Tea Parties, Roly-Polies, and Hemangiomas

Well, I didn't wait quite as long to write this post as I did last time... Aubrey hasn't had her birthday yet! Unfortunately, her birthday is next week, so it's basically as bad. *sigh*

Anyway, no time for regrets or self-criticism; I have a cute girl to write about! Here she is:

So we weren't able to throw a birthday party for Aubrey in April because of Covid. We would have done it outside, but we worried the weather wouldn't cooperate. I mean, it has snowed on Aubrey's birthday twice since we moved here. So we decided to throw her an outdoor park party in May, when the weather was more predictable. It was a tea party, which I had started planning for her birthday party in 2020 but had to scrap because of everything shutting down. 

Anyway, it was a fairly windy day, which made it pretty frustrating trying to keep the tablecloths down. Even with a lot of tape, there was some definite billowing. But it still worked out. Here's the setup we had:

We started the party with a decorate-your-own-fan activity. The night before I cut semicircles from colorful cardstock and hot glued popsicle stick handles on the back, so they were all ready for the girls to decorate with stickers and sticky gems and such.

Then we had the actually tea party. The drinks were water, juice, and chocolate milk. The food was fruit, vegetables, and crackers with cheese. Then each girl got to decorate her own cupcake using her own frosting bag and an assortment of sprinkles.

Here's Aubrey with her cupcake!

And here's the group:

After all of the scheduled activities, we finished with some free play at the park. I think the girls all had fun. It was not fun for me and Daniel, however, when we got home to this mess:

While we cleaned up, Aubrey got to play with all of her new presents. Here she is coloring a DIY messenger bag she got:

Another present Aubrey got from a friend was a $20 bill, which she used to buy herself a betta fish and all the things he needed. She named him Luke (which got a little confusing when her youngest cousin was born a few months later and they named him Luke, too).

Anyway, school wrapped up just a couple of weeks after the party. Aubrey's 1st grade teacher, Mrs. Brown, did little superlatives for each kid in the class, and Aubrey's was very on point:

During the 2020–2021 school year, Aubrey took a tap and hip-hop class at a local dance academy. I posted about her winter tap recital in the previous post, but her spring hip-hop recital was in June (on Carter's birthday, actually). Here she is before the recital:

And here's the performance (she's wearing silver and starts out on the left side of the screen... the farthest left of all the silver wearers):

And here she is after:

Once the dance season was done, Aubrey switched to gymastics to see how she liked it. The place she went to was way cool! See?

Here she is swingin' and stuff:

And here she is doing the beam for the first time. You can see she's really nervous.

But then, after just a couple of times through, she was noticeably more confident.

In addition to doing gymnastics, Aubrey also spent a lot of the summer outside. She played at the "creek" nearby with some neighborhood friends and went through a phase of loving to catch roly-polies/potato bugs/pill bugs (whatever you want to call them), and one of the times I got this kind of icky photo:

Unfortunately, most of the good photos and videos I have from our summer adventures are in our family blog. But I did want to share these cute art pieces Aubrey made for Nana and Papa during summer break. This first one is a coloring page she painted and decided to give to them.

And then there's this, which she obviously made completely on her own. I just thought it was so sweet. 

Anyway, before we knew it, school was starting again. Second grade for Aubrey! Her teacher had all the kids make little "all about me" cards and put them up outside their classroom. This is Aubrey's:

I love the things she wrote (almost as much as I love the drawing in the upper right corner, hahaha).

We've been really grateful for Aubrey's good group of friends at school. They all write each other nice notes and make little presents for each other. I love it! Here's a cute note from one of Aubrey's cute friends:

And another:

Aubrey also did a lot of her own writing, as usual. One time she and Carter made a "Book of Dares."

 I'm not sure what the end goal was, but I was very entertained by their dares.

Then there was stuff Aubrey wrote for school. She brings so much home (and makes so much here) that I can't possibly keep everything. But here are some favorites from all of 2nd grade (not including the months of April and May though, because they haven't happened yet):

The beginning of this "book" just makes me laugh...

This is a picture Aubrey drew of herself in bed

Here's a kind of creepy story she wrote about a "vises" (vicious) beast:

And a more lighthearted story about Carter fighting fire with his guitar-playing skills:

She drew this one day to ask me to buy her and Carter cookies from Crumbl

This next one is a personal favorite. Each kid had a picture on the classroom wall with a description of what they considered the best part of themselves to be. A lot of the girls said their ears were the best because they were pierced with pretty earrings. A couple of kids, inluding Aubrey, selected their hearts. I just love what she wrote.

And here's what Aubrey's teacher. Mrs. Barden, wrote about her at Thanksgiving time:

She definitely knows Aubrey well!

Anyway, going back to the beginning of the school year, I decided to get Aubrey and Carter balance bikes for Christmas. I found some cheap used ones and bought them early, with the plan of hiding them until Christmas. But then it occurred to me that that made no sense because of what the weather would be like then, so we gave the bikes as early Christmas presents... in September.

Aubrey, who had had a very difficult time trying to coast on her regular bike, and who had been super freaked out about the idea of trying to pedal, glided on her bike with ease for about five minutes...

And then, just like that, she asked to try her real bike. Apparently gliding and practicing how it felt to balance on two wheels for a few minutes was all she needed, because...

Then I got this awesome video of her, only to discover that it somehow got done in slow-motion. Neither Daniel nor I could figure out how to fix it (the audio couldn't be sped up to match the sped-up video), so you get to enjoy me sounding like Jabba the Hutt (the laugh is particularly on point).

After these videos, she was riding her bike like she'd been doing it for years. And for the next couple of weeks, she rode it every day after school. She only stopped when it got too cold.

