Ella Turns SIX!
Happy 6th Birthday Elle Belle!! We celebrated with a Taylor Swift, friendship bracelet making party in the backyard. It was a great afternoon with her friends, especially the new ones she has made in kindergarten this year!
The biggest update in Ella’s life is that she started kindergarten in August with Mrs. Van Buskirk at May Elementary School. When we went to her ‘meet the teacher’ event at school, Ella shocked us with her bravery; she didn’t want us to do anything for her and went to speak with her teacher all by herself. She basically told us, “Mom and Dad, I’ve got this!” And boy oh boy, did she!
She has come home from school every single day happy. She loves her teachers and her friends, especially Isabella, who is one of her classmates. Her favorite special is, of course, Art, with Mrs. Bruss. She has learned so much from being responsible for her library books to reading books at home to us. Her favorite series, and ours too, is the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems; they are incredibly funny and entertaining. She received an art and writing award at school in the first semester and I’m so grateful for the incredible year she has had.
Ella continues to be incredibly empathetic and is hardest on herself. She loves ‘silly time’ as she calls it, where we basically wrestle and tickle each other in the family room. By the way, she is a very skilled tickler. She has a chore chart which earns her a weekly allowance for feeding Topo, doing laundry or putting silverware away. Speaking of Topo, Ella loves her so very much! She plays with her, snuggles her, and their bond has grown so much that Topo even falls asleep with her in her bed.
Ella loves saving her money (sounds a lot like me, haha!). She is so sweet with it; while I didn’t want to buy a $6.00 Valentine’s Day card for her to give me, she said that she would buy it. When we got home, she immediately went to her safe to give me the money. She cares about everything, even crying over the “lonely” bad guy in movies we watch.
Although we haven’t put Ella (or Miles) in any activities this year, she did do a week of art camp last summer at Ms. Kim’s house where she created incredible pieces while learning about the artists who inspired them. She was the youngest one there! Fortunately, with a pool in the backyard, not only did Ella master swimming last summer, but she started to dive for sticks and retrieve them from the shallow end of the pool. Her determination to accomplish tasks is incredible. She would dive and dive under water until she got a stick. We put her in fitness club, which meets every Friday morning, at her school. Here, she has met other teachers and students while learning how to play basketball, baseball, tag and more.
Ella continues to be an amazing big sister to Miles. She encourages him, shows him to do new tasks, and helps him take his shirt off sometimes. They continue to share a room and I love listening to them talk to each other in the mornings getting ready. They have so much fun playing together being silly, until someone gets hurt usually. Although Ella tries to control what they do most of the time, she’s learning to listen to Miles’s ideas. I’m so grateful they have each other and hope their love for each other grows and grows.
Ella still loves art, making cards, building with tiles, puzzles, playing on the play ground, playing tag, and climbing up our rope swing in the backyard. She loves to be at home, but is also willing to go on adventures with us; while she loves camping she isn’t a fan of the long drives it takes to get there. We got her a Camelbak for her birthday last year, so she is learning to carry her own water. She eats all sorts of various foods (and is willing to try anything), but her favorites are pancakes, waffles, edamame beans, chicken noodle soup, rice, strawberries, cantaloupe, and chocolate of course. She encourages Miles to try new foods too.
Her favorite show is Bluey, which she watches most mornings before school with Makenna. She asks a million questions during movies. She gets frustrated with Miles when he bothers her on purpose or me when I ask her to do too many things; she cries and walks away saying that she needs a break. She’s fast, like I need to run hard to escape her during tag. She’s smart; she’s at the 99%ile in school. She’s driven; she has an idea and she makes it happen. She’s incredibly kind; her heart aches for everyone. She’s shy; she needs encouragement to talk to her teachers. She’s creative; her artwork is framed all over. She’s silly; she gets in these laughing fits where she just doesn’t want to stop.
So I don’t forget, I want to share this story. Ella loves art and had made this red cardinal picture in white snow during her Art special at school. She brought it home, but it wasn’t finished; she needed to add more snow flakes. So she started using a white marker, a white colored pencil, a white crayon, but none of them gave her what she wanted. She said, “I wish I had the white pen from Mrs. Bruss.” I encouraged her to ask Mrs. Bruss, who she sees at the school gates each morning, but she said, “That’s too scary.” We talked to her that the worst that could happen is that Mrs. Bruss would say, “No.” Well, I picked her up from school and forgot about the pen. About 5:00pm Ella called for Scott and me to come in the kitchen and said that she had a surprise. I didn’t even think about the pen because I think Miles had a bad day at daycare so that’s where my mind was. And from behind her back she whips out the white pen and yells, “Surprise!” She did it! She did it! That’s little Ella in a nutshell. Shy, but brave. Patient enough to wait to tell us until we were ready to hear her good news. And determined to finish her red cardinal in the white snow picture just as she had imagined.
Ella went in for her six year check up and weighed in at 36 pounds and measured in at 40.5 inches! She may be small, but her blood flows with kindness and her heart is always bursting with goodness. Here is another story that speaks to who Ella is. March in Las Vegas always has random cool and windy days. I said, “It’s going to be cool and windy this weekend.” Ella replies, “Cool? I like cool. Windy? I like windy. It’s going to be perfect!” She will always make lemonade out lemons, limes, or dirt. She is happy regardless of circumstances.