Sadie graduated from her balance bike to a two wheeler. It only took her ten minutes to learn to ride, although she’s still not comfortable on hills. The balance bike was great and she still uses it when we go on longer walks. In fact on Monday she rode over 5 miles as part of the Patriot’s Day walk from Acton to Concord that her great-grandfather helped start.
Here she is riding her two-wheeler at Lynch Park:
Another recent picture from our trip to Vermont:
A week ago Sunday we had dinner with Alexander and his family. Sadie noticed they still had unpoened gifts underneath the tree. Ransom explained this was because they celebrate Russian Christmas – January 6th – as well as American Christmas. “Can we do that do?” Requested Sadie, “Because I really, really, really like Christmas!”
I really, really, really, liked this Christmas, too. On Christmas day Sadie and Frederick slept in until about 8:30. What a gift to me & Dad! Another highlight was a few mornings before Christmas. I was surprised to find the house silent and Sadie’s bed empty when I awoke. Where could Sadie be? Turns out she was in the kitchen happily decorating her gingerbread house.
This has been an eventful week as Sadie approaches her 5th birthday.
On Wednesday Sadie, Frederick and I took the train to the Science Museum. Another passenger said hello to Sadie and referred to her as a “little girl.” She promptly replied, “Actually I’m a big girl. I’m going to be 5 next week. And I am a lot of help at home….” On Friday Grammy and Grampy took Sadie to see Suessical, which she enjoyed. Saturday morning was Sadie’s “kid party”, shared with her friend, Mia, who also turned 5 this month. The party was at Iron Rail gymnastics and included about 8 of of Sadie and Mia’s church friends. Sadie requested a dinosaur theme, so we had dinosaur hats, plates, and napkins. I also made a cake shaped like a dinosaur based on a pattern I found online. Sadie was disappointed in the pattern because she “really wanted a T. Rex cake.” In the end we had fun decorating together and agree that it turned out great:
For gifts at the kid’s party we had everyone bring a wrapped book and then leave with a different wrapped book. I had trouble choosing our contribution so I bought two and planned to let Sadie choose. After we read both books Friday night, I asked her what she though of them. “I like them both. I like them as much as I like you. And I like you as much as I like ice cream, which I like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, like, etc ….!” From a kid who doesn’t share her emotions much, being liked as much as ice cream was a huge compliment. But how do you give away a book that your kid likes as much as you? “Wow!’ That was just about all I could say, “Wow!” Luckily we were able to sort it out in the morning.
Tonight we had a family birthday party for Sadie at Flatbread Co in Bedford. ALL of Sadie’s aunts, uncles, and grandparents attended! While I was working on the plans for Sadie’s party, she siad it would be “really special” to have it at a restraunt. Thank you Sadie! – this allowed for less travel for everyone and saved us from doing a lot of preparations over what turned out to very a busy weekend.
Friday was an eventful day for Sadie – she had her first violin lesson, and she hosted her first sleep over!
We rented the violin on Tuesday. As the staff measured Sadie for her instrument, the significance of this milestone dawned on me: playing the violin will likely be the first thing that Sadie will learn that neither Ransom nor I know. Wednesday morning at around 7 an unfamiliar sound awoke me – it was Sadie “practicing” her violin! Sadie soaked up the info from her first lesson like a sponge. She shared what she learned about the parts of the violin during the drive home. When Julie arrived soon after we got home, she played and sung for all of us, “This is the A string. How do you do?….”
Friday night Julia slept over our house. This was a milestone for Sadie, and an even bigger one for Julia – her first night away from her mom. The girls took a bath together, then we did the usual bedtime routine with stories read and stories told. The girls were asleep around 10. Sadie slept in her bed and Julia slept on a mat on the floor. Julia woke up around 5 and invited Sadie to snuggle with her. Both arose for the day around 6 and were delighted have the morning to play together.
We picked up Sadie’s rental violin today. She starts lessons on Friday. She’s been consistently asking to learn violin for about a year and is very excited to start lessons. Today she said that she wants to play some each day and will decide later if she wants to play trombone as well.
We took a minute to scan this before sending it off to the North Pole….
Flying Sadie
Sadie completed her 8-week rock climbing class at the YMCA today. It was a huge success! On the first day she climbed all the way to the ceiling. Today she got to do the “flying squirrel” adventure (pictured), which invoplved being pulled, swinging, up to the ceiling. As the picture shows, Sadie had NO FEAR.
