Happy Halloween!

This year A-chan went through a total of 3 costumes for Halloween. For the Library's halloween night she wore her Knight outfit from DragonCon. For the Halloween party on the 30th she wore her Pirate outfit from DragonCon last year. For her school fall festival and the actual Trick or Treating it was her Faerie outfit that got chosen. It was very cute.

I chose a kimono complete with obi and obijime, geta and wild hair sticks. A-chan complemented by obi tying skills with "wow, you can tie an obi just like Konata's dad!" which references the Lucky Star anime.

It was kind of icky and wet but not as cold as I thought it might be. We went out with Emma and Alex and their parents and some other friends first, then visited Lucy and my mother. Mom took A-chan treating around her neighborhood and by then her Hello Kitty basket was overflowing.

She really enjoyed all of it despite the rain. I think that I personally could have done with less walking but I enjoyed it too. One thing I find interesting is how she never actually looks and chooses the candy she likes. She chooses things randomly and leaves the things she knows she likes. It will be neat to see if that changes next year :)

44.5 inches

Today was A-chan's 5th birthday. We had a great day! It was made more interesting by the pouring rain and the massive amounts of sugar consumed.

The first thing she wanted to do this morning was measure herself on her height chart to see if she'd grown any over night. She is now 44.5 inches tall, 3 inches taller than on her 4th b-day. Then she got to open a present before getting ready for school - a pikachu bento box and a pikachu wristwatch.

Next we hurried to get ready for school and to arrive with cupcakes intact. For her school cupcakes she chose a yellow cake/chocolate swirl with chocolate and pink icing swirled on top with pink, blue, orange and small ball sprinkles on top. She helped mix them and bake them, then did some sprinkles on top.

While she was at school I transformed her bathroom into a more kid-friendly space with a hello kitty shower curtain, new fantasy art and some other hello kitty additions. This was not about the fact that I want my sink to myself in the mornings, no way! And it had nothing to do with the amount of times I have tripped over her stepstool in my bathroom. It was all about her special day, yep :)

Then I hurried back to school for the cupcake party, with huge princess balloon and flower bouquet in hand as well as a bag of puffy cheetos as a surprise. Off to lunch at IHOP for pancakes and then the free bowl of ice cream for the birthday girl. Back home to try out the new game her daddy had installed on her computer and then to play Katamari on the PS3.

Dinner next and then I had to run off to teach dance class while she stayed with her godfather to play. When I got home there was an enormous cookie thingy with icing in the middle and a pink crown in icing on top. Whew, the sugar!

Birthday Countdown

Only two days until A-chan's fifth birthday. It's hard to believe that she will be five! She has a second tooth that is very much ready to fall out any day. She still has a tiny bit of pink in her hair from Dragoncon. Her worst fears are still storms and spiders. She loves playing drums for Rock Band.

There is so much to do before her birthday - cupcakes for school, plus grapes and cheese snacks. Plus finding something to carry 22 cupcakes in. Decorating her bathroom into a big girl bathroom. Wrapping a present, making a card and deciding what to make her for lunch and dinner that will be special. None of it includes her two parties. I just hope I can drag enough energy from somewhere to get it all done!

When recounting the tale of her birth she got very upset about the c-section and started crying. It took me a few minutes to calm her down, but in the end I think she was okay. She thought it was funny that her daddy had to do all her diapers at first.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. I love my girl so much!!

Pink everything!

Used to be A-chan loved mashed potatoes. Now I can't get her to eat them, not for begging, pleading or threatening. I have no idea why. But as I was making lunch today I made the offhand comment "would you eat them if they were pink?" and she said yes. So...I made pink mashed potatoes. And she did indeed eat every bite of them. I guess I must be too much of an adult now cause I don't get it! They taste the same. The texture is the same. Well, I'm happy that she ate them :)

No tooth!

26 days before her 5th birthday, A-chan's first tooth came out! It happened at lunch where the very wobbly tooth got stuck in corn on the cob. Bleeding occurred which kind of freaked her out but she quicly calmed down and wanted to see the gap in her teeth.

I'm relieved that it finally came out. The adult tooth had already pushed through behind it and I was getting just a bit concerned. We also had a near disaster when I forgot to get the tooth off the lunch plate before washing the plate. For a few tense moments we thought I had lost it but finally it was recovered. A-chan washed it and quickly put it into the pink heart on her tooth pillow.

