Friday, May 15, 2020

Aubrey Turns Six!

In a perfect world, Aubrey wouldn't have had to celebrate her birthday during a pandemic. But alas, that is exactly what she did. She didn't get a party. (On a side note, I'm so glad I spent hours planning a tea party birthday for her for absolutely no reason.) She didn't get to see her friends at school or eat lunch with me, Carter, and Clara in the cafeteria like we'd planned. She didn't get to go out to her favorite restaurant. In fact, she didn't get to go anywhere. And you know what? She was a total champ about the whole thing. 

Because her birthday was happening during this weird and hard time, super cool Aunt Kara made some special art-themed birthday cookies and sent them to Aubrey all the way from Texas. They arrived a couple of days before her actual birthday, which was fun. Look how cute!


Aubrey loved them (obviously)! She immediately started planning which cookies she would eat on which day.


The set also came with two "paint your own" cookies, one for Aubrey and one for Carter. Aubrey thought it was the coolest thing ever and took it very seriously.


On Aubrey's actual birthday, she woke up to find streamers over her door. (We happened to have a small roll in the basement. I wish we had had more, but she still loved it.)


We also blew up a bunch of balloons and filled the living room with them.


The first thing she did when she came downstairs was frolick in the balloons. Obviously.


Then she decided that she wanted to open her presents before breakfast. So we let her. Anything to make her non-ideal birthday better, right? 

We decided to do six gifts for her (half of them small and pretty cheap), and we hid them around the house. She had to translate the location of each present using a cypher code (which is something she loves to do). 


Then she went to find them!


She got her own wet brush (so she'd stop using mine), hair dye, and a new helmet (a $5 clearance item!).


She also got...


... a book called "How to Draw"...


... a tub of Bristle Blocks (because she's always using random objects from around the house to construct buildings, stages, and more for her dolls)...



... and a coding robot from Grandma and Grandpa.


Then, after she had played sufficiently, she ate the traditional birthday breakfast of Swedish pancakes, or "mommy pancakes," as the kids call them. We dyed the batter purple, of course.


After breakfast, she went for the balloons again.


She also learned how to use the robot.


Then she got to decorate her own cake. She had so much fun with it! I did the base layer of frosting (she got frustrated trying to do it herself), and she did the rest. At her request, I made frosting in rainbow colors.


Not to be left out, Carter asked if he could decorate the small 6-inch cake that I made with the extra batter I had. He made a heart out of sprinkles using a cookie cutter! Awww.


In the end, this is how Aubrey's cake looked. The second purple P in "happy" is actually supposed to be the D in "birthday," but Aubrey insisted she wanted it that way. I love her style!


In the afternoon, Nana and Papa stopped by to bring presents from them and cousin Emma. Aubrey decided to show off her scooter skills, which allowed her to try out her new helmet!


Nana and Papa also paid for us to get Dos Amigos for dinner. Aubrey is completely obsessed with their rice, so we got her her own big container of it. She was a happy girl!


Taking that first bite...


Ah, it's Heaven!


The cake was also enjoyed, and the birthday song was sung (I think). Unfortunately, I don't have any photos or videos of that.

All in all it was a good day. Aubrey didn't complain about being stuck at home, she loved her presents, and she enjoyed playing games with the family whenever we had a spare minute. She got to dictate what we did all day, which she always loves, haha.

So there you have it! Our oldest is six years old! *insert cliche but totally true statement about how she's growing up too fast*

We love you, Aubrey girl!

Saturday, March 14, 2020

Knock-Knock. Who's There?


