Anya

It is so amazing to watch Anya blossom into a cool little kid. Yes, she still has some babyfat around her cheeks and wrists, but otherwise she looks like a kid- wow! And she's really getting the hang of reading. She fights it since it's work, but each day she's recognizing more and more words by sight instead of having to sound them out. She's getting much better at sounding them out as well. Her writing is improving, too...she rarely puts a capital letter in the middle of a word anymore and her name is much neater.

As far as I can tell, she's doing very well socially too. She has a handful of good friends at school and seems to play well with them. At the beginning of the year, she came home sad every day because they wouldn't let her be the mommy when they played house and now she gets to be the mommy often. There also doesn't seem to be anymore issues with her hitting or bothering the boys, like there were at the beginning of the school year.

She had her 100th day celebration yesterday. Apparently this is quite an event in most schools. We never did this when I was growing up, but we went to her school to view all the kids' posters this week. Anya was so eager to start hers that she picked up a marker and went to town. So rather than having a neatly laid out grid of pictures or stickers or toothpicks, etc, hers is a collage of her drawings, but there are 100 of them!

Anya had a ball at Disney this year....she wanted to be Jasmine at the boutique and she looked lovely! We couldn't find a dress for her before we went down and it looked like that costume just had a lacy material over the belly, so we bought her a flesh-colored bodysuit. Thank goodness we did because Jasmine's costume is actually a 2 piece, bare-midriff one! Besides not wanting the pedophile weirdos seeing her belly, it was COLD, so I was happy we did this. Having Isabella there ran hot and cold for Anya. Mostly, she was happy to have her little cousin there, but there were a few times that Anya wanted to be left alone, which led to some fighting. Baz and Isabella both fought to ride with Anya in the side by side stroller, but in the end it all worked out.

Now we're looking to fill up her winter break from school....it shouldn't be too hard- there's always Colleen's and my parents will be here for a few days.