Posts Tagged ‘kid’
Halfway Through Third Grade
Posted on: February 18, 2013
A couple of weeks ago at Thursday Dinner, the kids had to be plunked down in the family room for quiet reading time because Jess was putting E to bed right at the same time that I needed to go get Matthew from the train station and they had been super-crazy all afternoon already (having, among other things, flooded the downstairs bathroom). Shoshanna pulled Jess’ copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone off the shelf and was almost halfway through it by the time we sat down to dinner.
The next day she read Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Prisoner of Azkaban took her a little longer, as did Goblet of Fire (which is the book she picked for her February book report). She has since re-read Prisoner of Azkaban about three times – it’s her favorite. This Thursday she sat down with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (to do her 20-minutes-of-reading-every-day homework that we never even bother to worry about because really the challenge would be to LIMIT her to 20 minutes of reading a day…)
and when I came back into the room a half-hour later, she was reading Heidi because the beginning of Order of the Phoenix was too scary for her. She has also recently devoured Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess. She took The Secret Garden to school with her last week but I don’t know if she’s finished it or not.
Report cards came out from both regular school and religious school within the past 10 days, and we had her parent-teacher conference last Tuesday. To say she’s doing well would be an understatement… her grade improved from the first to the second quarter, and all of her teachers love her. Two comments sum up halfway-through-third-grade Shoshanna. From one of her RS teachers: “She demonstrates a great deal of enthusiasm for class activities”. From Mrs. V, on her presentation of her Black History Month project (which was about Martin Luther King, of course): “Clear, loud, and energetic.”
End of Summer in Pictures
Posted on: September 11, 2012
Haircuts
Trips to the amusement park
Coming home from a daddy-daughter camping trip so tired you can barely function
And shortly after school starts, new wheels
Sixth/Fourth/Third
Posted on: September 5, 2012
Sixth first day of school / fourth at her current school / third grade.
Mrs. V.* made a friend for life by taking one look at Shoshanna and saying, “Oh, you’re wearing my favorite color!” And earned major favor with us by immediately handing me a permission form to test her for OT services and by saying that she really emphasizes organization by having them color-code their notebooks and folders, etc.
There seems to have been quite a bit of mixing up of the classes this year, too. BFF G is in her class, which we knew, but BFF S is not. There’s one boy who has been in the same class since kindergarten and a couple of other familiar faces/names but not many.
*Another first: first time her teacher is, based on my estimation, younger than her parents.
Karma.
Posted on: August 16, 2012
Yesterday this little graphic came through my Facebook feed. I chuckled and reposted it, not knowing that less than 12 hours later, Shoshanna would prove how very true it is.
Because last night when she was getting ready for bed, I was singing for her to “come here” so I could brush and braid her hair.
And she started singing about how she would “comb here”.
The apple, it appears, doesn’t fall very far from the pun tree.
Other news in bullet-list form:
- Softball season is (finally) over. The Rebels took first place in the regular season and won a nail-biter to take first place in the post-season as well. We are very sad that this merry little band of nutjobs will be split up next year – there are five girls from the team moving up to the next division, and Trey doesn’t have five openings on his team.
- Shoshanna loveloveLOVES camp but she’s also very excited to start third grade in a couple of weeks.
- Dental fun continues. Shoshanna had the sealant put on her bottom six-year-molars to mitigate the effects of the demineralization that Dr. Dunn was concerned about. She was a model patient. I have a picture of her wearing the N2O mask but she has forbidden me from posting it on the Internet. Now it’s a game of watch and wait to see if the sealant holds and to see what kind of shape her upper molars are in. The first of them just poked through the gum recently – Shoshanna discovered it last night.
V-A-C-A-T-I-O-N, in the summertime!
Posted on: July 25, 2012
We’re just back from 2 weeks’ vacation and all suffering a bit of vacation hangover.
First we went to Delaware to hang out with M’s family and meet Eviva, Shoshanna’s new cousin. S kinda liked the baby.
She and Cora got along really well, too, which was good because after Cora’s birthday party the two of them went to hang out with Grandma and Opa for a couple of days while we stayed in DE to help out with the little one.
I designed matching t-shirts for the grandparents and the kids (kinda like I did when Cora was born) but the girls refused to wear them except for the picture.
We all met up at Hershey Park on Thursday of that week to ride the rides and for us to reclaim our offspring. Shoshanna had been saying for weeks that she would ride the little kid rides with Cora, but Cora has decided that she doesn’t like rides. So Shoshanna rode the kid rides by herself.
She also rode grownup rides. Rides that Grandma won’t touch with a ten-foot-pole (the Wildcat) as well as ones that most of the adults would go on with her (Lightning Racer and Comet). She declined to do the SooperDooperLooper this year (she did ride it two years ago) and says that when she’s tall enough she’s going to ride Skyrush, which Josh and I both did and is the only coaster I have ever been defeated by. (Did it once; it would take a lot of convincing to get me to do it again.)
Phew. So that was Delaware. We came home Friday so Shoshanna could play a softball game on Saturday. (Obligatory awesome softball photo not actually taken at that game. But look at the midair first-base-crossing!)