Dang, I can't believe the last time I wrote about Aubrey was in September! In some ways she doesn't change that much over the course of a few months, and in other ways she does. Here are just a few milestones and funny stories I've collected over the last few months, as well as a bunch of photos, obviously... because cute.''
  • One time she tried to wipe her hands on my shirt during dinner. We got after her and told her to use her napkin or at least her own shirt and not someone else's. She responded, "Well your shirt is kind of ugly, so I thought I should wipe my hands on it instead of mine." BURN!
  • One night we had breakfast for dinner, and among other things I made oatmeal for the kids. I added cut up bananas and a sprinkle of brown sugar to each bowl. Aubrey was happily eating hers until I mentioned the brown sugar. Then she said she didn't like it. So we lied and told her Carter's bowl didn't have any brown sugar. They switched bowls. She said it was definitely better. *eye roll*
  • One night she got mad at me when I said it was Carter's turn for me to put him to bed, and she said, "Then I'm not going to bed! I'm going to stay up and figure out a plan to trick you into doing something for me!"
  • When I put her to bed, she often asks if we can do "Sunny Day," which is a little game we've been playing for so many months that I forgot how it even started. It starts with her saying, "I'm going to get the beach ball," at which point she gets up from her bed and walks over to the light switch. She turns it off, and I say, "Huh. What happened to the sun? Why is it so dark?" She climbs into bed for snuggles, and then we go back and forth saying things like, "Why is there a crib at the beach?" and "Why is there a fan?" and "Who brought a pillow to the beach?" Etc., etc., etc., until I say, "Wait a minute, this looks like your room!" Then she says, "How did we get here? I must have teleported us!" It's a thing. And it's so Aubrey.
  • Even though she loves her scooter and is very good on it, she's totally freaked out about riding her bike. The thing is that she could do it... but she won't. She gets really frustrated, as you can see from this video. I'm hoping we can work on it this summer.
  • She also likes to play a bedtime game in which one of us pretends that we think the other one is a stuffed animal (or "stuffy," as she calls it). Then the person who is mistaken for a stuffed animal keeps trying to convince the other person that she is actually a person. It involves trying to find the stuffed-animal-person's battery pack to remove it so it will stop talking and moving around. This, of course, leads to tickling. It's a whole big thing. Did any of that make sense?
  • Anyway, here's her school picture! She's smiling weird, but hey, what can you do? I'm just glad she even posed for the photo. This was taken on the makeup day because she refused to do pictures on the actual picture day. Oh, the struggle.
  • She loves school, but she sometimes has difficulty getting there. Usually the way it goes is that something happens in the morning to upset her, and her first reaction is, "I'm not going to school now!" Sometimes, however, the morning will be incident-free, and she'll just say, "No, I'm not going to school," when I tell her to get dressed. And then there are the times that I get her all the way to the drop-off line and she refuses to get out of the car. I learned the hard way that I need to always wear shoes for drop-off when she did this to me the first time and I had to essentially drag her into the school with no shoes on (and it was freezing outside, by the way). Then I had to chase her down the hall because she ran away, and finally I had to drag her to her class. It's kind of all an act/power play though, because on the days I have to walk her in late, she'll cling to me all the way to her classroom door and cry and say she wants to stay with me, but then as soon as the door is closed and I'm gone, she acts totally fine (her teacher told Daniel this). SO annoying. I hate the Russian Roulette morning situation we've got going here.
  • Back when things were at the height of difficulty with her, she would throw things at her door in anger. So now there are several sizeable holes in her door. I came in one day to find out she had been using them in her play somehow. I'm not sure I want to know how...
  • For some reason, she always asks me to take pictures of her with things she likes at the store. One time it was a giant M&M. More recently it was a cardboard Santa...

... a stuffed Mario...


... and a stuffed Olaf.

  • Her school had a contest in which each kid was supposed to decorate a pumpkin to look like her favorite book character. With some prompting from me, she chose Ping-Pong Pig. I thought it would be easy to make a pumpkin look like a pig. But I didn't count on all of the stores running out of pumpkins. So in a moment of desperation, I bought an acorn squash. Only acorn squashes don't accept paint very well. So Aubrey painted it sparkly pink, it took forever to dry, and then it ended up looking maroon once it did. Aubrey was in bed by the time I saw it, so I stayed up late repainting it for her so she wouldn't be sad that it wasn't the right color. And in the morning it was... still maroon. Then we ran out of time to properly attach the ears and legs Aubrey had cut out, so they got taped on. It ended up looking like this:


So yeah, total Mom fail. We just procrastinated too long. But hey, Aubrey had no idea it looked like a train wreck. She was happy! So that's good enough for me. Also, based on the following photo, I think it was a crazy dress and hair day at school.

