Dear Lucy –

On June 25, you turned 5! We celebrated with a birthday party with all of your favorite things, The movie Frozen, arts/crafts, and cooking! We made Olafs out of marshmallows and pretzel sticks, painted picture frames, and decorated cupcakes. 🙂

It has been fun to watch you grow up over the last year. As you get older, you are more able to express yourself and describe accurately what you’re thinking about, how you’re feeling, what gets you excited, what upsets you, etc. I feel like I know you better than I ever have.

It’s hard to sum you up, but I’ll try my best!

• You love to play by the rules. You love to figure out the “right” way to do something and won’t veer off the path too much. This is good in that sometimes it only takes me one time instructing you on how to do something. You remember well and do it consistently. One challenge is that you also notice if others (like your sister) aren’t doing that thing up to the standard. One example is making your bed. Once I taught you “how” – you do it well on your own. 
• You love following detailed instructions – like Legos. You like to build the sets by yourself using the instructions. You have built lots of lego sets mostly by yourself over the past year! 

• You are also very creative. One of your favorite things to do is draw on white paper (you specifically request) – anything you want. You also like it when I let you make whatever you want out of a box of craft supplies. 
• You LOVE scotch tape and have made many things with it over the past year and used up a lot of rolls haha 
• You often are in a rush to do something and don’t worry about doing it carefully enough. For example, you got a birthday package in the mail, ran and got your scissors and got into the box so quickly that you cut yourself! One of the things we tell you quite frequently is “Slow Down!” and “Be Careful!” and “Be Gentle!” 
• You love to remember specific memories and tell me all about it. You like to tell me things you remember (in great detail) while we are driving and you always want me to confirm it and say “Oh yeah, I remember that too” – but sometimes I don’t remember as well as you! 
• When we go outside, one of your favorite things to do is play with dirt and sand. You like to make “sugar balls” out of water and dirt and bake cakes. 
• You love to help me cook – anytime I let you, you are standing on a chair helping me. 
• Your favorite activity is watching TV. We have to be very careful with this, you would probably watch TV all day if we let you. Right now, we try to limit it as much as possible, and have been “trying” to transition to books on tape instead. 
• One of your favorite things to watch is YouTube kids where you like to watch cake decorating videos and videos of people play make-believe with Barbies. 
• Last Fall (2016) you started Preschool! You were a little shy at first but ended up doing really well and enjoying it. We’re thankful that you had the opportunity to have wonderful teachers – Mrs. Shannon and Mrs. Janet at Trinity Baptist Church. You had a very cute graduation ceremony in May. 

• In the spring, you played soccer at the YMCA. It was a really fun experience being on a team for the first time! You didn’t really seem crazy about soccer itself and we had to bribe you to kick the ball! 

• This summer you really learned how to swim with private lessons with Ms. Dottie. You had a series of 6-8 swim lessons during May-June 2016 at The YMCA – but Josiah was born in June and so you had to miss some of those lessons. By the end of your lessons this summer, you were swimming by yourself in the deep end! You really seemed to enjoy swimming so I think we may consider swim team in the future. 

• This fall, you are doing homeschool for Kindergarten! We had our first week last week and you did GREAT! You were a very eager learner and honestly super easy to teach! Hopefully the motivation stays strong throughout the year. I hope to do another post soon about the curriculum we are using. 

• You and Bridget are playing better and better together these days. You are really starting to imagine when you play. Y’all have been playing barbies a lot lately and it has been fun to listen in on what you are playing 🙂 

Playing Animal Hospital

• You are still sisters though and do fight a fair amount. I think this is probably a result of y’all being close in age, both being pretty strong willed, etc. Top it off with the fact that when you annoy Bridget, she responds with shrieking screams and it can get quite loud in our house! We have LOTS of opportunities to talk about the right and wrong way to treat others and talk to others. 
• Recently, you learned how to ride on your balance bike, and you have gotten really good at it! Soon, we can show you how to pedal, but for now you seem totally content without the pedals. We took everyone to the park yesterday. You were on your balance bike and Bridget rode her bike with training wheels while we pushed Josiah in the stroller.  Y’all were ahead of us the whole time!