Anyway, all was going well for Aubrey in 2nd grade. There was just one little bump in the road... er, rib cage:

One day Aubrey came to me saying she had a painful bump on her side (just to the side and down a bit from her nipple, a bit below the armpit). When I looked at it, I saw that it was a good-sized lump with a blueish tint to it. We took her in to the pediatrician, and they scheduled her for an ultrasound. After the ultrasound, their best guess was that it was either a cyst or a lymphatic malformation. They referred us to a surgeon, who said it was probably a benign cyst but that we should remove it because it would only get bigger and would be particularly bothersome once Aubrey started wearing a bra.

So we scheduled surgery for Friday, November 5th, at an unholy "morning" hour that required me to wake Aubrey up before 5:00. Aubrey was a bit nervous, but she was comforted knowing that she would be asleep the whole time. And the hospital we went to was awesome. They had a whole pediatric surgery place, so they were great at making everything less scary and more kid-friendly. They even had a dog come and visit Aubrey (after asking if she would like that)! Then the woman who brought the dog described the whole process to Aubrey so she would know what to expect. She even helped Aubrey "paint" the inside of her surgical mask with the scent of her choice to help cover up the "stinky feet" smell of the anesthesia.

Then the anesthesiologist came in and told Aubrey all about how she would be put to sleep. She answered all of Aubrey's questions and was just really comforting. Seriously, everyone we dealt with was awesome! Nothing felt rushed, which really helped.

I got to accompany Aubrey all the way into the operating room, which we both appreciated.

I even got to hold her hand while she fell asleep. She was definitely nervous and squeezed my hand (and Teetagee) pretty tightly. It was funny to watch her drift off.

Anyway, the surgery was pretty quick, all things considered, and the surgeon came and told me that it was a hemangioma, which is a collection of blood vessels that have gotten all tangled up in each other and formed a tumor. He assured me they're almost always benign (which it ended up being, thankfully), and then he said I could go see her. 

I expected her to be asleep still (and I was looking forward to watching her wake up and seeing if she was confused), but she was completely awake by the time I got there. She was in some pain, but it wasn't awful. And she was a little nauseated, so she got a popsicle and some crackers, I believe. 

When they said we could go, we headed out and went to meet Nana, Papa, Daddy, and Clara for brunch at Snooze (poor Carter missed out because of being at school). Then we went home and let her rest. The recovery went well, and they gave us the thumbs up at her checkup appointment a couple of weeks later. The whole process was really not a big deal! Aubrey has a bit of a scar there now, but she doesn't really think of it anymore.

SO. That was probably the biggest thing to happen to Aubrey during this time period. But a lot of other stuff happened, too.

She lost three teeth (only three!), including one of her front teeth. I just had to get the classic toothless shot:

She's rocking the look!

She also started preparing for baptism by reading the Book of Mormon (as I mentioned previously) and by bearing her testimony in Sacrament meeting a few times. I couldn't believe that she wanted to do it, but it was her idea. I mean, this is the girl who refused to even go up on the stand for the Primary program with dozens of other kids singing. But she really wanted to bear her testimony. And she did! She actually wrote it down ahead of time.

She also wrote this one day, though I don't think it was for anything specific:

She also gave this talk in Primary, which she wrote all by herself:

And when Carter was asked to give a talk in Primary, she helped him. He utterly refused to let me write something with/for him or anything beforehand. He just kept saying he wasn't going to do it. But Aubrey said she'd help him, and when the time came he let her. It was awhile ago, and the details of how it all went down are very, very fuzzy. But I love this picture of her whispering to him what to say:

Aubrey actually did a lot of cute things for Carter over the last few months. She wrote this cute message in her math book (It says, "I love Carter my brother."):

She also made a plan to decorate his birthday cake for him, though she bowed out when I reminded her that we let them decorate their own cakes. Here's the plan she had though (note the lime peels on top... no idea where that came from):

And she wrote some cute notes to him, like this one:

I, however, got notes like this one, which Aubrey scribbled in my crossword puzzle book after I told her it would be too difficult for her to do one herself:

And, for the record, I always give snuggles. It's, like, my thing. Moving on...

The last thing I'll say before sharing a few funny quotes/conversations is that Aubrey got put on an Advanced Learning Plan this year for reading and math. She's well above her grade level in both subjects (particularly reading), and I was so glad her teachers noticed and worked to find ways to challenge her. In addition to reading a whole lot and finishing large chapter books within a few days, Aubrey likes to do math for fun. Here's an example of a piece of paper I found, which shows her working on the basics of multiplication just because she wanted to:

And with that, here are some sassy and/or funny things Aubrey has said:

• Me, calling to Aubrey from my bed one morning after she hurt Carter: "Aubrey, come see me."
  Aubrey: "Neh."
  Me: "Aubrey, come here now."
  Aubrey: "You can talk to me from there. You have a mouth... so use it."

• Aubrey: [Asks for something]
  Me: "No." / "Not right now." (And I almost always give an explanation for why.)
  Aubrey: "Okay, I'm doing it."

• Me: "Hey, Aubrey?"
  Aubrey: "Hold on, I have to fight crime before I talk to you."

• Aubrey: "Mom, what do you want for Christmas?"
  Me: "I want everyone to get along."
  Aubrey: "No, like a present."
  Me: "I'm serious; that's what I want."
  Aubrey, with annoyance: "Well that's not gonna happen!"

• Aubrey, while looking at an extensive Halloween yard setup: "All these signs make me feel like the world is just death and destruction."

• Aubrey: [Asks for something]
  Me: "No." / "Not right now." (And I almost always give an explanation for why.)
  Aubrey: "Okay, I'm doing it."

• Aubrey: "I'm George Washington! I'm so formal."