Our sweet girl is 5 years old!

Just over a week ago, on March 11, Miriam turned 5.  For some reason, as a parent, having a child turn 5 seems like a huge milestone; she's half a decade old!  She's old enough to start kindergarten.  I admit, I cried a little bit on her birthday.  She's such a joy and we are enjoying this age a lot, but gosh, I still wish I could slow down time.

At her doctor's appointment, we learned she continues to be tall (45", which puts her in the 91st percentile) and lean (39 pounds, which puts her in the 40th percentile).  I think it could be hard to find clothes to fit her, but she leans towards loving dresses and leggings, both of which are very flexible and stretchy.  She still wears some 3T leggings and dresses - she just calls them her "capri leggings" and "shirts that used to be dresses."  She loves to pick out her own clothes, often choosing bright colors, patterns and stripes.  She LOVES shoes and although she usually wants to wear the same pair 2 weeks in a row, she can't help eyeing new shoes every time we go to a store and saying "Oh, I love these!  They are so _______ (sparkly/warm/fuzzy/pretty, etc.)."  I think she got her love of shoes from her Aunt Katie, because neither Mario or I are particularly into shoes.

Personality wise, it is such a wonder to watch the girl she is becoming.  She's still got a fiery streak and sometimes can be stubborn, but most of the time she is loving, kind, empathetic, thoughtful, funny, and busy being a helper and caretaker to others.  She's extremely polite, well-behaved, and goes out of her way to make her family and friends feel special and loved.  Whenever Mathias is crying, she's the first to run up to him and give him a hug and make him feel better.  If one of her classmates is upset or hurt, she tells me she sits by them and gives them hugs to make them feel better.  One of her classmates got extremely sick and ended up in the hospital, and she came home and announced she wanted to make him a "feel better soon" picture.  She loves to do art and draw pictures, and is constantly handing out pictures to her friends or putting surprise pictures under our pillows.  She has a friend with a food allergy at school and whenever it is Miriam's turn to take snack, she always double checks that we have something her friend can eat as well.  It makes us so proud that she is such a thoughtful and caring little girl.  She's still a bit timid and shy in new situations and around new people, but has grown a lot and will now ask for her meal at restaurants, talk to the parents of her friends, and even initiate conversation with kids in our neighborhood who are already playing outside together.  She's a great helper at home and is always asking what "jobs" we have for her to do; she loves to set the table for dinner, help me with laundry, help me bake cookies and muffins, and get mail from the mailbox.

It is so fun to observe Miriam's mind at work and where her interests are these days.  She's still taking violin lessons once a week; I wouldn't say she loves it, but she does enjoy playing and especially enjoys listening to her violin teacher play while Miriam either draws (in response to the music) or dances.  Miriam LOVES art and anything to do with drawing or any type of art project.  Our house is filled with tubs and drawers and desks full of paper, stickers, markers, glue, beads, crayons, paint, etc. that she's always wanting to use.  She draws or colors something on a daily basis, and we also try to do a more involved art project at least once a week.  She's just started getting comfortable using scissors and now all of her "drawings" also involve pictures that are cut out (and many, many little pieces of cut paper falling on the floor!).

In addition to art, she loves to build and create things.  She is always building towers and houses and castles with wooden blocks, magna tiles, and even large legos.  Her room is constantly in a state of chaos because she gets so many toys out to play with at the same time - she uses blocks to build a tower for her Paw Patrol pups, then brings the ponies along as their friends, then gets out "brain flakes" (plastic building discs) to use as their food, then gets her plates and bowls for them to eat from, then gets out beads to build them jewelry and decorate them....and it goes on and on.  We do a deep clean of her room about once a week and put everything away, but if we give her 30 minutes to play, it goes back to looking almost exactly the same.  The mess is hard to handle, but at the same time we love that she's so imaginative and playful!

Speaking of playful, she has also recently become very interested in playing both board and card games.  Her current favorites are UNO, Sequence for Kids, and Sushi Go.  It is fun to see her so interested in games, as Mario and I both enjoy playing games.  That's definitely something we hope we can continue doing with her (and Mathias) as they both get older!  In addition to playing indoor games, she really loves to spend time outside.  She likes to ride her bike and her scooter, run around and play chase, dig in the dirt, help me weed the garden (although she tires of that rather quickly), and play basketball and soccer.  We are looking forward to spending more and more time outside as the rain slowly subsides and the weather starts to get nicer.

