Abby’s 5th Birthday

This month we celebrated Abby’s fifth birthday. (For the record, she has officially told us that she prefers “Abby” over her other names like “Abigail”, “Abs”, “Abster”). Abby chose to celebrate with pizza and ice cream (with Grandma and Grandpa) after a day at the hands-on museum, and then homemade pizza bagels for the “day of” celebration. It was fun to watch Abby take “center stage”, as she usually is shy and quiet and content to sit out of the spot light.

First of all, you all must know that Abby, sweet and quiet as she is, is strongly opinionated. She loves what she loves and lives with zeal. And one of her biggest loves right now is pigs. Real pigs, cartoon pigs, stuffed pigs…pigs. For her birthday, we got her a pig backpack and a big stuffed pig to sleep with. (She already sleeps with her special Christmas doll, her little pig stuffed animal, and her stuffed Elmo – all previous gifts from all different people). Anytime we have any kind of pig sighting, Abby is sure to look over and Dan me with a great big grin. It’s adorable.

Abby is sweet. She has a gift for playing with Little Kids and is my go-to-girl when I need someone to “keep Elijah back while I open the oven” or “see if you can get Elijah to stop crying”. Just last week we were at a baseball game and she came up to me and said, “Mom, you don’t need to watch Elijah. I will watch him so that you can just watch the game”. (She is five, though, so that really only lasted a few minutes, but it was sweet all the same).

Abby is also my little helper. She loves to help me do…anything. Often on days when she naps, she’ll ask me, “When I get up, can I help you do whatever you’re doing?”. And she does! She’ll bring me ingredients from the fridge, put things away for me, or does whatever little job I ask her to do. She also has a daily chore of wiping down the dining room table, which she almost always does quickly and cheerfully.

This year, Abby is tackling kindergarten. She’s technically a little young for kindergarten (by 10 days), but we’re plowing right along. She shocked me last year by starting to sound out words at a younger age than Lydia, so this year she’s learning to read, doing a little handwriting, and beginning some organized math. She LOVES school work, especially workbooks, and begs me to do more and more pages, often more than I can say “yes” to. (On the second day of school, she finished my allotted first three weeks of handwriting!)

Abby is not picky when it comes to having fun. She loves surprises and she loves any outing. Any little gift makes her smile and she keeps her treasures all together somewhere (currently in her new pig backpack) and guards them with zeal. Some of her favorite treasures right now are new sunglasses (in a case), a spiral bound notebook and pencil with an eraser cap, and a couple of toy necklaces she got with her birthday money.

One of the sweetest things, though, that I see Abby do, is play with her siblings. She has a little bit of a peace-making ability, and will usually be the first to give up something to make someone else happy (sharing some of her meal with Elijah after he finishes, sharing stickers with Lydia, and even giving up some ice cream after a birthday-date with Daddy so everyone could have a taste). During the boys (and my) nap time, she loves to play with Lydia, and together they plan weddings and parties, dress up, and pretend travel, school, and restaurant. Sometimes Lydia reads to Abby and sometimes Abby pretends to read to her brothers.

We’ve lately noticed that she’s a little peanut gallery, making hilarious (although, not necessarily on purpose) comments to some of Lydia’s more dramatic episodes. One day Lydia was trying hard not to cry in the car, but she just couldn’t control herself. Abby was sitting quietly, sucking her thumb. She popped the thumb out and piped in, “Try sucking your thumb. That’s what I do.” Then she popped her thumb right back in as Dan and I tried not to laugh (for Lydia’s sake).

Abby has always been a smiler, and she lives her life passionately. When she’s happy, she beams. When she’s tired, she sleeps hard. When she’s excited, she can’t contain herself. It has been so fun to watch Abby grow and learn in the past years, transitioning from a baby who couldn’t eat, to a toddler who couldn’t talk, and now to a spirited five-year-old who is eating, talking, and learning to read!

This Crazy Kiddo

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Lydia turned six at the end of May. She had been counting down to her birthday for over three months. Several days each week she would update us on what she wanted to do for her birthday, who she wanted to have over, and what presents she wanted to receive. When the birthday weekend finally arrived, we had a lot of birthday and start-of-summer fun. We took her to a toy store to pick out a toy to buy with her birthday money, got ice cream and pizza, and spent much of her actual birthday at the playground. She constantly reminded us to sing and say “Happy Birthday” and begged me to make her a “birthday balloon” (a balloon with a smiley face drawn on it). She got pink roses from Dan and went on her second-ever Daddy-daughter-birthday date.

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Lydia has also been asking regularly if it’s warm enough to play in the sprinkler or go to a pool. Since the first day of spring, it’s been hard to keep socks or shoes on her feet, not to mention a coat. She loves playing “house” outside and is so proud that this year she’s big enough to climb into our tree house all by herself.

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Lydia loves to play pretend, dance, and snuggle. She is always dressing up as a bride or asking to “play princess” with Dan, which is not exactly his favorite game. 😉 She loves any hands-on activities and anything “special”. Bridal showers, weddings, holidays, birthdays, and get-togethers are sure to put her on her best behavior because she’s just so happy. When she learns it’s a significant day, for any reason, she’ll wonder why we aren’t celebrating more. For example, she asked why we weren’t having a fancy breakfast or a special dessert for groundhog’s day.