She's very excited about the tooth fairy and asked if the TF could leave a picture of herself behind. She also wants to buy a giraffe with the money that the TF will be leaving, go figure :) Another request was for a picture to be taken of the gap in her teeth and posted on Facebook so that everyone could see it.

The tooth pillow that I made for this occassion is two sided. One had a pink heart pocket and one has a blue heart pocket. It's handsewn out of machine felt and cotton lace. We've been looking forward to using it, even lugging it to DragonCon and AWA just in case :) Tonight's the night!

P.S. The Mystery of buying a giraffe with her tooth fairy loot has been solved. It's because that's what Lola (from the children's series Charlie and Lola) bought with her TF money. So apparently A-chan is convinced that she must absolutely do the same. I'm all for it if that's what she really wants, but I'm glad to know where it came from!

The Business lunch

A-chan and I had a nice sit down business lunch to talk over the details of her upcoming 5th birthday party. It was a productive meeting and much was decided. Notes were taken and memos will be sent out accordingly this week.

Basically she wants a princess party because she had so much fun at M & F's princess party last year and it's stuck in her head all this time! It was decided to be a fairy princess party though and that any boys that come can dress up as knights instead. There is to be a cake with a crown. There is to be fairy bread and hershey's kisses (because a princess is always awakened with a kiss).

I'm a little worried that it will be too cold to have an outdoor party because it will be a couple of weeks late this year. But hopefully all will work out well. I'm excited about it...planning for the crafts and games always makes me happy. I tend to go overboard on her birthdays, but it's worth it.

Convention Season

Convention season is over. DragonCon and AWA are behind us and we are moving forward into fall with ever increasin chilliness and planning for A-chan's birthday.

This year for DragonCon A-chan dressed up as a Clone trooper, a Jawa, a faerie and a knight.
For AWA she did a catgirl with really cute pink and white ears and Moegi from Naruto.

She bought her pink bunny hat at DCon - turns out that she wanted the "soul candy" hat from Bleach. It's incredibly cute and really matched her pink hair.

She bought a Mokona hat at AWA. Pokemon was very much in favor this year and we saw stuff that delighted her just about everywhere.

School is going well. Interesting at times, but she loves it. Today she was very concerned with looking cute in order to get the attention of a boy she likes who apparently has been ignoring her this week. Not really sure what to think about that other than the fact that it's sweet :)

Alphabet Notes

Aeri took in:

A red toy airplane for "A"
A small stuffed Eeyore for "E"
A purple and brown stuffed dragon for "D"
A Super-deformed Leia from Hoth for "L"

Cat food freedom

I absolutely love the fact that A-chan feeds and waters the cats every day. It's just so cool! She kept wanting to help and I would have to go and get the food scoop and fill it for her since the huge bin of cat food was kept in a high place she couldn't reach. Then I had the brilliant idea to move it somewhere she could reach it and ever since she's taken it upon herself to feed them and give them water everyday. All by herself!

She will actually monitor their dishes to see if they have enough. The cats are getting spoiled. And I've been giving her lots of allowance. Her allowance is being saved up to spend at DragonCon and AWA, and apparently her goal is buying a "bunny hat". I'm not entirely sure what that means, and I can't wait to see what she picks.

The allowance thing really rocks too. I had no idea that she would be so motivated by it.

Oh! Plus we've rearranged her closet so that she can reach her own clothes to get ready for school in the mornings. Such a simple, easy thing that I just hadn't thought about. Originally all her clothes were hanging up high cause it was easier for me to reach while she was a baby and toddler. I think that A-chan truly loves the ability to get them herself, including socks and undies, and dress herself before school.

Pokemon Training

We recently viewed some Pokemon videos. Guess who is now totally obsessed with them. It's been fun today to go outside with her and pretend to catch pokemon in the balls that her Lucky Star figures came in. (I knew I saved those things for something!) Later we went to the Pokegym (the garage) where she had her pokemon battle while I did some sewing for DragonCon. It's amazing how much information her brain has soaked up with only a small amount of exposure.

Not Ready

It's hard getting up in time for school. And it's not exactly happening on time yet. School starts next monday (4 days). I kept intending to start getting A-chan up earlier, but things keep happening to keep her up late. I'll work harder on it the next couple of days.

Tonight is the parent's meeting for her school. I'm a little nervous about it. First because I'm going to be late for it - it starts at 7 and I'm teaching a dance class until 7. Secondly because I'll be dressed for dance class and icky from dancing for an hour! Going to take clothes to change into if I find the time for it, but who knows.

