So what's our favorite four-and-a-half year old like these days?
Well, she goes to Montessori 5 days a week and has convinced me to let her stay until 3:00 with her little buddies three days a week. This means on those days she skips her nap in favor of playing with her pals at school. On Monday evenings we've started taking Spanish class at the community center. She is a confident, very outspoken student willing to participate at all times...even when it's some one else's turn.
Tuesday Alia comes home from Montessori for lunch and a nap, and then we go to swim lessons. She swims the entire distance of the pool on her own and now is learning to backstroke. While swim lessons were slow to take off for her, just as I was about to throw in the towel (lessons aren't cheap, and to be honest, the complaining was driving me nuts!) Alia began loving it. And her coach, Kyle.
Thursday is Alia's other short day at school, again so she can take a nap before going on to her gymnastics class. Alia is thriving in gymnastics. She is so excited to learn all the neat things her little body can do. She's obsessed with cartwheels, and to be honest, she's really improving. Now if we could just get those little legs to straighten out we'd be there. But for now, the mechanics of the cartwheel are definitely improving. And dive rolls. And straddle rolls. And the trampoline. And the beam. This girl loves gymnastics.
Alia is learning to read and write. Her letters have evolved into uniform size. Gone are the serial-killer big and small letters mixed together with half of them backwards and looping down the right side of the paper. She loves to sound out words and write down the sounds she hears. She keeps her Hello Kitty notebook handy and loves to sit at her little table and practice. She is also becoming a good little colorer. When she focuses, she can stay in the lines.
Alia is also a happy little singer. She loves music class at school and keeps a decent tune! She is also learning the words to songs by listening. I'm shocked sometimes when a song comes on in the car and she sings along with every word correct.
Alia enjoys being the teachers' right hand girl at school. She still struggles socially in that she'd rather be with the adults than kids, and when she does play with kids her age, it's likely she will boss everyone around until they don't want to play anymore. But even that is improving. She has real friends now and plays well when it suits her. However, Alia is still our strong willed child and can make whatever she chooses a miserable experience.
Take this morning for example. From the get go, she was a miserable little grump. No, I wanted this kind of jelly on my toast, no, I didn't want raspberries, I wanted blueberries. I have, indeed, created a monster with over-attending to her every whim in her earlier years. Now it's my job to reel it back in and re-direct her brightness and energy and enthusiasm to good versus evil. Because when she's having a particularly evil day, it's enough to drive me insane. Not only can she be an entitlement minded little prima donna, but she can be downright mean to her sister. She's bright enough to lure her in, and then rejects her, or changes the rules, or does something that absolutely devastates Amelie. Nothing breaks my heart faster than seeing these two little girls I love more than life itself sad or hurt. And Alia hurts Amelie's feelings a lot. It's as if Alia holds Amelie responsible for her existence and all Amelie wants is to be loved by her sister, her hero, her idol.
But hey, no one said this would be easy. There is so much good and promise in Alia. Her smile lights up the room. Her self-confidence is lovely. Now if we could just manage to get a little bit of self-control and self-awareness into the mix we'd be on our way. And in the meantime, I'm doing my best to enjoy the good, push through the not so good, and give her as much love as she needs.