Here are Sadie’s second day of school pictures (she wasn’t in the mood for photos on the first day).
Fortunately Sadie’s attitude towards scool has been more like the first picture than the second.
Sadie was a flower girl at Lauren and Ben’s wedding this weekend. More pictures are here: http://drop.io/LaurenBen/system.
On Aug 21st Sadie came into the kitchen carrying 3 board books, “I can read now!” she proclaimed. Then she demonstrated, reading “There a Wocket in my Pocket,” “Pat the Bunny”, and “I Love you Sun, I Love you Moon.” She stumbled very little – only on “certain …jertain … curtain.” It was a Big Moment, one I hope will go down in the history of Sadie lore, but it wasn’t a big surprise. She’s known the sounds of letters for over a year and she’s been reading words here and there for many months. It was tempting to push, to encourage her to string the words together and read a story, but she usually resisted. Last Thursday was the 1st day that she knew she could do it. She was so proud!
Next to bragging about Sadie’s math skills …. Sadie has been addicted to the game Incan Gold. In this game, treasure (value 1-17) is found and split evenly among the players, with any remainder going into a kitty. Through this Sadie has been learning about multiplication and division. One day at lunch she said, “Four 3’s is 12.” “How do you know?” we asked her. “Because two 6’s are 12,” she replied.
In Sadie’s world, math is important for game playing, and also for doling out and receiving love. “A kiss is a gallon of love,” she tells us. Furthermore, everyone starts with 40 gallons of love. As you give and receive love throughout the day, you add and subtract gallons. And what if you use up your 40 gallons and don’t gain any back? Not to worry – love is regenerated at the rate of a gallon per day! And if that is not enough love for you, let it be known that Sadie loves “my family as much as I love ice cream.” Wow! (We shared this comment with Great-Grandma Richardson. Even in her ill state she appreciated the significance of that declaration, saying “Well, that is a lot!”)
Sadie has long had hopes of being an astronaut, along with a few other occupations. One day she elaborated on her plans to someday pack her lunch bag to go to Mars and be back in time for dinner. It used to be that she wanted to do 4 occupations – astronaut, nurse, paleontologist, and builder – each on a different day of the week, and then stay home with her kids on the remaining 3 days. Now she’s switched plans, from part-time management of different careers to sequencing. She wants to “be everything,” one each year. Astronaut at 30, nurse at 31, etc. As for being a builder, Simon was impressed with Sadie’s block tower and asked her if she wanted to be a builder when she grew up, to which Sadie replied, “I already am one.”
We’ve been swimming a lot – at Contention Pond, at Springs Brook, at the Beach, at the outdoor Y pool. Here’s a scene from last Wednesday afternoon: We meet Julia & Simon at the outdoor pool at the Y. Sadie dons her purple goggles and hops right in while I sit at in a chair at the edge to nurse Frederick. Three minutes later Sadie rushes back to me, dripping, goggles still on. “I LOVE THE POOL!” she exclaims, then she hurries back into the water. (”Wow,” says Diana, “usually when Julia comes at me like that it is to complain or because she wants something.” I nod in empathy. Sadie’s unbridled enthusiasm in this moment is truly something to cherish.)
All this time spent swimming has made an impact. Sadie is very comfortable moving around in the water with her bubble and she can swim short distances (5 ft or so) without it. Going underwater is another new talent. After several repetitions of jumping off the edge of the pool with me catching her, Sadie said she was ready to jump on her own. I considered telling her that her head would probably go under, then thought better of it. I thought she could do it, so I’d wait and see how it went. She jumped, submerged, popped back up (she had her bubble on), and said “I went under!” with a huge smile. “Yes! And you came back up,” I pointed out. She climbed back up the ladder to do it again, and again, again and again. Sadie is enjoying swimming so much and making such rapid improvements that getting her into the water at least every other day has become a priority of our summer.