  • She has recently developed a knock-knock joke obsession. It's particularly funny because a lot of times she doesn't understand the jokes, but she laughs anyway. Then she makes up her own, and they make no sense. Example: "Knock-knock? Who's there? Car. Car who? The car we're driving in!"
  • At the beginning of the school year, Aubrey's teacher (Mrs. Rushing) asked the parents of each kid about their goals for the year. Then she asked the kids. We wrote this long, detailed paragraph (not knowing it was going to be displayed in the class), and she wrote, "I want to learn about worms." Well all right then.
  • She received her orthotics and has been diligently wearing them for months now. She wears them all day. She puts them on herself, but then putting on her shoes requires help. It's a bit annoying, but it's worth it if this helps her avoid leg surgery.
  • Before Thanksgiving break, Aubrey made this cute placemat at school. She said she's thankful for Mom, Dad, Carter, Clara, herself, God, and Jesus. This whole thing made me so happy!!!
  • Daniel wrote the following on Facebook: "In a parent-teacher conference today with Aubrey's kindergarten teacher, I just discovered that her teacher and aides are all under the impression that she is left-handed. This comes as very interesting news to us at home, as we have only ever seen her use her right hand for writing/coloring/drawing. Consequently, it is the most Aubrey way for a parent-teacher conference to have gone: discovering that she is closet ambidextrous." Apparently she doesn't like using the pencil grips they have at school with her right hand, so she uses her left...? We're not really sure.
  • Nana did something we've always wanted to do for Aubrey but couldn't quite afford, which is get her a weighted blanket. It's even Frozen themed, which is fun. Aubrey loves it! She has replaced her bedspread with this blanket and even wants it when it's too warm.
  • Her class had a Christmas holiday party that the parents came to, and we all ate treats and drank hot chocolate and did crafts and such. Aubrey's friend Makaela--who she went to preschool with and was happily put in the same kindergarten class as--went around with her, and they even made each other necklaces. They're too cute.
  • While I was at the party, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the wreath Aubrey colored...

... and the photo of her that is on the classroom wall. It took me a second to recognize her among her classmatess photos because of the ponytail. She never wears a ponytail! This must have been taken first thing in the morning, before she took it out. In the photo she is working on her book all about rainbows.

  • Speaking of school fun, they had a spirit week, and every day the kids got to dress up in fun ways. I didn't get a photo of every day, but I did get photos on a couple of the days. This one is crazy hair and clothes day.