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Kindergarten was a breeze for Lydia. Thankfully (for me) she picks up on things really fast. Really, the best way to teach Lydia is to not teach her but let her watch others do the task. When she gets it in her head that she wants to try, she usually can succeed. This has worked well with laundry, cleaning up after meals, serving food, and even math lessons. I can get her to learn a lot more by doing a lesson half myself and letting her do the other half, than if I explain a concept to her and ask her to do the assignment alone.

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Gift-giving might be Lydia’s top love language. She loves to make “gifts” for people – homemade construction paper cards, simple cross-stitch pictures, cut out pieces of paper, and bouquets of flowers (dandelions or violets, usually) picked from our yard. She also loves receiving gifts. When she was struggling to do her reading lessons with a cheerful attitude, we discovered small prizes work wonders to get her motivated. And now that our library has started their summer reading program, Lydia has been reading at least a book a day to win her prizes, when it was always a struggle to do a page or two in her reading lesson book.

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She’s always been our most verbal child, so it’s no surprise that Lydia is almost always talking. If we had the patience and knowledge to answer all of her questions, she would be a genius. On ANY topic, Lydia can rattle off 5 questions without taking a break. Usually her trains of questions come to an halt whenever Mom or Dad have to ask for a break so we can focus on something or give attention to someone else. Lydia also has a very good memory. She has memorized over 100 Bible verses (with desserts as the most effective incentive). The other day we were listening to our daily news radio program during breakfast and one of their regular promo segments started playing. She recited the 30 second promo pretty well right on top of the program.

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This year is Lydia’s turn to accompany me to our church Ladies’ Retreat for a Mommy-Daugther date and she’s pretty thrilled. She’s been looking forward to her turn ever since I took Abby last year. Her memory is pretty incredible in that way too. For example, about nine months ago we took Lydia to a dentist appointment. They told her that she would earn a stuffed animal prize if she could stop sucking her thumb for 30 days. She stopped that very day. Last month I took her again and she got her prize. The next day I found her sucking her thumb after eight months without it! Dan and I had to explain that the point was to stop altogether, not just stop for eight months to earn her prize and then start again.

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Some of my most precious memories of Lydia lately have been our one-on-one times together. Sometimes Lydia will snuggle up next to me during nap time and play with my hair while she listens to an audio book. Occasionally Lydia helps me cook dinner, peeling carrots or stirring vegetables as they cook (that’s her favorite because she feels so grown up working at the stove). I try to remember to give her snuggles, hugs, and tickles whenever my hands are free because my hands are so often full, I’ll go days without a Lydia hug if I’m not intensional. (Don’t worry about her being deprived though, Dan picks up the slack. Lydia is quite gifted at sneaking into his lap whether he says it’s ok or not!)

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Kindergarten – Taylor Style

Several weeks ago, Lydia began her first “real” year of school. We handled preschool pretty casually, mostly teaching her the letters and some very beginner reading. This year we have a much more structured school day, and everybody is loving it.

For those who are curious, I’m primarily using a book called Learning at Home. This is a day-by-day curriculum that includes Bible, Reading, Math, Art, Gym, Story-time, Music, God’s World (science, geography, community), Health/Manners, Character Building, and Field Trips. The lessons are set up in a casual “talk to your child” sort of format, also using a lot of library books as resources. It’s an older book (1988), so last year I “previewed” all of the library books and made my own substitutions where books were out or print, they were unavailable from the library, or I didn’t approve of them for some reason or another. I had also started Lydia with An Ordinary Parent’s Guide to Teaching Reading last year, so I’m subbing that for the reading lessons.

We have spent so much time talking about, researching, and getting Lydia pumped up for Kindergarten, that everyone was really excited on the first day of school.

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Because we want our children to learn how to spend time alone reading the Bible and praying each day, Lydia starts her school day by listening to ten minutes or so of her Word and Song Bible (This is our favorite audio story Bible, but it’s sadly out of print, so you have to find it used. The books are cheap on Amazon or Ebay and the sound files are available on iTunes.)

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Then we plunge right in. I printed off these daily Calendar pages from Confessionsofahomeschooler.com and the girls love filling them out. It’s totally extra and lately we haven’t even been doing them, but the girls love it when we do.

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I love how hands-on the activities are. Every day Lydia is excited to see what she gets to do.

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Since math is my favorite subject, I’ve found myself tailoring that subject to fit Lydia’s speed and interests a little better.

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Once a week I have Lydia draw a picture and narrate for her journal and once a week I have her do a few pages in a handwriting workbook.

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Paul and Abby just kind of tag along with whatever Lydia is doing.

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Our field trips have certainly made for some fun weekends. So far we’ve visited the zoo, a harvest festival, the Ann Arbor children’s hands-on museum, and an apple orchard to pick apples. Most of the pictures are still on my camera, but here’s a fun one of the closest hippo encounter we’ve ever had. 🙂

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