On Saturday Ransom and Sadie and Simon and his dad (Jeff) took a day trip to Contention Pond. This sparked great enthusiasm from Sadie, “I’m so excited to have a Mommy and baby day and a Daddy and kid day!” (Simon’s mom & I would both be home with our respective babies.) The report after the trip (and Simon’s birthday party on Sunday) was that it was “the goodest weekend” Sadie had ever had! While Sadie and Ransom were gone, I put away some seemingly forgotten and unsafe for baby toys, hung an arts & craft rack for Sadie, and got some old baby/toddler toys out of the attic. When Sadie got home from the Pond around 8:45 she was exhausted, but she was thrilled with all the new “Fredericky toys” and had to cart all of them from the bins in the living room to Frederick’s play mat in the office so they would be ready for him to try them ALL the next morning. I felt so lucky that she noticed and rejoiced in what was new (and much of it geared toward her brother, not her) rather than lamenting what had disappeared.
Not that she’s always looking on the bright side. Last week Mossy and I planned a day to pick berries, then visit Crane’s Beach. But Sadie didn’t want to go to the beach, she JUST want to play at the playground at the orchard. Her new habit of making threats came into play, “If we go to the beach I’m just going to sit there the whole time and cry!” “Fine,” we told her, “that will be your loss.” But wouldn’t you know, Sadie got her way in the end. The greenhead bugs were out so we called off the beach visit and spent hours in the shade of the orchard playground where the bugs weren’t so vicious. I forget the context of this one, but my favorite of Sadie’s threats was intended to be one of her more severe “If you don’t [do that], I won’t live with you anymore and I will never live with you again!” In the midst of witnessing an all-out tantrum, I have to bite my tongue not to reply with the obvious sentiment of the moment, “Well, that will be a relief.”
This week and last week Sadie is attending camp at a local park for half days, M-W. Two favorite friends are there, too. She enjoys it, bringing home pocketfuls of seashells each day. Unfortunately, getting her ready and out the door by 8:50 has been a challenge. Without preschool to keep her schedule in check, she’s renewed her natural night-owl tendencies. Sleep doesn’t come to her until about 9:30 these days, and it is not unusual for her to be up after 10. When I put her to bed, I usually fall sleep before she does. My assignment for a few nights in a row was to count to 100 in Spanish, then count to 10 in Spanish, then count to 100 in English, then count to 10 in English, and then count backward from 10 in English until Sadie falls asleep. For two nights I was asleep before reaching 100 in Spanish, so Sadie kept trying to wake me up to continue. On my next night with her she told me I only had to count to 100 in Spanish then count to 10 in Spanish (no counting in English) because I kept falling asleep to fast. Turns out I wasn’t able to manage that mandate either. Ochenta y cuatro is about as high as I can get.
Our first trip to Contention Pond was for 3 nights, beginning with July 3rd. Sadie loved being there. She wanted to do all the things she remembered from last year – swim with each person who was there, canoe around the whole pond, see fireworks, etc. It was a good trip.
Sadie has a knack for facts and science these days. We’ve been enjoying the “Magic School Bus” book series. We started studying dinosaurs a few months ago. Since then we’ve also been learning about the human body, and the ocean. Sadie drew a remarkably accurate picture from memory of a white blood cell “eating” a germ. This morning as Frederick was pulling to standing at the edge of our mattress on the floor, Sadie told him, “You have muscles and bones, Fredericky. You are using your muscles to pull your bones into new positions.” Today at camp she drew sea creatures, including a mermaid, some fish, a jellyfish, a crab, an octopus, seaweed, a sea star, and 2 tube worms (of all things! We learned last month that tube worms live near hot water vents in the ocean floor). If you mention composognathus, Sadie can tell you that this dinosaur was “about the size of a small dog.” She can tell you that T. Rex teeth were about “the size of table knives.” When Sadie doesn’t know the facts about something, she likes to make them up. Looking at a picture book with Dad last night, Sadie pointed out a castle that she said, “was from when the first people were born.” “Who built it, then?” asked Dad. “Oh,” says Sadie, “the moms of the first people.” “And where did the moms of the first people come from?” Ransom questioned. “They just ‘poofed’ and were there,” said Sadie. (Uh-oh, daughter of an evolutionary biologist shows creationist tendencies!)
Sibling relations continue to be a joy (although sometimes over-zealous). Last night at Frederick’s bedtime Sadie told him, “Goodnight Frederick. You are the cutest baby I ever saw.” Sadie may be twice Frederick’s size, but they are already very physical with each other. Sadie will bop Frederick with a toy, and just as I’m saying, “gentle, please,” he starts cracking up, laughing. “But he likes it!” giggles Sadie. And so he does.
