to watch her do this. Apparently, even though she says she doesn't know which one she wants, she'll put two "items" out and start saying/pointing "Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe". The end always goes something like this: "...and my mother said you are go-ing to...(silence, contemplating)...okay, wait, wait, wait. Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe. Catch..."

And last but not least, this is actually a story from the last day of Kyle's baseball season that I just kept forgetting to post. She was sitting on the bleachers talking to my sister, Kim, about getting along (or not, as the case was at the time) with Kyle. Kim looked at her and said brightly, "Well, Katie, don't worry too much. Most brothers and sisters fight a little, but when you grow up you'll be the best of friends. I must tell you, though, he does have issues with you coming into his room." And Katie quickly replied, "Oh, no, Aunt Kim, we're not allowed to wear our shoes in our rooms. We have to take them off when we come in the house!"

Cub Scout camp

Last week, Kyle spent 5 days (8am - 4pm) at Cub Scout Camp. They had all sorts of activities scheduled each day, including archery every day (Kyle's favorite)! I was able to volunteer at the camp on two of the days, and I was assigned to be Kyle's Den Leader for one of them. Here are some pics of Kyle at Camp.

Pic 1 - Kyle running to third in a kickball game for Sports session

Pic 2 - Hammering nails in Crafts session (pretty difficult task for most of our 7 year old cubs).

Pic 3 - Archery range - Kyle is 3rd from the right. I couldn't get a good shot because they were shooing us back behind the white line they stand on (for good reason!)

Pic 4 - Lined up for Telephone in the Community session - remember doing this as a kid? You get all lined up in a row and an adult gives you a sentence to pass on. Then each boy whispers it to the next kid and that last kid is supposed to tell everyone what the original sentence was. They had 18 kids and started with "The cow wears polka dotted pants." They ended with "Shock a baby." Only boys could end up with that!