Here are some pictures of Miriam from her 5th birthday, as well as a few random pictures from recent weeks:

Nutella crepes for birthday breakfast!

She picked out a special birthday outfit to wear on her birthday!

Playing with pizza dough at the restaurant while waiting for birthday pizza!

Marble run!

Miriam (up top) at her Easter program last week

February, and little memories

Happy almost March!  We've had quite a busy February (including the 2 weeks where our whole family was extremely sick and a week of Mario traveling), so all of a sudden it is almost March and I haven't done a blog post in over a month.  

Things are good here.  Miriam celebrated Valentine's Day with her class; we made homemade heart crayon valentines for her class, and she loved picking each one out individually for her friends.  (She was much less enthusiastic about writing her name and addressing 21 Valentines, so we had to spread that out over several days.)  Miriam's preschool is wonderful and they always invite siblings to their class celebrations; Mathias really loves to participate and walks right up to the kids and joins in whatever they are doing.  We are contemplating finding some type of preschool for him next year, but we aren't going to make any decisions about that until the end of summer.  Speaking of school for next year, we spent two weeks touring local elementary schools and ranking our school choices for Miriam for next year.  We were both really impressed with the Japanese immersion school that's about 2.5 miles from our house, so when applications open next week we'll be putting that down as our first choice and really hoping she gets a spot!  The school really focuses on teaching Japanese culture and customs as well as language, and we are excited about the opportunity to possibly send her there.  She was with us on the school tour and seemed to like it, although she did turn to me in one of the Japanese classrooms and say (with quite a concerned expression on her face) "Mom, I can't understand anything she's saying!"  

The weather has been starting to turn nice here and we've been taking full advantage of it, frequently stopping by the park after picking Miriam up from preschool and then playing outside again after naptime.  Mathias loves to zoom around the sidewalks on his little tricycle while Miriam chases him or rides her bike along with him.  We've also started on our outside projects for the year; we are putting in raised garden beds in our backyard, putting in some new flowers in the front, installing a playset in the backyard and I'm also hoping we can put up some window boxes and put down some patio paving stones.  We've got a lot of great outdoor space and I'm looking forward to enjoying it this spring and summer for the first time!  

The kids are at such fun ages right now; we are having a lot of fun during our time together at home.  They both love to dance, do art projects, play outside, help me bake in the kitchen and make huge messes around the house.  Mathias is talking up a storm these days, constantly repeating anything we say and learning new words all the time.  He's got an adorable little grin and a funny giggle that we get to see all the time, and we try to soak up as much as we can.  Miriam is sounding so grown up these days, walking around the house singing to herself and saying things like "I don't quite understand what you mean" and "Can you please repeat that?"  

Here are a couple of little memories that I want to remember, since they are growing and changing so quickly:

-Shortly after we bought our car in December, the Toyota dealership called to say our car rack was in stock and we should pick it up.  Mario was getting ready in the morning and Mathias had his phone.  Apparently Mathias answered the phone and talked to the service person from Toyota (Mario heard Mathias saying "hello Daddy?  hello Daddy?" but thought he was pretending) for about 2 minutes before Mario discovered he was actually on the phone.  

-When Miriam concentrates hard on something (like coloring or cutting), she sticks her tongue out the side of her mouth and wiggles it around the whole time she's concentrating.  Pretty cute!

-When Mathias wants to call out to someone and is trying to make his voice louder, he sticks his whole hand over his mouth (like he's giving his mouth a high five); he's seen us use our hands as megaphones and is trying to copy us, but he hasn't quite got it figured out yet.  

-Often times when we go into Miriam's room at night, she's fallen asleep with books in her arms.

-Mathias will shake his head "no" at the same time he's saying something (to indicate he doesn't want to do that thing), so shaking his head + saying "like" = he doesn't like something. Or if he shakes his head while saying "eat", it means he doesn't want to eat.  It can be tricky if I'm not looking at him to figure out what he wants, because sometimes he says exactly what he wants, and sometimes he uses his head movement and his words to indicate what he wants.  

-Miriam's incorrect lyrics to songs always make me laugh, and when I try to correct her, she always insists her lyrics are right.  A sampling:

*She sings "Spaghetti looks a lot like Christmas" instead of "Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas"

*She sings "I like a gumball drop it" instead of "I like to move it"

*She sings "Come great a giant pile of leans" instead of "Come rake a giant pile of leaves"

In short, they are both adorable kids and we are so blessed to get to enjoy their little, funny personalities every day.  Between all of us being so sick and Mario being gone, we don't have a ton of recent pictures.  But some are better than none, so here they are:

Valentine's Day Cuties!

