Fall 2014

School has been in session for two months now, Emma has the swing of things for the most part.  She learns quick, but struggles with impulse control...rats herself out when the teacher has corrected her...the reveal is during feeding and baths. Truth Serum.  She is enjoying writing words, creating patterns and simple math.  Most of her drawings have elaborate back stories. 

We purchased Children's Theatre season tickets with our besties...this season we joined The Kids Club, so before the performance they do special things with the club members like a character meet/greet from the play.  The season runs through the winter months only, which helps winter feel not so long.

Emma now has 10 "siblings" that she is escorting around...will randomly call out to her siblings or kids to follow her.  She wants to be the leader. This morning at breakfast, E. asked if I remembered all her siblings names, then proceeded to name them all..they are the kids names she goes to school or gymnastics with. 

We had a great time at Disney...Pluto, Goofy and Donald are bigger hits in her life than Princesses. I'm ok with that.  I thought her mind would explode at meeting Anna/Elsa but nowhere near as excited as meeting the Characters at Chef Mickey and during the MK parade.  She kept reconfirming that the characters were just people in costume.  Look out Santa, your time is expiring!  We were able to meet up with our extended adoption family in Disney and Emma had a blast meeting Miss N. who she lived 9 months in the orphanage with. They were instant BFF's!  Five days at Disney with a sensory kid was probably a bit much, 3 days would have been more than enough. We walked about 7 miles everyday and we were in bed by 9pm every night...the break from technology and tv was nice, didn't even miss it.  We have over a 1,000 pictures taken that I have yet to sort and create an album for. I'm about 3 years behind in picture sorting! I will do that next year when she goes off to kindergarten.

Emma is still enrolled in swim, only two more levels before competitive swimming, if she wants to continue.  Probably next summer she will do competitive swim. She is still at gymnastics once a week for 1.50hrs. Yesterday they let us know they aren't moving her up yet due to maturity/listening skills. They reassured us the skill level is more than there, but she would never survive the focus required for the two hour class.  They don't want her to burn out and hate gymnastics. We couldn't agree more.  The kid is super strong, they have her doing 5 straight arm chin ups on the 12ft bar and last night she was doing 3-4 spins around the kip bar at a time with so much control, looked like a 10 year old. E is doing "big girl" things as Em calls it, now she needs to develop her big girl maturity.

She knows Christmas is right around the corner and has been talking about all the gifts, but struggles to tell you what she wants.  She really wants/needs nothing. We have noticed she barely touches any of her toys, still into drawing 10+ pictures a day and playing games with us.  I would say she is more of a collector of stuff...likes the idea of owning stuff, but never uses it.  Uno has become a big hit over the last few months.  It's the 2nd thing she wants to do after dinner, the 1st is to hug me...that's her thing, climbing into my lap and hugging me after eating. I likey!