One of Josie’s birthday presents this year was a butterfly growing kit. We sent away for the caterpillars and they came in about a week in a jar filled with their own food. They are painted lady butterflies. We grew three into chrysalises and then put them into the mesh cage to watch them transform, hatch and grow. The girls loved watched how big they got and it was very noticeable how quickly they grew from day to day. Josie had done this same thing in school, although she missed out on parts because we went on vacation so she was excited to see it all. Last Sunday morning they hatched into butterflies in a very short amount of time. We had two quickly and the next one came two days later right past breakfast. We got to keep them for a week and watch them fly more, and eat, but all in all they didn’t do all too much. The greatest excitement for the girls was checking for them to hatch several times a day. The cats actually weren’t even too excited about it until about halfway through the week when Mio finally noticed that we were growing bugs in the house. He looked so excited and so happy that we were growing bugs for him to chase! I felt bad taking them away, but then the butterflies got to live in the bathroom when we weren’t directly watching them to make sure they didn’t become cat food. George and finally Fred noticed them too a few days later. Never did see Ezzy particularly take an interest.

On Sunday morning it was time to let them go as otherwise the book warns you’ll have way too many caterpillar eggs. Or perhaps just wreck their business of selling them? Either way I was ready to be done protecting them from the cats and feeding them. I think Josie may have been able to do more for them, but Celia definitely does not have the fine motor dexterity to be careful enough so I did the care and feeding work. We gathered a few neighbors who happened to be around, Zach, Ethan and Charlie and opened up the cage and the butterflies went nowhere. Just the same as what happened at school. We eventually got a leaf and lifting them up and encouraged them to fly happily away, nothing bad happened instantly and so everyone was happy. One even landed on Zach’s bright yellow sock to check it out for a while. Overall it was a good experience I’d recommend and I think we’ll do it again sometime, but not right now.

Oh the heat has hit Boston, 94+ degrees today. I hid inside most of the day, we had some friends over, did some crafts, art before finally heading out in the late afternoon for fudgesicles and playing in the kiddie pool! I could not convince Josie to just eat her fudgesicle for the picture, she wanted to smile.

I got some one on one time with Josie today with Celia out of the house. So I decided to start teaching her about using the stove top and cooking a bit. We started with something she’s been itching to make more of as it’s been summer, popsicles! In this case, fudgesicles, which require a small amount of cooking over a double boiler. Josie got to feel the heat, but nothing too bad and she did a great job listening and learning. I even got some science instruction in about conduction when comparing wood and metal. We will hopefully enjoy a few tomorrow!

This is more of a documenting post, just trying to preserve some pictures of Josie’s artwork throughout her year at preschool. They sent home a bunch of stuff on the last day all at once.

Above is a drawing of Josie and Celia, done recently.

Above is Josie’s drawing of the different holiday traditions around our house, including, baking cookies, shoes going on top of presents, decorating the Christmas tree and lighting the menorah.

Above is Josie’s circle time mat, she decorated it in the beginning of the year and sat on it every day for their circle time where they discussed the date, the weather, and celebrated each persons special day with their clue box surprise!

Above is Josie’s diploma! No big ceremony or anything for us, just simply handed this.

Above is a very typical drawing from Josie these days, her flowers and sun, often times it includes a rainbow as well.

Above is a house they were supposed to put our family into and decorate, this is her second version though where she got free reign in how it was designed. I love the person going down the chimney head first.

Josie used some leftover jewels from another project to add to her typical person and flower pictures.

Above is Josie’s work from last fall when they discussed where they might land as a leaf. She did two versions of this one too, the other one said she’d land on her sisters head.

Above is Josie’s self portrait from November. Interesting and kinda troll-like 🙂

And this one is from May, looks a lot happier, more hair!

Above is Josie’s picture of her looking out the window during the snow storm. Interesting how the playing in the snow wasn’t apparently the part that stood out. She’s often quite literal, so literally during the storm she was inside looking out.

Above this is from early in the school year. I think the picture is supposed to be of a rainbow. Not sure what else it could be 🙂 But we certainly did go to Thompson spray park with friends.

And above this is mid-winter, she did love the hot chocolate after coming in from the cold. It’s sitting on a table.

Overall we’ve seen a lot of progress in her art this year, adding in more body parts and details to her pictures. We have one on our wall right now I need to take a picture of because she shows a great perspective.

After having to be postponed twice, once for a rescheduled trip to Miami and again for rain, we finally got to execute Josie’s 5th birthday party! She picked rainbows as the theme for this year. We painted rainbows on paper and made a rainbow of cupcakes! To keep the party numbers reasonable we kept to school friends and neighborhood friends and Josie had a blast. She was so very pleased that almost all of her school friends could make the date.

For fun we had the regular bounce house, an art project and a quick game. Our art was decorating pillow cases which also became the goody bag to take home. I bought fabric crayons which the kids drew on regular paper with and then my dad helped by spending half the party ironing them onto the pillow cases. The kids thought they were great and Josie enjoyed making two of them.

Josie chose the menu of some basic snacks, hummus, strawberries, carrots, chips and guacamole. Her one fancy request were some chocolate dipped strawberries which I made. Nothing nearly as fancy as last year but I was exhausted none the less. (note one rainbow on the basketball hoop above). After snacking and bouncing the kids were definitely looking for something else to do so thankfully I had one game planned. They played ‘musical towels’ which would be very similar to musical chairs except that no one actually get’s kicked out of the game. We just watch the kids struggle to get themselves onto progressively fewer and fewer towels with less space. They enjoyed the running around in circles to Glee’s take on the Hairspray song “You Can’t Stop The Beat.” They got the hang of it by the end, they had trouble fitting onto all of the towels to start with, but by the end they were all on one all snuggled in together.