Mathias with his favorite stuffed animal, a bunny he calls "YaYa"

An example of the mess they can make! 

Playing "bump beds" on Mathias' changing table 

Happy New Year! (and quick kid updates)

Mario and I frequently turn to each other after looking at the calendar and say "Do you remember time going this quickly when you were a kid?" and invariably, our answer is always "no."  We seem to remember time moving quite slowly when we were children, and yet, as adults, time seems to fly.  Here we are, closer to the end of January than the beginning, and I'm just starting to think of it as "the new year."

We've been busy getting back into our normal schedule and finding new indoor activities to do now that the never-ending rain has arrived.  There are a couple of gymnastics gyms that hold "open gym" hours for kids 5 and under, so we've been exploring those.  Mathias particularly loves making obstacle courses out of all the gym mats and running on those.  We've also been spending more time at the library, at story time at a local bookstore, and a cool little place called "old school" that has a lot of arts and crafts and toys for younger kids.  Mathias is my little buddy and happily tags along with me whenever Miriam is at preschool, whether we are running errands or going somewhere to play, just the two of us.

Speaking of Mathias, we can now proudly say he is pacifier free!  He'd been getting it for naptime and bedtime (and other times inbetween, if he was particularly fussy or we were going to be in the car), and he was growing a bit too attached.  So this past weekend we went to the store and he "bought" two new stuffed animals ("friends") with his pacifier.  He handed it over to the clerk without a word of complaint, and we both think the weekend went much more smoothly than we anticipated!  He asks about it sometimes, but more in a teasing, funny way, rather than the sad, forlorn way that we were dreading.  This is a big year for him; getting rid of the pacifier, potty training (which we are working on currently, and he's doing pretty well!), and eventually, moving into a "big boy" bed.  We are very surprised he hasn't yet climbed out of his crib (we are sure he could if he tried), but we are taking advantage of him staying in his crib and leaving him in there as long as we can!  He is so smart and learning so much every day.  Without us realizing, he's been picking up letters of the alphabet as we talk about them, and he can point to and identify about 10 letters.  He can spell his name (well, he spells "Boo", which we call him about 50% of the time), almost count to 10, and can make more of a mess in 10 minutes than I care to clean up.  He's a happy guy most of the time, and he loves to build things, read books, and do anything that Miriam does.

Miriam is turning 5 in a few months, which we still can't believe, and she's seeming older and older every day.  She still loves imaginative play and uses all of her toys to create great stories about stuffed animals going on trips or ponies building a tower, complete with food.  She knows all of her letters and numbers and knows most of her letter sounds; she's shown a bit of an interest in reading and spelling so we are working on that a bit at home.  She seems really comfortable at preschool now and has branched out to playing with some new kids in her class.  She really loves to do art projects and coloring, and has started asking for chores to do every day.  She still takes violin lessons and seems to be picking up a lot of the mechanics.  She also wants to play soccer, but we are going to wait until the rain lets up a little bit before signing her up for anything outdoors.  She's a great older sister and has loved helping Mathias with his potty training.  When they are getting along, they play so nicely together...I love seeing it.  This morning I had a really bad headache, and so they played "going on a trip" together nicely for about 1.5 hours...they packed up their bags, packed up snacks, packed up toys, put out chairs on the airplane, and then rearranged the living room to be a "hotel" that they stayed at on the trip, complete with pillows and blankets all over the floors.  It was pretty cute to listen to, and I think Miriam likes that Mathias listens to her and follows her directions about what to pack and where to sit!

Things with me and Mario are good.  Mario's been busy with his "year end" financial things that always happen at the beginning of January.  I've been starting to do some school research so we can decide where to send Miriam for kindergarten next year.  The application process opens in March so we'll need to start making some decisions soon!  I also joined a recreational volleyball league that started last week.  I haven't played in about 5 years and definitely feel rusty, but it has been a lot of fun to get out there and play again!  I don't know enough people in Eugene who play volleyball so I got assigned to a team, but that hasn't been too bad...everyone seems very nice!

Here are some pictures from recent weeks, including the trip we took to the Willamette Pass Ski resort to play in the snow:

Snow at the mountains! 

A dusting of snow in our backyard...

Cutie pie, helping his Mama vacuum! 

They get to lick beaters/spatulas after they help me bake.  :) 

Miri playing violin

"Going on a trip" this morning