We're getting really excited about Dragoncon now and starting to work on costumes a whole lot. A-chan has decided that this year she wants to continue her Jawa costume and her fairy costume but add a Knight costume.

Tooth trauma

So on A-chan's very first day as a yellow belt she got injured and bled on her new belt, which is kind of a badge of honor I am told. She collided with another student while playing freeze tag and bashed her teeth. They are fine now, but at the time it was fairly traumatic with blood everywhere and both lips busted open. It was her first major (ie bleeding) injury and her first trip to the ER which we should have just skipped and gone to the dentist instead, but I followed her pediatrician's advice. Anyway, it wasn't a very bad injury - it just looked awful at the time. She was soon very proud of her battle scars and showing everyone :)

The dentist did xrays (thank goodness the dental technician was good with kids, cause the dentist certainly was NOT). The xrays showed that her baby teeth are just about to fall out anyway! Hurridly did we prepare by making a tooth pillow so that we will be ready for the tooth fairy when one does fall out. A-chan has been asking me to go buy her apples for the last three days, hoping that her loose tooth will stick in one and come out.

I'm pretty proud of the tooth pillow, it's soooo cute! But I'm extra proud of my girl who bounced back very quickly and was ready to go back to Tae Kwon do the next day.

New yellow belt

A-chan recieved her yellow belt today! It's amazing to me how much different it looks than the white belt. She's very happy about it and I'm so proud of her. She's already starting to work hard so that she can get her green belt. We did strength exercises together this morning. I'm hoping that I can use the green belt thing to get her to eat veggies she doesn't like. "It will make you stronger so that you can do Tae Kwon do better..." lol. probably won't work, but I figure it's worth a try.

The other day she asked me "Mata, when are you going to be pregnant again?" A little shocked by this question, I asked why she wanted to know. "Because I don't remember what it was like to be a baby and I want to have a little brother so I can remember." Apparently she's enamored of her friend E's baby brother. Today she mentioned that she wanted a baby brother "so that mommy won't be sad about only having one child." Hmmm.

Yellow Belt Test

A-chan took her test for Yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do this past saturday. I think I was more nervous about it than she was. She'd been practicing for about two weeks and had gotten the form down pat. But I was nervous about video taping the test, much more nervous than she was.

I spent so much time concentration on trying to figure out the bleeping camera that I didn't really get to watch the test. And I still didn't get the video, so I completely failed. It made me feel horrible. Watching her take her first test was so important and I suck so much at the whole camera thing that we can't even watch it on video. I spent the rest of the test trying not to cry, feeling like I had utterly failed her.

She was very happy about all of it, and she feels that she did well which is great! We won't find out the results for a week so we have to be patient which is hard. They give out three medals at each test, for attendance, perseverance and courtesy. A-chan was awarded the perseverance medal! It's sooo cool and she's super proud of it. I think maybe she understands that it was because of her hard work in class to balance and jump and learn the form, not something just for the test.

I can't wait to find out the results of her test. And next test I'm not even taking the bloody camera.

Coming soon...

A-chan's test for yellow belt in Tae Kwon Do is this saturday. She's being very serious about it. In class today she even decided on her own to practice the form right before class started. I think she is going to do great! I've been trying not to pressure her too much about it, though.

She loves to make salads. The act of tossing all the different ingredients into a bowl is apparently lots of fun plus she knows that I like them. This evening she tried a new decorative twist: the dot to dot salad. She placed all of the cherry tomatoes very carefully on the top of the salad to make a dot to dot flower, with a circle of feta in the center. So cute!!! While we were waiting at the airport with her dada for his flight out I started drawing her a dot to dot, just to pass the time and help her not be bored. Then she decided to draw lots of them herself and now on to salads.

Getting Ready

Tomorrow is the first day of a miniature summer camp for A-chan. A pottery studio is doing weekly themed camps for kids her age. It's not exactly what I'd wanted for a summer camp for her, but I waited too long to look into all of it and the ones I'd really wanted were already full. I had no clue that summer camps started before summer did! Seriously, they start in May. Anyway...when I found this one I jumped on it. I think that she will enjoy it, but I still feel very guilty and like a bad parent for not having gotten her into others.

I think we're both a little nervous about it. This will be the first time that she's been away from me for more than a couple of hours. And the very first time she's been 'babysat' by someone other than very close friends. While I know that she'll be fine, I've still got the butterflies going wild in my stomach. I think overall that I'm nervous that she won't like it for some reason.

