The Present / Kid Rundown

Daisy and Cecil got bikes this year. Cecil had outgrown his Spiderman bike (if not physically, then in his maturity). Daisy was also due for a more age-appropriate bike. Her pink "Misty" was looking a little juvenile. Granted, she is still getting used to the idea of only using hand-brakes, but she's already looking great at it! I have to say, she is really seeming older these days. Middle school is right around the corner, which is frightening, but she is just really easy to talk to, is very smart, has a great sense of humor, and I think becoming the oldest of 4 has given her a little more sense of leadership. She just has to watch the power trips (I don't know where she'd get that from! ;) I just read her application to a middle school (you have to apply to some of them because they're special programs) and it said that she wants to go there because she wants to go to Stanford. I love it! Shoot high!

Cecil has been writing sentences as his holiday project (see December 22 post), and it has been a bit of a challenge. I don't know if it's a sign of his priorities, or just his age, but we've had to continually have him rewrite some because his instinct is to constantly talk about himself and his things. "I have a bike. I have legos. I have a skateboard ramp." We've tried telling him to write about others and to try to write sentences that don't start with I. They go something like "James is cool. Mickey got a Wii." OK, so he's getting a bit frustrated with the process, but the new rule is that they have to be at least 5 words long, and that he needs to either be creative (e.g., There was a frog who loved to dance.) or about other people and why he likes them (not because of what they have). One cute one was "Curtis has a fun laugh." Granted, it barely met the minimum requirements, but I did love that he wrote something sweet and thoughtful about his 4-yr old cousin.

Cecianna got a whiteboard and a shoe rack with a couple of pairs of shoes. Here she is displaying all of her shoes (it seemed like she had more when I bought it, but apparently it was time for her to weed out some ill-fitting pairs). How many pairs of shoes does a kid need anyway? She will be having a sleepover tonight to get her hair done by her aunt. Apparently, it is an 8-hour process over two days so she is in for a long haul. The payoff is that I guess it will last like 3 months, which is awesome for both she and I! I'll post pics from when she gets back tomorrow. And can I just tell you that it seems like she gets more mature-looking every day! I feel like she's grown a foot and looks like a pre-teen overnight!

Clara got a "Danny Tanner Kit". For those of you who have no idea what this means, he was a character on the show "Full House" in the late eighties / early nineties who was clean / organization-crazy. This is who Clara has become. She got drawer separaters (which she LOVES), some Full House DVDs, some Clorox wipes, a couple of other misc. items, but most importantly, a label maker. Without a doubt, she thinks the label maker is her favorite gift. However, she's not going crazy with it, because she's conserving the tape ribbon. Who would have thought Clara, the crazy, haphazard, uninhibited one, would be so neat! I did have to tell her yesterday that cleaning her desk with the wipes 3 times was too many. It's OK to be neat and organized, but we're not turning into germaphobes here.