And then the next Monday we flew off to the Pacific Northwest where Shoshanna spent Monday – Friday with my parents while Matthew and I went to Seattle with nothing but a car and a hotel reservation and had a great time just doing whatever seemed like a good idea at the time (including going to see Mt. St. Helens on the way back down to Portland). While we did that, Shoshanna and my parents went to OMSI, the zoo, and the library’s used bookstore.
(Obligatory reading picture does not show one of the books she bought at Title Wave.)
After we got back to their house on Friday, we had dinner with Auntie Em and Nuncle Jake and flew home Saturday morning.
Phew Squared. Now it’s back to camp and work, just a bit more softball (one rain-out to make up next week and then presumably playoffs), and a crazy influx of company as people pass through on their way to and from Pennsic as well as just plain coming to visit us, including a surprise visit from my old friend Angela, her daughter Jessica (who I have known since she was 9) and A’s husband Tyler who I hadn’t met before we had dinner with them last night (and they had never met Shoshanna, either).
Shoshanna swam three races: the 25 freestyle, one leg of the 25 free relay, and the 25 breaststroke. And she got a medal (all the kids did), which she insisted on wearing to school the next day.
Snippet
Posted on: June 14, 2012
Last night when I collected Shoshanna from swimming, she was clearly wiped. out. They had field day at school, which meant that they were outside running around all day. Tuesday night she had softball practice and was up a little late. Monday night she had her first swim meet (she swam the 25 free, one leg of the 100 free relay, and the 25 breast – pictures and videos forthcoming) and didn’t get to bed ’til well after bedtime.
So I knew we weren’t going to be able to wait for me to grill the fish I was planning to make for dinner. I called Matthew on the way home and we had the following conversation.
Me: I’m about to drop some serious obfuscation on you.
Him: OK.
Me: I think we need to come up with an alternate plan for our evening sustenance because someone will need to eat before I would have time to prepare what I had planned. Someone is e-x-h-a-u-s-t-e-d.
Shoshanna, from the backseat: I’M NOT EXHAUSTED!
After I hung up with Matthew, I asked her to spell exhausted. She complied: e-g-s-a-u-s-t-e-d. All the while maintaining that it did not in any way describe her.
One more down
Posted on: June 7, 2012
Tooth #7 flew the coop this evening at tooth-brushing time. This one had been driving her a little bit crazy for a while and she had asked me to pull it a bunch of times but I could never get a firm grip on it. After trying to hook it with dental floss I decided to go with the dentist-recommended twist technique. After I got it to rotate 180 degrees, it came out pretty easily. And bled quite a bit.
For those keeping score at home (I’m looking at you Grammy and Grandma), the only hanger-on of the front 8 teeth is one upper central incisor which is hanging on very, very stubbornly.
And also, softball
Posted on: June 5, 2012
Second Base
Did I mention that softball started? And that the Rebels are back together? Yeah. They’re still hilarious. So far they’ve only managed to have one game, which they won 4 – 2. And then we had a week of bad weather and last weekend’s game was rained out.
The kids are doing REALLY well. They actually seem like a team! Even the new girls are catching on really fast, though one of the kindergartners runs the bases every time. On every play. Whether she’s batting or playing outfield. She runs the bases. It’s hilarious, really.
So since most of the girls have the basics down, now they’re working on things like backing each other up and making sure to cover bases. This means a lot less boredom, too – because even if the ball’s not coming your way, you have a job to do!
Which resulted in one play in the first game when Shoshanna was playing right-center. The ball was hit… somewhere that wasn’t near her. What did she do? Picked up on the fact that she second baseman was not aware of the play at all and covered second. The play didn’t come to her, but .. she covered it.
Not strike 3.
And she also is batting .333 for the season. Struck out twice but singled in her second at bat, and drove in a run.
Next game’s tomorrow. We’ll see what happens.
Dance Recital, Third Time Edition
Posted on: June 4, 2012
This year was the first time Shoshanna’s been in more than one dance class. Since her studio has been growing by leaps & bounds and Candace had to accommodate 33 pairs of siblings AND 33 kids who were in multiple numbers, there was basically no chance of both of Shoshanna’s dances being in the same show. We ended up with tap on Saturday morning and ballet on Sunday afternoon.
This has been a really good year of dance for her. She’s progressed a LOT in terms of her attention span and her ability to pick up the steps in a reasonable amount of time. (Rhythm… is coming along.) And she dances CONSTANTLY, making up new combos of the various steps that she’s learned in her classes.
Anyway. Her tap dance was to the first 2 minutes or so of Justin Bieber’s “Baby, Baby, Baby”. I will spare you a link, but don’t think I’m not tempted. Her ballet dance was called “Garden Fairies”; I don’t know the music that it was set to. What was noteworthy about it was that it was in 3-4 time, which is much more challenging to dance to than 4-4 time.
So… here you go. Pictures. There were soooo many kids in her tap class that I didn’t manage to get a good individual picture of her from the front. But you better believe those purple sparkly accessories have been worn a couple of times a week since the recital.
Killing time in the gazebo before the ballet show
Our Garden Fairy
Start of the tap dance
End of the tap dance
