Lydia's update

Oh LuLu. My big sassy girl. Four and a half is proving to be challenging for Miss Lydia. Sometimes she thinks she is so big and sometimes she wants to be so little. And sometimes those wants clash and she can't figure out what she wants and it ends up in a big old melt-down. We've had some whoppers lately. But, overall she is such a beautiful child inside and out. We had our first parent-teacher conference for her in October. Easy peasy. I had no idea that 20 mins really WAS long enough for a parent-teacher conference. LOL! Who knew!! I always had to schedule two back to back for Jake! ;-) Her teacher thinks she does just wonderful and we have no concerns about her at school either. She is very young for her class though and I can see that as her best friend in the class is the other girl who is also very young for the class. But, academically and socially she does well. Next year we will homeschool her as well as Jake. She and I will embark on the Kindergarten curriculum together. Since she is so young for kindergarten we will just take it at her pace. If she can go through it at a usual pace, fine. If she needs to take it slower b/c she isn't ready for the intensity of the work then fine. I have no worries about her being ready to learn the academics but I just wonder if she'll be ready to take on that much learning in one day. We may have to divide each day's lessons into 2 days. That is okay b/c if we were to put her into school we would have waited another year and started her at six.

Lydia's big interests are dance and gymnastics as far as classes go and drawing/coloring and pretend play at home. She and Jake are always pretending something elaborate together and do not want to be interrupted. Sometimes this is interrupted by the two of them aruging over something but for the most part they play very well together. She can sit and color and draw on plain paper for hours. She is not a big fan of coloring sheets. She wants to come up with her own creations which is more of what I have encouraged anyway. We had to recently institute a system of keeping her beautiful masterpieces from getting all over the house. When she finishes a masterpiece she puts it in the basket on the steps. Then at the end of the day she empties the basket to the box under her bed. When that box is full she is to go through it and may keep 5-10 of her favorites. I am starting to wonder if trees scowl at sweet Lydia when she walks by them but we will devise a plan for recycling her art, I promise Mr. Tree.

Lydia recently recovered from what we believe was probably H1N1 flu. She had received the H1N1 flumist vaccine 12 days prior to coming down with it but that was her first and it was not time for her second. So, I think she got a milder version than a lot of kids. She did, however, have fever for 4 days up to 103 (on motrin), cough, congestion, body aches. Jake had had his first vaccine also and was 15 days post vaccine by the time he got sick but all he got was a mild cold. Perhaps he was old enough that he had a better immune response to the one vaccine??

Lydia is just the light of our lives just like her brother. Such a sweet girl and we are so lucky to have her in our family.