Anna

Anna, my girl. My kindergartener. My light, my sunshine. This girl has grown leaps and bounds in the past year. She has matured so much. She is so very independent and loves how much she can do by herself. She gets herself up every morning, gets dressed, brushes her hair and comes down for breakfast. She then packs up her school bag complete with snack and water bottle. She is loving and rocking the kindergarten world. We have also discovered just how competitive Anna can be when it comes to school! While I want her to be driven, I do hope this does not lead to unwarranted stress. She can be quite boastful when she wants to be so we try to keep that in check as well. She is reading on a first grade, four month level and loves reading. She initially had trouble and still does some weeks with the full days of kindergarten and going five days, along with ballet and tap on Thursday afternoons. She is enjoying those classes so much as well, as tap is new for her.

Anna remains full of drama on most days (lots of prayers from me going up because some days I just don't know how to handle her!) but she is also such a wonderful sister to her two brothers. She will help Kyle with most anything and the two of them play so wonderfully together and giggles are constantly erupting from whatever room they are playing in. She does also try to mother him just a little too much here and there which frustrates him and leads to tiffs! He stands his ground with her just as much as she stands her ground with anyone. This girl is not to be messed with and yet still can be shy and not want me to leave her if she is uncomfortable somewhere.

Anna has been dying to lose a tooth and well, last week, October 28th, it happened! It was kind of loose one day and then the next day she wiggled it quite a bit but I could tell it wasn't going to come out no matter how much she wiggled it that day. Then over that weekend, I could tell it was uprooting. Monday went by and then Tuesday morning when I was dropping her off at school, she opened her mouth for me to look at it and I knew right then and there she would lose it at school. I prayed all day that she wouldn't misplace it, or swallow it, or bleed when it came out. She said her friend Landon (who hasn't lost any teeth) told her to move it with her top teeth and then she said it just popped out into her mouth and then she spit it into her hand. Her teacher had her take it to the clinic and they gave her a little tiny treasure box to keep it in. She was just busting at the seams when I picked her up from school that day!!! Couldn't contain her new smile! And, of course, she was super excited for the tooth fairy to visit. So that is the big event I was referring to in the last post about Anna! Our little girl who is rapidly becoming our bigger girl.

This past weekend, along with Halloween, brought Anna's Christmas performance for her ballet studio. They had a little trouble getting a better day for their performance so it was super early. However, this production is so beautiful and I just love it. The first half is excerpts from the Nutcracker and then the second part is the Christmas story complete with the dancers becoming the Advent wreath themselves. It is just a wonderful way to kick off the Christmas season, even if it is only November 1st. This does not mean that we overlook Thanksgiving. I put out my decorations today and love enjoying the month of November!

So, as you can tell, Anna is doing just so so well in her little life. I am so proud of her and she continues to amaze me daily with her energy and light and yes, even her sass!  Below are pictures from the performance and the tooth! Her class were Sugar Plum Fairy Angels....her best costume yet which unfortunately we don't get to keep (the studio reuses them every year). Seriously, they just looked beautiful onstage and this was the first year of these costumes.

And, the tooth. I only had pictures on my phone from the day it happened.