Nine Years Old

January 26, 2015

Nine Years Old

It's so easy to say, "I can't believe you're x number of years old," because it's so true! Each year that passes with the kids seems to go faster and faster. Also, the youngest of the family is *supposed* to stay young forever, right? I guess in the scheme of life, nine is not an old age to be. It is, however, moving perilously away from little kidness.

Here are some facts about Alyssa at this stage in her life:

She doesn't like school. "Can't I stay home today?" are many times the first words out of her mouth after I wake her up for school.

She's very athletic. She's fast, she's flexible, and she has great eye hand coordination. She isn't ultra competitive at this point. She doesn't mind too much when her soccer team loses a game. She's also not super hard on herself if/ when she makes a mistake on the soccer field. She seems to accept that everyone makes mistakes from time to time.

She's really into playing games on the iPad. I have to watch her screen time or she spends too much time on the iPad. The iPad is virtually hers; no one else uses it.

She still likes to play with her American Girl dolls and all her AG doll stuff. I'm so glad that she still likes to play with toys!

She makes friends very easily. She has many friends- from soccer friends to school friends to neighborhood friends. But her best friend is still her sister. LOVE!

She's a very finicky eater. She doesn't like meat of any kind with very few exceptions: Chick- fil- A nuggets, McDonald's nuggets and few other restaurants chicken. She doesn't like tacos, spaghetti, chili, Penn Station (how can she not??), eggs, pasta with anything other than butter, any kind of casserole (the less entangled the food ingredients are, the better). She dislikes almost all vegetables. Notable exceptions are cooked carrots and potatoes when made with a pot roast (but don't even expect her to eat the roast meat itself). Ah, good times trying to get her to eat healthy.

She loves junk food including but not limited to most candy, cake, cookies etc. Notable exceptions are white chocolate. She won't eat chocolate chip cookies that have white chips in them and she doesn't like pretzels that are coated with vanilla bark. She is very concerned about getting in the proper amount of junk food per day (that would be lots according to her).

She is a little angel at school! She obeys all the rules, she doesn't talk out of turn, she's helpful to her teachers. She is slightly less angelic at home (let's just say she feels more comfortable expressing her opinions at home than at school) but she's sweet most of the time for us, too.

She enjoys playing Connect 4, Spongebob Memory game, Blokus and Sorry!

She loves Jesus and is looking forward to heaven since there will be lots of junk food in heaven. Heaven = Perfect Life and since Perfect Life = Junk Food then obviously Heaven = Junk Food. She's looking forward to the all you can eat dessert bar!

She's ornery as can be at times but she can also be incredibly sweet. We are lucky to have our little Goose (her current nickname) as our family caboose!

When we painted the kitchen last weekend, (or the weekend before that... I can't keep track of what we've done when...) we had to move the refrigerator to paint behind it. Besides an astonishing amount of dust back there, we found some treasures. Over the years, several pictures had fallen from where they were displayed on the side of the fridge into the little space between the fridge and the counter. This was one of those pictures. It was from when she was in preschool and invited Donnie in for "Someone Special Day." Love how she was rockin' soccer clothes as a preschooler.