  • And then on this day they were supposed to wear pink.
  • She says, "Phewf!" when she's relieved about something, and I find it very entertaining.
  • She also went through a phase of saying "uh kah" instead of "okay." She claimed a friend at school said it that way. She still does it sometimes, but thankfully it's not as often.
  • She still totally loves her baby sister. She likes to match her, so it was really sad when they grew out of their matching sister outfits. This was the last time they wore them.
  • In general, she is starting to throw tantrums like a teenager. She says, "I hate you!", stomps up to her room, and slams the door. Good times.
  • But then she has this super sweet side. When Carter hit his head on the coffee table and had to get stitches, I was super upset because it was partially my fault (on accident, obviously, but I felt so awful). So as Daniel and Carter rushed to the ER, I sat on the couch sobbing. Aubrey was really freaked out at first, but then she got into nurturing mode. She brought me pillows and a blanket, filled up a water glass and brought it to me, and wrote me a sweet note. Then, when I decided to head to the ER to see Carter, she sent me with rainbow heart tattoos to cheer him up. I still can't get over how sweet it all was.
  • She does similar things all the time for people. I managed to snap this picture of her trying to cheer up Clara as she cried while waiting for her bottle. It didn't work, as you can see, but it was so cute and sweet of Aubrey to try.
  • She is an amazing reader. She's reading chapter books that say they're for 2nd to 3rd graders. And I've checked to see if she's understanding them, and she is! She's also super sweet and reads to her little brother and little sister a lot. I love it when she does that...
  • Writing, however, is a bit harder for her. I think she's age-appropriate when it comes to spelling and understanding basic sentence structure, but her handwriting is not good. It's really hard to read. We're pretty sure a lot of it stems from her SPD, especially because she will write part of a word on one line and then just finish the word on the next line, and it's not clear that that's what she's doing. She also does, like, no spacing and writes some letters backward. It's all a visual processing disconnect. Thankfully, she's going to get extra help with it at school. I still love all of the super cute notes she writes though. I can read them, which is the point, right? The following few photos show some of her writings. I have written them the way they should be spelled/punctuated rather than how she did them, haha. I can't help myelf.
  • The following "journal entry" is from October. It describes our various activities during Fall Break. It reads: "I liked the indoor pool. We played in the water. We [splashed?] in the water. We baked cookies. We went to the zoo. We went to Nana's and Papa's."
  • This next note is from November and says, "To Mom, from Aubrey. Mom this time can you put Clara down at 7:00 o'clock? Please Mom." She had started sharing a room with Clara and always wanted me to put Clara in there at the same time as her instead of waiting until after she was asleep. Pretty cute. Also, I love that she spelled it "oklok."
  • Also in November, she decided to write everyone's names in chalk on Nana's and Papa's front stairs. I don't know what gave her the idea, but it's super sweet!

  • This is something she wrote at school in December: "If my snowman came to life, I would play with him all the time at the park."
  • Also in December, she gave a talk in Primary. And she actually did it! I was so proud of her. She decided she wanted to write about Jonah (shocker... it's her favorite scripture story). She wrote it herself (with only a bit of direction/prompting from Daniel) and read it herself. The Junior Primary teachers were impressed! She wrote: "Obey God when He asks you to do something, because He is so special. But Jonah did not obey God, so God sent a whale to Jonah. So we should be like God instead of Jonah. I know that God loves us. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." So sweet, right?!
  • Aubrey's cousin William just had a birthday party at the beginning of March, and Aubrey was insistent on making him a card. This is what it says: "Dear William, I hope you have a wonderful birthday. Love, Aubrey." She did it all by herself, so she spelled "wonderful" with no vowels ("wndrfl") and "birthday" with an "f" instead of "th." But check out the word spacing! Definite improvement.
  • One more writing sample, and then I'm done. I just thought this was so funny. She did this at school for Dr. Seuss week. Her answer to the question of what she'd do to get the Cat in the Hat to leave her house is "mop his feet so he would jump out." Hehehe. When I asked her about it, she said that the idea came from the fact that cats don't like water. 
  • With how well she's reading, she is now able to figure out the words that we spell. So that's now a bust. But she can't quite figure out how to spell words herself. She will attempt spelling something but get it wrong. She particularly had a hard time spelling "treat." She would say, "Can I have a T-A-R-T-E?" or some other misspelled version. Tonight was actually the first time she spelled the word right.
  • She's still our prolific little artist. She loves coloring books and can breeze through one in a day or two, depending on the size of it. She also enjoys gifting her creations to different family members, such as this picture she gave to Clara.
  • Then there's this bunny drawing she hung up on the wall at therapy. She made it at school by drawing upside down hearts! I really wanted to keep it, but she insisted on giving it to the therapy office. It's pretty cute, I guess.
  • She also drew/wrote this super adorable thing in class one day, and it melted my heart. (It says, "I like my dad. He is fun.")