School Days

I just realized that I never put up the pictures of Ella from her first day of school. She's in her second year of Preschool and she was so excited to start again. She really loves going and is so happy that this year they have a special music class, with their own separate music teacher. She's always teaching us the songs she learns there. I was planning on having her in Pre-K through the elementary school, since that's what they do in Buffalo (and it's FREE!!!), but unfortunately, our county doesn't have Pre-K here. Bummer! So instead of having two kids in school (we were going to pay for Ruby to go to school this year, since Ella's was free), we decided to send Ella again and wait on Ruby until next year. It actually works out ok because of when Ruby's birthday is. She will miss the cutoff for kindergarten by a couple of weeks, so if I put her in preschool this year, she'd be in it for three years. How many times can you learn the ABC's?! So when Ella's at school (three days a week), Ruby and I do "school" for her. We focus on one letter a week. We learn the sound, how to write it, what words start with the letter, and do lots of different letter themed activities. It's working out pretty well so far.

Anyway, back to Ella. She is a pretty funny girl. I love the person she is becoming. She's pretty calm and is a great big sister to Annie. She and Ruby play together a lot (the good/bad side of having no friends) therefore they fight a lot. Most of the time, they play really well together and I LOVE listening in on all the different games they make up. They are great at pretending. It reminds me so much of my brothers and I when we were growing up. We had silly languages (but the cuminafuuuum delie. I won!), inside jokes (corn dogs!!), and made up games (kitty house). It's so fun to always have a playmate. Ella is really good with other kids and I have seen her try to offer alternatives when kids are getting crabby about sharing. It's great to see her personality shining through more and more. She is also very emotional though. She gets her feelings hurt and bursts into tears. Richard is convinced she gets it from me (me? have unbalanced emotions? never!) but I recall hearing that he was quite emotional as a child, so I think maybe it's a little of both.


Since Ella's school is at an Episcopal church, they go to chapel each week. The first time they went, Ella came home and said, "Mom! There is a church in my school! And I got to go inside!" She thinks it's pretty cool. I hear her singing little songs about the light of God and I think it's cute. On a family note, we've started having Family Home Evening. Ruby still wanders around and is a space cadet while we're talking about the lesson (that may have more to do with her personality, not her age!), but Ella is just a sponge. She listens and remembers everything that is said. We had a lesson where I told the story of the Little Red Hen about a month ago and last night she said she wanted to tell me a story. She retold that story, after only hearing it once. My Dad sent me the Mark Mabry book "Another Testament: Reflections of Christ" for my birthday. Richard was gone at study club on our FHE night, so I went through some of the pictures and scriptures in the book with the girls and Ella was very interested and I felt like she understood a lot more of the scriptures. I am loving Age 4 Ella. She is such a joy to have around. Don't get me wrong, of course there are times when she's bugging the heck out of me, asking for snacks 800 times a day or constantly wiggling around. BUT I keep catching myself just watching her and listening to her, being overwhelmed with love for her. Actually, that has happened quite frequently with all three of my girls and with Richard since we moved here. I am convinced that it's because we don't have a ton of friends here yet, so we have been spending all of our time together. I'll admit, for the first month we moved here, it was a little much to be together all of the time. We were used to hanging out with friends all the time, going fun places, and having lots of activities. Now it's just us, and we're slowly adding in activities, but for the most part, we hang out with each other. Surprisingly, I've really enjoyed this time of doing our own thing and really getting to know my kids. Of course I've always truly loved my kids, but I feel like there's this deeper love there that really humbles me and makes me unbelievably grateful for my family.

Anyways, now that I've gotten all sappy, I'll leave you with a couple of my favorite Ella things as of right now. First, is her love of coloring. We probably have 5 spiral notebooks that have every inch of every page colored on. We always have a box of crayons and paper out on the counter because she and Ruby will color for hours every day. It's usually pictures of people we know, mostly pink.

And the second thing is her version of Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe. I sang it once in the bath because she and Ruby were arguing over who had to get their hair washed first. Ever since then, she sings it whenever a choice needs to be made, mostly about toys. Here are the lyrics to her version:
Eedy, Mighty, Piedy, Oh.
Catch a spider, appen doh.
My mother said to pick the very first one and you are it.

I LOVE it!!!