We did the first part of the summer reading program at the library today - A-chan got to write her name on a tag and staple it on the 10 books wall. Then we gathered a huge stack of books to bring home and promptly read 5 of them. My mom was amazed that A-chan read her a Charlie and Lola book with an English accent. I have to admit that the accent is incredibly cute!!

One other note from todays' adventures: My girl is just like me and doesn't really care about shoes. Getting her to pick a pair of shoes at the store was almost impossible, she just didn't care. However, never underestimate her love of Moe's burritos.

To Be a Knight

A-chan wants to be a knight. That's her costuming choice for DragonCon this year. So when I mentioned that we would be going to see knights swordfighting today, she was just ecstatic. Got a little upset when I told her that she was too young to join in though. We went to the Regional Fighter Practice for the local SCA groups today. It was fun! She loved it and wants to know when we can do it again. Youth combat starts at age 7 and she still seemed excited about it even though she has to wait 2.5 years. But after seeing all the people in garb today she decided that she wouldn't mind dressing up "like a princess" sometimes too.

I had a great time. We met lots of new and wonderful people who were very nice! And it was awesome just to sit under a pavilion and watch everything. Although I got pretty badly sunburned, A-chan just got a tiny bit pink. I took sunscreen with us. I always do take sunscreen. It's just that I've never gotten good at actually using the stuff. Luckily it doesn't seem to matter for her, just for me.

On the drive home she sang along to "Here come the ABC's" by They Might Be Giants. It was soooo cute. And then she asked if we could play checkers when we got home. It was a tough game, but I won by two pieces. We tied on tic tac toe.

Watercolored people

A-chan loves my watercolor pencils. Originally purchased to help when designing temporary henna tatooes, the watercolor pencils are now entertainment for a whole evening. The fact that she can draw/paint on each of us is fun. The fact that it easily washes off in seconds with just water is my fav part :) She's been enjoying doing henna on me for a while, but her henna is very...let's say abstract. And it stays for a couple of weeks. Lovely watercolor pencils, I shall make an ode to thee. Anyway, she spent about an hour and a half painting flowers and hearts and fruit all over our arms and feet tonight while we watched Kodocha.

Yesterday we went to Stone Mountian to visit with friends and relax a little. A family of tourists happened to see a tortoise on the side of the hill next to the road and stopped to take a closer look. When they saw that the tortoise was laying eggs, one of the boys ran down the hill to tell us so we could come and watch too. It was pretty awesome. Definately not something you get to see often. A-chan seemed fascinated.

Today was Friday. Fridays are currently significant because they are the days when A-chan can play online computer games at pbskids.org. I've limited the weekly time she can spend on these games to just the one day because she was liking them way too much and ignoring the essential things in life like...popsicles! It's working out pretty well, I think. She knows exactly when she can play the games and doesn't pester me about it during the week unless she occassionally wants to know how many more days til friday. And it's also a powerful deterent to bad behaviour cause she knows she might not get her game time on friday if the rest of the week she was a cranky ogre.

She helped prepare the corn on the cob for our dinner tonight. It's amazing how much she loves the stuff. I seriously think that she would have eaten two whole ones by herself if I'd let her. After cleaning off all the corn silk and singing a song about it, she read some of "Cinderella" to me while I cooked. A few of the words gave her trouble like 'widowed' and 'step-mother'. The way she pronounced Anastasia was priceless.

A Full Day

Today we went hiking at the Botanical Gardens. We did the Orange trail because A-chan wanted to see the river. It was a lot of fun. We saw dragonflies, a beautiful lizard, two turtles, some tiny frogs, butterflies, faeries and some birds. Her stamina has definately improved, she didn't ask me to carry her at all. We both loved being in the forest. Afterwards we went and got smoothies for lunch!

Next there was the matter of her allowance to sort through. She used the Coinstar machine to count some of the change from her Totoro coin bank and got almost $10! When we went to the toy store to buy replacement sand (her sandbox had gotten flooded last month and just recently got cleaned out thanks to some wonderful friends) she chose some princess mega blocks to purchase with her allowance. We also replaced her doctor kit which has been missing for a very long time. This time she chose the pink one instead of the blue one.

We also went to the library and signed her up for the Summer Reading Program. She has her very own library card to check out her books with. Today we left with 14. I think she might have been more excited about the reading program than about the new toys.

