London 2012

I get excited for the Olympics anyway, but this year I was super excited that this would be the first Olympics that the kids were old enough to enjoy/be aware of. In anticipation of the start of the big event, the kids and I spent an afternoon drawing the flags of about 15 different countries on note cards and swagged them on the mantle and whipped up some quick "torches" with construction paper and tissue paper.

 I also thought it would be a great idea to make a country flag bingo game for us to play while watching the Parade of Nations. The idea was that we each got to mark off a country's flag on our card when we saw that country parade into Olympic stadium. And if you marked off all of them in a row, you could eat an M&M that matched one of the colors on that flag (in case you were wondering, this is the part that most interested the kids). But apparently I have a terrible two-year memory and/or missed the memo that the Parade of Nations isn't until AFTER the rest of the Opening Ceremonies and that it goes on forever! And of course, the kids and I had made the cards earlier in the day and had chosen flags based on attractiveness and not where they fall in alphabetical order. If I had been smart, I would have pretended like the Parade of Nations didn't happen until the next morning, surreptitiously recorded it and made it a morning game. But I had already talked up a late night with bingo and M&Ms, so we proceeded as planned with only a slight deviation: about halfway through, Luke and I started calling out "random" countries (that just happened to correspond with flags on certain people's bingo cards) and moved things along a little more quickly.

Maybe now that I've written all of this down I will remember this key fact in another two years. I'll get back to you in February 2014.

All About Amelia (age 6)

Amelia LOVES to read. Loves it. She reads easy reader books, chapter books, restaurant menus, comics in the newspaper, signs she sees, everything! She can't read every single word, of course, but she does her best even with the longest, most complicated words. Most mornings I go in her room and find her reading in her bed before she has even come out of her room, and many nights I see her light still on at 9pm and find her reading. She wants to bring books in the car and sometimes even tries to read while walking. She has always loved looking at and listening to books, so it's no surprise that reading is such a passion for her, but it has been so much fun seeing a whole new world totally open up for her this year! 

Amelia still loves animals. She has gotten really into dolphins over this last six months or so. I think she brought home every non-fiction dolphin book from the library during the course of the school year! She also still really loves horses and may start riding lessons this fall! And of course she is always hoping for a puppy or a kitten at home. (Hmmm... we'll talk about that again in a couple of years!)

Amelia is like her dad and is not a big talker. If it's just Amelia and me at lunch together, it would be totally silent if I wasn't so desperate for conversation for myself. :) She also isn't much for reporting what happens at school/camp/a party/a play date/etc, although this has improved over the past year and she does it more than she used to. And, while she loves playing with friends, she's also great at playing on her own in her room, the yard or the playroom. Although she hasn't napped for two years, she still has a "rest time" after lunch each day that she is home (weekdays, summer, etc.) and it really seems to help restore our introverted girl after a morning of social activities.

Amelia loves making art. She has been at a pottery camp this week (sculpting and glazing her own pieces as well as making a batik pillowcase) and went to Arts Center camp earlier in the summer. At home, she loves to draw, paint and sculpt with clay or play dough. During her kindergarten year, art was always her favorite "special."

Amelia is a slow mover. She gets distracted by nature and the things around her while she's walking. She's a classic daydreamer. For all who know me, this is very different from my personality, so a while ago I tried figuring out her Myers-Briggs-type personality profile (I used this book, and my guess is ISFP for anyone interested). Then one day, I saw a website where someone had matched animals with each personality type. Amelia's was a sloth; I had to laugh!

Amelia loves all things nature. She loves digging in the dirt and finding worms, listening to our backyard bird song guide (very cool book for kids and adults alike!) and identifying birds, looking for and catching frogs and toads, smelling flowers and studying the natural world in general.

Amelia HATES to clean up! I have been working hard to get her into a cleaning routine (so we don't have those giant clean-up jobs at the end of the day or on the weekend), but she just absolutely hates to pick up anything and has really resisted cleaning up one thing before moving on to another. She also has hundreds of (mostly teeny tiny) toys and hundreds of books, so things get out of control very easily. She gets very overwhelmed when I ask her to clean up her room and needs a big mess to be broken down into "jobs." Even then, she sometimes throws herself on the floor and cries about it. She is overall a low-maintenance, low-drama girl, but cleaning really sets her off. 

Favorite books: Ivy+Bean, The Puppy Place series, Flower Fairy Friends series, Magic Treehouse series, Stablemates series and the I Wonder Why Series

Favorite foods: any desserts/sweets/pastries, all fruits except grapes, cheese calzones, macaroni & cheese, quesadillas, cheeseburgers, tortilla chips and flour tortillas, Dutch baby puffed pancake, cooked cabbage, creamed spinach, almost all meat, salt & vinegar or honey roasted almonds, candy!!

Least favorite foods: tomatoes, tomato sauce (for pizza or pasta), anything spicy, most unfamiliar things,  many vegetables (mushrooms, eggplant, squash, peppers, onions, peas).

Favorite clothes: Comfortable cotton dresses (she has one or two favorites that she wants to wear whenever they are clean), Reef flip flops (they recently overtook the Crocs as her favorite comfy shoes!)

Favorite TV shows: Phineas & Ferb, Jake and the Neverland Pirates

Movies: She is officially over being scared of all movies! This year, she saw several movies in the theater (including The Muppets, Madagascar 3 and Brave) and did great. She was definitely scared during parts of Brave, but she stayed with it and wanted to finish watching it. At home, she watched E.T. and really loved it (although, again, she was really worried about E.T. and if he was going to be okay). 

Dolphin pool party

I forgot to post about Amelia's big friend party this year! Two of her favorite things right now are dolphins and swimming, so we had a Hawaiian dolphin-themed party at our little neighborhood pool. It was perfect and simple -- swimming, leis, lunch and cake! It was really wonderful to celebrate with so many of the good friends she has made -- through kindergarten, preschool, dance class, the neighborhood and playgroup -- during our two years here in Chapel Hill. We are so happy to be here!

This was the first year that I felt like Amelia should get her friend party to herself without a certain pesky little brother. Fortunately, he was invited to a birthday party at the exact same time, and his sweet Granddaddy whisked him away before the girls started arriving. Time apart but cake for all! :)