Last month, Celia turned 4.5 years old and we celebrated with half of a birthday cake. Cake is on the mind a lot at our house, see Ewan’s 1.75 year post for information about that, but I haven’t written it yet, hopefully tomorrow. Celia is like a person who has eaten a lot of cake. She is an eternal bundle of energy and happiness, except for when she crashes and then crashes hard and is very tired and grumpy like someone coming off a sugar high. She absolutely adores riding her bike and wants to ride it every day, even tolerating us requiring her to just ride it around the driveway and nowhere else for those times when we can’t go anywhere. She transitioned in under a week from her balance bike to the real bike. The frustration was tough, but she kept at it and figured out stopping and starting with brakes quite quickly, although not quickly enough for her!

Her other favorite activity right now is gymnastics. She’s on the Bronze pre-team right now and has been moved up to the silver team as of this summer. Basically it’s the uber-beginner team in a very competitive gym. Today she was very proud of how she was able to do some backwards rolls without any help which she has been working on for a few months. She also likes to bounce on the tumble track a lot and has started to get the hang of climbing the rope. Celia has mastered the monkey bars at the playgrounds too! She finished up her ballet lessons a few months ago and she’s been disappointed not to have those anymore as well, although I think it may be more of an issue of jealousy rather than true love for the class, because Josie’s class runs longer than hers did.

At school Celia has been enjoying herself. She says she primarily plays with her friend Safi, but her teachers say she plays with everyone. She’s like me in that when she gets home from a big event like school, she likes some quiet time to unwind and decompress before talking about it. That combined with her teachers not writing about what they did most days, I’m rather in the dark about what she does at school most days. Tonight she told me the parts of an insects anatomy, so there’s something they covered apparently! She’s one smart cookie for sure. We’re working on her reading and she’s picking things up quickly. She will also read to Ewan books she’s memorized, or can figure out the words from the pictures. I’m bragging, but this is my blog, so yes I’m bragging. Celia’s also been playing around with her math skills and adding and subtracting. She begs to use Khan Academy on the ipad to practice her math skills. She only has to wait because she can’t read the words to understand most of the questions if they’re not just straight equations. I also work with her on some workbooks and she still loves to play games.

Her happiness moments are listening to us read books to her, and playing outside in the park as a family. We’re looking at trying new activities, but Celia often feels shy of trying new things if Josie isn’t doing them as well. She wants to wait until the fall to try soccer too. Her listening skills need some work too, but I think we’ve made a bit of progress at least on that. She helps around the house when required, folding laundry, emptying the dishwasher and dusting. Celia is particularly fun to talk to and hang out with when she’s on her own as the green eyed monster is very strong at this point with her. She’s also afraid of bears, and sleeps with her head under the covers every night to hide from them. Jordi sleeps with his head under the covers too, but I’m pretty sure it’s for a different reason. No problem seeing the bears at the zoo oddly enough.

• Size/weight: 5T, 42 lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, tomatoes, pasta
• Favorite toy: dress up
• Favorite book: Olivia the big series, Nina Nina Ballerina series
• Favorite activity: digging and getting dirty
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: monkey bars and two wheel bike riding!
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: three letter words!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2015 at 9:13 pm by Jen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.