Happy 6 years around the sun to my lovely Josie! She designed her own cake, I implemented it mostly, but she helped with the baking of the chocolate cake part. There is a ton left, anyone need some cake?

She also planned the whole day, starting with the food. We had blueberry chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, then we had gymnastics class. Then off to Friendly’s for lunch with my parents including a design your own ice cream sundae. From there we went out to the Stone zoo and met up with Josie’s friend Bronwyn. Home again for a short time to play with the birthday gifts she opened in the morning before going to Comellas for dinner with Jordi and my parents. Then home for cake, more presents and bed. She forgot to ask for the ice cream with the cake at dessert tonight, but I don’t think anyone went away less than stuffed. Then she’s also got us booked for this upcoming weekend, but I’ll update on that later.

In front of the bunk beds, with the interval timer

Almost two weeks ago our Celia turned three and a half! And she’s very proud of it. She will tell you now that she’s three and a half, a big change from when she was three and wouldn’t tell anyone how old she was. That half is clearly very important!

Celia is a bundle of energy, always running up ahead, walking on the stone walls, bouncing on the balls and off the couch and the walls. Her gymnastics teacher says she has the stride of a runner, and she sure does like to do it! She loves to run, ride her bike, swing, and jump off of very high things. Not only does her body go non-stop, so does her mind and mouth. She’s got lots to tell us and lots of opinions on how she wants things to be. She’s getting better about controlling her impulses with Josie and using her words, but Ewan doesn’t listen so well and so she has a tougher time remembering to use her words on him.

She adores Josie and spends most of her day playing with her. Celia loves to play pretend, mostly ‘baby’ where she is the baby, Josie is the mommy and I (Jen) am the ‘pama’. She also greatly enjoys playing games and flipping through books. Her favorite game right now is the cupcake game, but games tend to go in and out of favor very quickly. She also likes to play hoot owl hoot, high ho cherry oh, and go fish.

Celia will eat a variety of food, but often favors mostly fruits and vegetables which can be difficult at times to get her to eat enough to maintain her high energy lifestyle. She’ll walk away from a meal only to be hungry a very short time later which doesn’t really work for anyone. I never thought I’d be holding the fruits and vegetables hostage until she eats something more calorific!

Academically, if you want to call it that, she’s made big progress in the last few months. She recognizes all the letters, knows the sounds for many of them, counts to 60, is starting to do some addition with very small numbers. She loves to do science experiments with us and listen to many stories, Maisy books are her favorite right now. She’s got a few memorized. When we go to the library she’ll go pick out all the ones that they have and bring them to me to read and try to negotiate bringing them home. She likes to be big like Josie and work on school work, Josie likes to lead her in the instruction of how to do each one. Celia can write her own name now, although her C’s end up sideways and look like U’s and the letters aren’t always quite in order, but they’re usually close.

Being the middle child is a tough business for Celia right now as she struggles to figure out how we all fit together and how to get what she needs. We work hard to give her one on one time every day as possible. She still tells me that she wants Ewan to go away. She had her visit to preschool this month to meet her teachers for next year. I’ll be very interested to see how she enjoys some time away from all of us together and branches out on her own a little. She relishes all one on one attention right now. Spring has brought a lot of fun activities for her as well though, she loves to be part of a gang at the park and she also enjoys digging in the sand and dirt around town.

One activity we do now is at an open gymnasium we visit for a few hours of free play. Celia swings on ropes, and jumps off of high things into a foam pit and jumps on the trampoline. She tries flips on the bars as well. She has no fear, I have lots of fear for her 🙂

• Size/weight: 4T’s, 34lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, tomatoes, blueberries
• Favorite toy: whatever Ewan is trying to play with
• Favorite book: Maisy series
• Favorite activity: digging and getting dirty
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: counting, using her words when she’s upset
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: reading us books that she’s memorized, letter sounds like t, s, b and d

The only one of my children I made get dressed up for photos. Happy 9 months to my little boy too!

The girls started a new set of swimming lessons this spring. Josie was super excited as they moved her up two levels after the first day. Celia was not so pleased by the second lesson though because now her sister wasn’t in class with her anymore (although they were at the same time). But we persevered and went to family swim as well to help her get more comfortable and now they’re both swimming like fishes. Well sort of, Celia swims like a fish with a big piece of styrofoam on her back, and Josie swims like a fish with a lot of water getting in it’s mouth, but it’s been big progress for both of them.

They’ve just about finished up the first session and will start a second to keep the moment going for summer. Josie got moved up a level so she’s thrilled, Celia’s teacher says she made fantastic progress, but will need to learn to swim with fewer bubbles on her back (4 currently) before she’ll be ready to move on to another level. Celia has thus far refused to move down to three bubbles, but she says she’s going to jump in off the block next time. This past week was ‘peek week’ which meant the parents got to come in with cameras and take pictures. I was the only looney one doing that pretty much. But I’m pleased. My dad came and hung out with Ewan so I wouldn’t be trying to balance a baby and my camera next to the water.

I took this one this morning and I looooooooooooove it.  It is definitely going up on the wall, in a big print.

So guess what this is?

If you said ‘the sun’ you’d sort of be right, in that the sun’s light is what you’re seeing, but that was the moon, past 8pm tonight (read: totally dark) as I hurried to try to take a few pictures while keeping my kids from knocking over some generous people’s super-expensive telescopes. Gotta work on that. My Boston skyline ones came out a bit better, but still need some practice.

We brought the kids up to see the night sky after bedtime to complement the school work we’ve done about planets. Members of the local astronomy club shared their telescopes and let us look at the planets and moon! It was actually really hard to look at the moon though because it was almost full and so very bright. They were able to see Jupiter, Mars and the moon.

Celia has a habit of chewing her finger nails these days. This happened in the car on the way home from soccer.

Jordi: Celia take your finger out of your mouth. (but he said it in spanish)

Celia: But I’m just eating my booger off of it.

Touche.

In our neighborhood there’s a woman who makes an easter egg tree every year. This was Ewan’s first trip to the egg tree! The woman actually yelled down from her porch that we could take one each, that’s the first we’d ever heard of that, so the girls were super excited to pick their own egg.

Trying out new ways of showing off pictures too.

One of the big changes we made around here, in addition to Jordi’s new job, was in February we took Josie out of public school. We did this for a number of reasons, which I’m happy to discuss not in a public forum like this, but in short, she wasn’t happy. We’ve had her at home and she’s come back to being her usual mostly delightful self. It’s a bit adjustment to have three kids here full time, especially for Celia who had gotten used to having more one on one time with me, and that’s getting more rare as Ewan drops his nap too. We’re getting into a routine though and finding more things to do in addition to having more time to play with friends in the afternoon, because playdates were not working when Josie was in school, it was just too much. Now we can do one every day! Tomorrow we head to a big gymnasium with gymnastics equipment, a trapeze, a giant foam pit and lots of  things to bounce and climb on and the kids all work on their strength and coordination and have a blast. We also spend a lot of time at the library, but that’s not particularly new. We spend way more time outside and Josie works on her reading, math, and science understanding through regular activities like cooking, playing and reading to me, alone, and listening to others.