My baby turned 7!

Gretchen has been through a lot in the last few years with occupational therapy and the such.  A few therapists have told me that sometimes it's a maturity thing that resolves itself around age seven.  I am hoping for my little bunny's sake that SEVEN is her year.  We gave her a scooter for her birthday back in March so she could practice riding and she has gotten really good on it.  Maybe seven is the luckiest number!

Summer Camp

This year Gretchen is doing a YMCA camp.  We wanted to try something where she would be swimming a lot, trying new things (like boating, archery, etc) so we sent her to a camp that some friends recommended.  She was nervous about it and excited.  She worried that she wouldn't have any friends there (which in truth she doesn't have any existing friends there but she's making new ones).  Like most camps, they have a theme every day and so she feels involved, I am making extra effort to have stuff for the theme.  So far she has done archery and a lot of swimming!

Happiness is a Warm Pool

June hasn't proved to be hot quite yet but the pool we had at our hotel in St Louis was warm.  We gave the kids a choice of going back to Six Flags or stay in the pool.  The pool won hands down... Hee

This is a Roller Coaster Summer

Gretchen has moved up in the world - she can now ride a lot more interesting rides including the Viper and the American Eagle at Six Flags.  As season pass holders at Six Flags we decided to maximize our passes and visit Six Flags St Louis.  Gretchen could ride every roller coaster but two of them.  It was very hot the day we went but so we hit a few water rides as well.  The only bad thing about St Louis was there was no Whizzer type roller coaster that under 40" set could ride.  Evan had to stick to the baby rides and other smaller rides.  He wasn't thrilled about it but we did our best to find things for him to do.  Sean could also ride a bunch of things so two out of three kids were pretty happy!

American Thunder at Six Flags St Louis

My pet shark

We took the kids to the Indianapolis Zoo and to the Indianapolis Children's Museum for spring break.  We are kind of spoiled by Brookfield Zoo so it was hard to love the Indy Zoo but there were a few things that kind of wowed us.  The boys loved the roller coaster but Gretchen really got into their shark exhibit where kids could actually touch the sharks in this giant pool.  We went to the exhibit twice since it was her favorite.  All of us got a chance to touch the sharks!  Their desert exhibit was pretty cool too.  It is in a giant biodome so the whole thing is about 80 degrees in there and dry.  Of course, after walking all day at the zoo and the next day at the museum, the kids still wanted to go swimming in the hotel pool.  The water was kind of cold so Gretchen kept asking to go to the hot tub.  I let Steve go with her most of the time because those things make my legs feel rubbery and woozy.  She did not seem to be affected though!  It was a good trip overall.  We plan on going to Six Flags in St. Louis this summer so now Gretchen wants to know how long until that trip and will our hotel be as good as the suite we got this time and are we going to swim there and what else are we going to do in St. Louis and on and on and on.......

Happy New Year!

Gretchen wanted to stay up for New Year's eve this year so we decided to let her try.  We did a celebration around 6pm with the boys with streamers, hats and noise makers.  After the boys were in bed, we watched Annie Get Your Gun since Gretchen has been singing "Anything you can do I can do better" for a few weeks now.  Surprisingly, she really liked it but we had to explain a lot of the context to her since it was almost foreign to her that a woman was not "allowed" to do some stuff.  After the movie, we watched some standard NYE shows and my girl promptly fell asleep.  She made it to roughly 10:30ish.  Pretty good really.  She kept asking us what else we were going to do and she was very disappointed to know that this was it!  Television and then bed...

Santa For Real!

Every year we visit Santa at the Lions Pancake breakfast.  They have the same Santa every year and he has his own white beard.  Last night at kids daycare/after-school place, they had a Santa there.  Apparently Gretchen told Steve that Santa was a fake!  Ha!  Makes me wonder when will she start to question it... She already told me the other day that some kids think Santa isn't real!  Which she followed up, "Can you believe that?".  

Thanksgiving Break

Dinosaur Bone

Our school district gives the entire week of Thanksgiving off because they have report card conferences instead so we had the week off mostly (I had to work Monday).  While I am not ready to discuss report cards, I can say we had a really busy week.  We hit the Kohl's Children's Museum, The Field Museum, Ringling Bros Circus, IKEA, Woodfield Mall and the Jelly Belly Factory.  We also had 16 people total at our house for Thanksgiving and spent Sunday getting our Christmas decorations up.  Whew!  They have two weeks off at Christmas so I don't know how we will top last week.  Gretchen wants to go to the Art Institute again so we may make a trip after New Year's.  I personally like to see the Christmas trees at MSI but we went the last two years so I could wait a year.  However, they are doing a Dr. Seuss exhibit so there is something to see!  Gretchen has been asking me if we can make a gift for Santa.   When I ask her what he needs or what we should give him but she does not know......  She knows she wants three things for Christmas though and that we should at the very least give Santa one thing!

Halloween 2011

Gretchen opted to go as the bride of Frankenstein this year (the boys went as Matt Forte).  She wore my Frankenstein wig (it fit her head mostly).  A friend from work lent us a wedding dress.  Gretchen was quite pleased with her look.  If you know me at all, you know I'm not a fan of hootchie mama costumes so I too was quite pleased with the costume.  May I be so fortunate every year!











That's her pumpkin next to her.  Steve painstakingly helped her carve it herself!

I think 6 is a rough age...

Gretchen is still struggling with writing.  Truthfully we did not push her too hard over the summer like we could have.  Part of me I guess hoped that a new school, more visits with the OT and a full day at a desk would help Gretchen.  Turns out she still needs extra help.  My little girl as so many ideas in her head but not enough something to get them on paper.  I have been told sometimes it just clicks in a kid around 2nd grade and they start to really blossom.  I hope that for Gretchen because I don't want anyone to tell her she is not smart and as good as the other students just because she has a  hard time writing.  Sigh.....

Talk Much?

Gretchen got a note home from school yesterday indicating she talked so much at school that the teacher asked us to talk to her about it.  Oh boy.... I was a talker too so I'm sure she got that from me.  The day before, at the first girl scout meeting of the year, she showcased this attribute for me and her troop leader by cutting her off and talking over the other girls.  Sigh.... what do you do with a talkative child?  Steve gently got her to be quiet for five minutes.  He handled it much better than I did... It's times like these when I wish my mom were alive so I could hear how she handled me!

Kihei!!!!

She finally got her gi!

We did our best to keep the kids busy this summer.   I tried very hard to get Gretchen to take dance again but she refused.  While she liked doing the show, it was not enough to motivate her to do it again.  It turns out she's not like a lot of little girls we met in dance who love the spotlight.  She liked the make up and the outfit but just not enough to go to dance every week.....  I told her she had to do something so she decided she wanted to try karate.  After a lackluster round with soccer last summer, I was hesitant to throw a lot of money into karate stuff.  I resisted all summer to buy her a gi (the white karate/martial arts uniform) until I was sure she really wanted to keep going.  So she finally got a gi for the fall session of karate.  I am impressed with the instructors at ISKC especially Sensei Martel who is teaching Gretchen's class.  They seem to have a good approach at teaching children and from what I understand adults as well.  Gretchen's OT thinks it 's good for her too so I am hoping she keeps it up.