My Baby is 5!!

Here's Grace on the morning of her 5th birthday. We let her open a few presents that morning and a few more at dinner that night. She was so happy when she woke up and saw presents and a My Little Pony balloon. Kingsley on the other hand was not happy, he's scared to death of balloons. I'm not sure what he's doing in the background, he's such a strange dog!

Nana came to visit on Gracie's birthday. Her teacher gave her a birthday homework bag to do at home that night. The assignment was to read the two stories while holding Paddington the bear. I read one and Nana read the other. Then she had to paint two pictures using the paint and rollers in the bag. The last thing was to take a picture of Gracie and the bear with the disposable camera provided. Her teacher loves to take pictures, and she said she will make each student a little album at the end of the year. We had to sign a paper that said we agreed to develop two rolls of film for the teacher during the school year. I don't blame her because developing all those pictures would be expensive, and I can't wait to get her little picture book in May.

Since it was her birthday, Grace got to choose where we went to eat that night. Because she is my child, she picked Olive Garden. We LOVE Olive Garden, probably more than we should. :) She always orders fettuccine alfredo, just like I always order chicken parmigiana. We are creatures of habit. We usually have to take her pasta home because she fills up on salad and bread sticks, but I don't mind because it just makes lunch the next day easy for me.

Gracie really wanted a cake on her actual birthday, but since we had baked cupcakes the day before I really didn't want anymore cake laying around the house. I thought it would be fun to order the little cake from Olive Garden and have them come out and sing to her. Grace did not agree with me. When the server brought out the cake and shouted "attention everyone, we have a special birthday today" she knew it was for her. The look on her face in the picture was the exact face she had the whole time they were singing. She later said that it embarrassed her. So note to self, don't surprise Grace in public! She is so much like her dad! But overall she had a good birthday. She got a new webkinz from Nana. So now she has two, and she plays with them both online. (*A webkinz is a stuffed animal that has a code that you can log onto a website. It's basically a virtual pet online. You can feed it, buy clothes and furniture for it, and play games. Now that she has two they can live together and play together. I don't really get into it, but Grace and Scottie play it together. So it's something fun for them to do.) Now when she gets birthday money in the mail she thinks she needs to go buy more webkinz. I think she's becoming obsessed. She is really looking forward to her birthday party on Saturday! I just can't believe she is already five years old. It seems like yesterday that we were changing diapers!

Birthday Treats

Last week was Gracie's turn to bring snacks to school on Mon., Wed., & Fri. Her teacher gave her that week so she could bring a birthday treat on Monday. Grace wanted to bring chocolate cupcakes with white icing and circle sprinkles. (We don't have any trouble with her making decisions, she's very detailed oriented! Which she did not get from me. :) We had a lot of fun icing the cupcakes with a pastry bag. I had never used one before, but I'm glad we did because it makes icing a lot easier. I let Grace ice a few for us to eat at home. She did really well. She was so excited to take them to school. When I went to pick her up I watched the other kids come out with icing all over their faces. Oops, I hope the parents don't mind! We sent healthy snacks the other two days.

Pre-Kindergarten

Wednesday was Gracie's first day of pre-kindergarten. She missed the cut off for kindergarten by 15 days, but I still wanted her to have some kind of schooling this year. She is going to a christian school, and it's literally 1 minute from our house. I love it! She will only go three days a week from 12:30-3:15. She had a blast on her first day. She jumped around the house for a good thirty minutes when she got home. Of course she could give you a minute by minute description of what they did that day. She can't wait to go back. She said she played with some kids, but she couldn't remember their names. Then she told us about the Star Wars discussion she had with two little boys. They were discussing episode one and she asked them if Count Duku (sp) was a part of the dark side of the force. They told her yes because he was a bad guy. She has become obsessed with Star Wars lately, so she couldn't help but join into their conversation. So now she is probably going to be known as the sci-fi girl. (aka: weirdo) Just kidding! But I do wish she would have other interests besides Star Wars and Gladiators. Thank goodness she is still into kittens, it keeps her girly! :) Did you notice her little pink bag? Her teacher wanted them to all have the same sized bag for the cubbies, so she gave them each their own bag. I thought I would be clever and original and sew her name on the outside of the bag. I even put a dragonfly applique on it, I was so proud of myself. THEN... we got to school and saw all the other kids bags. Some of them looked like a craft store threw up on them. One kids bag was completely covered in puffy paint. It had his name on it and a ton of designs made out of the paint. One girls had fringe sewn around the edge and all kinds of little knick knack things sewn on it. So much for being original! At least it had her name on it, otherwise she'd be the girl with the boring bag. I guess I was relying on my past teaching experiences where we thought a kid came from a half-way decent home if he even had a backpack on the first day of school. If he had supplies in it, oh baby- that kid may even graduate from high school!! I know that sounds negative, but that's the reality for a lot of my students. I'm going to have to get use to this private school, where parents go above and beyond for their child. But don't worry, I won't get caught up with trying to out do the other moms. I will not be adding fringe and puffy paint to Gracie's bag. I'm all for making cute things for my child, but let's not get tacky! --Well, we only have another hour before school starts and Gracie is already jumping up and down. I think this will be a good year!