Right from there I directed everyone to enjoy some singing and cake. We had way too many cupcakes. A number of people couldn’t come at the last minute unfortunately and I had the choice of making it ‘really close’ to enough cupcakes or just make another batch. So you know I made another batch. They were chocolate, strawberry and vanilla frosted with a rainbow of colors.

After cupcakes, a couple per kid generally, which also had an extra toppings bar for more frosting plus sprinkles, jimmies and other goodies, they played some more and it was quickly time to head on home. We did a little clean up and Josie actually suggested a family picture at the end for all of us who worked hard on her party.

Once we cleaned up we cooked an easy dinner and Josie enjoyed opening her presents from friends. She got a lot of art supplies which is great as they’ve kept us busy with all the rain this month.

Photo credits go to my dad except for the last one.

This week at Josie’s school they had a raffle for a whole bunch of different items. I bought a bunch of tickets to support the school and tossed them into two items, a kids rocking chair and a set of restaurant gift certificates. I told the kids it was a donation to the school and we wouldn’t win, because lots of people entered and we just usually don’t. So you can imagine my surprise when I walked in after the drawing and we had won both prizes!!! Those gift certificates will be awesome as I prefer not to cook much at this point and while it’s hot and the chair was decorated by Josie’s preschool class. They each made finger prints into different kinds of bugs. The girls are loving the chair, although Josie has rocked herself backwards out of it twice already.

Josie is a joyful 5 year old, full of ideas, plans and thoughts about her house, life and day. She is a big planner like her parents. Her teachers regularly comment on it. She’s always thinking ahead to what she wants to do next, what might be coming up and the next meal. She revels in the anticipation of fun future things to come and also does a bit of stressing about things that she’s less sure about. We finally just had her birthday party and she decided a lot of those plans, from the theme (rainbows) to the food (chocolate dipped strawberries were requested) and the guests (friends from the neighborhood plus all the girls from school).

She adores playing with her friends and going to school. She gets along well with all the kids although she’s playing with the girls mostly as is typical for this age. She loves to do the daily projects and her special days. I just got to go to her last special day for the year (5 total) and help out the class and see how they’re all doing. They were a cuddly bunch of kids and I enjoyed the morning thoroughly. Josie said her favorite part of the day was the movement songs, she has picked up on a loophole in their rules. Apparently ‘take me out to the ballgame’ is considered a very short movement song, so that if you pick it first, you get to choose a second song as well. The only time Josie doesn’t want to go to school is if she’d rather be hanging out with me and Celia instead and do what we’re doing. She’d prefer it if we didn’t ever do anything fun on the mornings she’s in school.

We’ve just had two visits to the elementary school she will be attending in the fall as well. Josie was excited to see the friends she already knows at those events and hang out with them. She didn’t have too much else to say about the school, except that she got spit on by a frog (in a puppet show).

Josie continues her gymnastics lessons every week and she’s always improving. She’s gotten considerably braver on the balance beam and will try out the steps without insisting on holding onto her teacher, including going sideways and backwards. Her handstands and cartwheels are still a work in progress, but she will nail them with great form at each practice a few times. She really enjoys them although she still asks about ballet class from time to time.

Most of her friends right now are from school. Sadly we’ll have to leave the majority of them behind going to elementary school but she’ll still get to hang out with Bronwyn and Sophie who are some of our closest family friends right now. We’ll see who’s in her class next year during the summer, but hopefully we’ll enjoy making some closer friends with people who live conveniently close by for easy playdates.

Josie’s default quiet activity at home now is often art. She got a ton of supplies for her birthday and enjoys everything from sticker mosaics, to painting, drawing and stamping. She likes to copy projects they’ve done at school, or even ones she seems on the wall at other places we visit, like Hardy elementary. She’ll often add onto the basic ideas given to her and make them her own. Right now she’s on a flower drawing kick. They all have smiles and two green leaves on a stem.

Every afternoon I continue to work with Josie on reading and school skills. Right now we’re working through reading a clock, reading books/words in general and basic arithmetic. She can read an amazing number of words right now, and even the whole book of ‘Go Dog Go’. Currently we’ve just gone over the soft ‘C’ and ‘G’ sounds after finishing up the long vowel sounds. She’s starting to read in the world around her but isn’t showing anything at school apparently yet. She likes to do mazes, puzzles and she’s shown interest in my sudoku puzzles too so I’m trying to explain those.

All in all Josie has been a great kid and big sister. While she’s often parroting my instructions to her sister as if she’s the one in charge, she is just trying to steer her straight and help things work out. She’s willing to pitch in often and does her chores with some obligatory griping. I generally try to have her help out twice a day with something, she’s often stuffing the cloth diapers, emptying the dishwasher, picking up toys, feeding the cats, bagging up the recycling or scooping the cat litter. I continue to be amazed at how fast she’s growing, how much she’s learning and how she’s maturing. Thankfully she still loves to hold my hand at night before falling asleep and also while walking down the street.

• Size/weight: 6, 45.75″ tall, 43.5 lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, pasta, dessert
• Favorite toy: art supplies
• Favorite book: Buddha at Bedtime
• Favorite activity: playing with her friends, pretend games
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: gymnastics tricks like cartwheels, handstands have gotten quite strong
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: reading most short words, understanding long and short vowels

I signed myself up for a class on using natural light indoors, and so I’ll be practicing using light differently for the next few weeks (and beyond probably). Here’s my attempt at 45 degree light, in which the light should be approximately 45 degrees off from the subjects face, creating shadows with a fair amount of spill though onto the far side.

Happy 5th birthday Josie to the little girl who made me a mommy 5 years ago tonight!