Celia is quickly coming up on her 5th birthday, although too late this year to be considered for Kindergarten. We are lucky to have her at home longer with us! This summer she’s been enjoying having lots of free time to play outside with sand, water and her bike. She’s very confident on her bike, riding it in on quiet streets and on the bike path. She also rides on her scooter always making sure she’s keeping up with big sister. Celia likes to ride on all the toys actually, and she’ll try anything new we find at the park too. She’s very coordinated and loves to run and play.

One way she’s gotten stronger is through her gymnastics lessons. She’s made the pre-team at our gym and is on the second pre-team level, which is two levels below any actual ‘team’ that does competitions. She still even comes bouncing out of gymnastics after 1.5 hours. The more Celia practices the better she gets, she’s made it most of the way up the climbing rope, but not all the way yet.

At home Celia loves to listen to us read books, play dress up, paint, draw and build things such as train tracks or lego. She spends most of her time with Josie playing jointly until they’ve had too much of each other and I need to separate them. She loves to sing and perform for us. When Josie’s not around Celia is starting to enjoy settling into a big sister role for Ewan and being the one ‘in charge’ for their games. I love to watch them interact in their own silly way that they connect.

Academically, Celia favors math and plays with numbers in her own head. She also loves to use Khan academy on the iPad and has almost finished the algebra-teaching app Dragon Box. I use those for rewards for when she’s finished her reading lessons which we started earlier this year. She’s still having trouble with a few letter sounds (y) and recognition (d vs b) but she’s reading full sentences and many four letter words, most recently we did the -st and -nt words. She likes to point out signs and words that she recognizes in the world around her. This year Celia will be at home for her schooling and we’ll incorporate her into our homeschool activities and I’ll work to get more hands-on and interactive to suit her learning style. Wish me luck.

Celia’s struggling right now with her continued middle child spot, where she’s too big to do some things, and too little for others. It all feels very unfair to her. We’re trying to help her express her opinions and desires without the whining and screaming. Some days I think we need to get her ears checked, but then I might whisper ice cream in the other end of the house and she’ll show up uninvited, so I don’t think the physical ears are the trouble.

She’s got a bright smile and an energy all her own that I wish I could bottle and borrow a bit of! She wants to touch, and push on everything. She is not fond of being told what to do and when, so we’re working on figuring out how to work together to get our lives to move smoothly. Celia’s looking forward this fall to continuing gymnastics and starting with choir and soccer. She just finished up a week of t-ball which improved her baseball understanding quite a bit.

She’s also still very fond of seeing her friend Safi from preschool, and Claire a family friend. Celia mostly looks to present herself as a 7 year old and play with Josie’s friends whenever possible. I want to encourage my little girl to stay little just a bit longer, no need to grow up too fast. Sometimes she seems much older, and then sometimes she’s on the floor like a two year old throwing a fit. She is always highly motivated by competition and keeping up with Josie to do anything and everything. Celia also enjoys helping out in the kitchen and can crack eggs quite well and is measuring and identifying all the ingredients.

• Size/weight: 5T, 45 lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, tomatoes, pasta
• Favorite toy: dress up
• Favorite book: Mercy Watson series
• Favorite activity: digging and getting dirty
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: reading bigger words
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: starting our consonant blends

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2015 at 10:36 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.