She's been having trouble going to sleep lately. Typical childhood nightime fears, but I'm not sure how best to counter them. I'm trying but I don't think I'm doing a good enough job. For a while she's been doing the stalling method of coming up with ways to go to bed later and later. But tonight was the first time she actually tried to take books to bed with her and read instead of going to sleep. I feel a little guilty stopping her from it. I mean, reading is great! And I used to read in bed all the time when I was a kid. But I also know that she'll be incredibly grumpy tomorrow if she doesn't go to sleep in time cause no matter how late she falls asleep, she gets up at the same time every morning.

Fractions of Lemonade

First thing this morning we made Lemonade ala the recipe from A-chan's Highlights High Five magazine. It was fun, it was messy and it has lots of sugar. She's been drinking it all day. But that's okay cause it's a special one-time deal that we made together. I'm sure that she won't ask for it again, right?

She's been learning about fractions the last couple of days so I took the opportunity to do more fraction fun while making lemonade. The measuring cups were fascinating to her now that they had a meaning to them. We counted the 4th cups together with both the liquid measure and the dry measure.

I'm hoping very much that she won't struggle with math as much as I do. I don't want her to be a super math genius or anything, but I don't want her to be afraid of math.

A Spock Fan

My Mom took A-chan and myself to see the Star Trek movie today. A-chan was very excited about it, even though she didn't really have a clue what it was about. I enjoyed it immensely but she only watched about half of it, then got bored. At that point she played a little with her stuffed puppy named CookieTable, some with my dupatta and then I supplied her with a pen so she could doodle on leftover napkins.

She was completely unflappable in regards to the violence or scariness in the film and would simply turn away from the screen if there was something she didn't want to see. I did try to cover her eyes at one point which made her very indignant cause she could do it herself, thank you.

The vulcan hand sign she reconized from Big Bang Theory and instantly made Spock her fav character. And she ate almost an entire bag of popcorn by herself. I have suspicions that she didn't eat much lunch purposefully saving room for that popcorn.

Plenty of Firsts Left

It's still amazing to me sometimes to find things that are still "Big Firsts"! This evening we went to a carnival at the local mall parking lot and there were tons of Firsts for A-chan. We rode the Ferris Wheel and the Carousel, she went on the Dragon roller coaster all by herself and the Wiggly Wurms by herself. She'd never had cotton candy before and enjoyed that very much, though she professed to liking the rides more and stopped eating the sugar so she could get on another ride faster. There was a beautiful full rainbow that she took pictures of with her cell phone while we were waiting in line for the Carousel.

I had a blast. I always wanted to go to Carnivals when I was little. We went to one when I was small and one when I was a teenager. When A-chan begged to go and was sooooo excited about it, how could I say no? Part of it was me going "I want her to be able to do all the things that I didn't get to do when I was a child", of course. It was so much fun to watch her.

There are times when having a 4 year old that can read the menu is a detriment, though. She read everything. And decided she wanted a snow cone. She wasn't sure what a snow cone was, but she liked the sound of it. I didn't have any money left at that point so we left without one. But I made strawberry slushies when we got home instead. That was fun. And messy. Apparently large chunks of ice in a cuisinart make strawberry juice skirt out everywhere and I suddenly had a red kitchen. That which actually remained in the container was very tasty and proceeded to ruin dinner. It was a great use for the strawberries that we'd picked a couple of weeks ago and that i'd frozen. I might make more tomorrow.

Not quite a year

I hadn't realized exactly how long it had been since I'd done any blogging. I've missed recording almost a whole year of my little girl growing up. Some catching up is in order!

A-chan is still in Tae Kwon Do and loving it. She had three yellow stripes on her white belt and is looking forward to testing for yellow belt - as soon as she really does know the form which is getting better by leaps and bounds.

She is currently going around and making sure everyone that she meets knows that she is actually 4 and a half. The half being ever so important at this age.

At DragonCon last year she dressed up as a purple Jawa again as well as a pirate. AWA was a double costume project as she and a friend dressed up as Sugar and Pepper from Snow Fairy Sugar. Her 4th birthday party was a pirate party at Stone Mountain Park and was hilariously fun. She's since discovered Pump It Up b-day parties though and I'm terrified that she's going to ask for one of those this year.

Reading is her major passion at the moment (other than acting silly for attention) and she reads a book to everyone who will sit still long enough to let her. She recently read Green Eggs & Ham over the phone to her daddy, which was incredibly cute.