Sweetie, the Soccer Star

Hallelujah, we're finally done with fall sports. I want to reclaim my Saturdays. I want to go to boot camp aerobics class at the gym. I want to stop carrying around in my purse a gallon of water for each child and 3 fruit snacks/fruit roll-ups per sports game for H.

Sweetie ended the season with a bang, scoring 3 of her team's goals today and saving double that on defense. Sweetie is actually very fun to watch. She's persistent, fast, determined, and all over the field. She also hates to loose, and, poor girl, she had to learn to accept loss this season, given the fact that her team was lousy.

Mister is equally glad that soccer is over because he is tired of entertaining H by playing in the dirt, running up and down the sides of the field, and looking for ants and other bugs. (Note, Mister's blue hair is from his football tournament.)

I'm thankful Sweetie played soccer this fall because it gave me a chance to focus on her strengths, to praise her for never giving up, even when her team was loosing badly, and for doing her best.

Sweetie Loses a Tooth

When I returned from Massachusetts (another post for another day), I had a few notes waiting for me from Sweetie. As you can see in the drawings, Sweetie has finally lost her first tooth. The day before I left, she told me she had a loose tooth. "Whatever," I said (because Sweetie has been claiming a loose tooth for over a year now--"I'm sure it wiggles!") But I felt it anyway, and, to my amazement, it really was loose. She was determined to have Mr. C, the principal at school pull it for her (probably because then she could bask in the extra fame and glory all day long). So she worked at it a few days, and Mr. C pulled it before I got back from the East Coast.

Here's our now one-tooth-less Sweetie:

Catching up: Sweetie's birthday

I'm forever playing catch-up with my blog. And sometimes with my life. Oh well, here's a quick report on Sweetie's sixth birthday. We spent most of the day in the car, coming back from California, but we still managed to go around and collect her birthday freebies ( 3 meals, including her favorite ribs; 1 sub sandwich, and a dozen donuts). We also opened birthday presents that night. The next weekend we had her cake and ice cream and games when her cousins could come celebrate. At the last minute, I decided to make her a Tangled tower on her cake and it was only moderately successful. :) We played Sweetie Jeopardy and guessed at the facts of her birth day, how old she was in certain pics, and her favorites. How grateful we are for Sweetie. We love her laugh, her wit, her imagination, and her offers of help.

Sweetie sings!

One constant in Sweetie's life is music. She's quite gifted on the piano and has no fear of singing in front of people. She sang a solo in church last Sunday. Here she is doing some practicing:

[oops, can't get the video to work--maybe later]

And she sang in the kindergarten musical last month, which I didn't get around to blogging about, given all of the spring break festivities. So here she is in the kindergarten production of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. We had many tears over the fact that she did not get chosen to be Goldilocks and would not get to skip down the center isle or pretend to sit in the booby-trapped chair before falling in. In fact, the morning of the musical, she refused to go sing because she wasn't Goldilocks. So I bribed her with lipstick-wearing privileges. Worked like a charm.

After the performance, we were headed to frozen yogurt, but H was screaming, Mister and Sweetie were fighting, and J was gone on a trip, so I flipped a fast u-turn and we went home. We did go for ice cream the next night when we all had our tempers in check and our wits about us (and our jammies about us--no harm in going places in your jammies. I'm a fan of the practice). Plus, little H needed to be introduced to the goodness of Cold Stone (until you add gummy bears to it, which is what all 3 of the kids did. Puh-lease. Way to ruin a good sweet cream).

Mother/daughter date

Last Saturday, Sweetie and I went on our long-anticipated mother/daughter date to the Nutcracker. We had such a good time. We were sitting really close, close enough that Sweetie got scared by Herr Drosselmeyer's magic (which came in the form of fireworks) and by the battle with the mice, who used canons (again, the fireworks). She sat on my lap for half of the performance and kept whispering that one day, she wants to be Clara, and that, didn't I think she was good enough of a dancer to be a flower bud or a fairy, but she just needed to get older?

oh, and I cut my hair. Some days I love it, some days I hate it. Here's another pic:

Sweetie plays soccer

And who knew she would be so fierce? Actually, I should have known, since I play games with her at family game night every Sunday and am well-acquainted with my do-anything-to-win and sad-face-when-losing Sweetie. Still, I didn't anticipate this level of fierceness. She averages 2 goals a game, and the child sacrifices her body for the ball. At this game below, she hit the goal post three times, each time from diving in front of the ball to save a goal. All I can say is that if we play soccer for family game night, I want Sweetie on my team.

Getting a hug from a teammate after scoring a goal:

Spectators: Mister catching the footballs J throws down the sidelines and H, looking for dogs in the crowd and other people's food and drinks to confiscate.

Is that a dinosaur cleaning the play room?

Nope, just Sweetie. Apparently she works better incognito.

Here she is writing to her missionary cousin. Maybe the words flow better when you wear a mask? I'll look into that theory the next time I have writer's block.

Sweetie, the Graduate and Dance Diva

Last week, Sweetie graduated from preschool. She got an "award" on her diploma for being a gifted reader. I look at the pictures and wonder how she got that old. She'll miss her teacher and her preschool friends.

She also had her year-end dance recital, which she was SO excited for. Here's the beginning and end of the dance, which is really the only time when the dancers were remotely together. But they were having fun, which is all that really counts. :)

Luckily, J's parents were in town visiting and were gracious enough to come to (i.e., suffer/sit through) both events.

Regrets

Why did I think a play make-up kit was a good idea for a birthday present for a 5-year-old? Why did I not foresee the clown faces, the tattoos (apparently a play make-up kit these days is not complete without them), and the clawed nails (which do NOT stay on 5-year-old fingers, thereby resulting in random choking hazards for little H, many tears for Sweetie, and countless pleadings for me to HURRY and STOP whatever I'm doing to reattach the nail). As I reattached Sweetie's nails for the first time, I vividly remembered, suddenly, doing this same thing when I was a girl and the trauma of the nails that won't stay on.

1. Open windows and breezes--spring weather coming back again! 2. A quiet house, 3. the 6 Milk Duds left in the box

Sweetie, Inducer of Parental Humility

Sweetie: "Mom, do you have another baby in your tummy?"
Me: "Um, no."

Sweetie: "Well, it sure looks like it."

Sweetie, holding up a "spring green" crayon: "Mom, what color do you think this is?"

Me: "green yellow? yellow green?"

Sweetie: "No, it's spring green. Did they not have that color when you were a little girl?"

So, apparently I am old and fat?

By the foot

Sweetie: "Mom, this isn't Fruit by the Foot. It doesn't even reach my foot!"