Dear Gwen: Month Sixty-One

Dear Gwen,

Today you are sixty-one months old.

You have been five for a whole month now, and you LOVE it.  You never miss an opportunity to tell people how old you are, injecting it into the conversation as the whim strikes you.  As for me, I love that you are five!  Somehow you have become even more imaginative, curious, creative, and brilliant.  You recently received one of the very first Goldie Blox toys ever manufactured, and you are crazy about this toy.  One night, you were playing with this toy and someone was reading you the accompanying book.  “Then she found a nervous Nacho / Who was not looking quite so macho.”  You looked at the matching “Nacho” toy (he’s a dog), and asked, “Does he look macho?”  

“What do you think ‘macho’ means, Gwen?”  I inquired.  You thought for a minute.  

“I think it means nervous.  NO.  I think it means, the OPPOSITE of nervous.”  Wow!  Excellent comprehension skills there!

We started (and completed) our very first chapter book this month – Roald Dahl’s “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory”.  It was pretty fun for all of us to read this with you, and it definitely changed our bedtime routine – now instead of nagging and pleading to get you ready for bed, you are nagging and pleading us to read an extra chapter!  (And you often get your wish.)  We have several other chapter books on loan from the library right now, so you can have your pick of which one we read next.  (Update: you chose, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz".)

Our bedtime routine has morphed a little bit in the past months, so maybe I should make note of it here.  Because most of the time it is only you and me home at bedtime, I’ve started giving you more independence at this time, so that I can clean up from dinner while you get ready for bed.  So your three bedtime tasks are to use the bathroom, to get your pajamas (including pull-up) on, and to put three books in your book basket.  (The book basket is a basket near your bed where you keep books that you want to ‘read’ before falling asleep.  I had to introduce the rule of having no more than three books, because otherwise you would stay up ‘reading’ all night long!)  Then I come to brush your teeth, read your bedtime chapter(s), say prayers and tuck you into bed.  You have seemingly grown out of wanting the meditation music you used to listen to before sleep, and use your reading time as a wind-down time, just like I do at my bedtime.

Your year of piano lessons is drawing to a close.  You have amazed me with all you have learned in the Music for Young Children program.  You can identify by writing or by key all the notes of the C scale – each note is a music friend, with an accompanying story.  You know your finger numbers.  You know your rhythms – hops, beavers, turtles, and sleepy pandas.  You can recognize repeats and quarter-rests.  You can read a grand staff.  You’ve even had a chance to compose your own song, an ode to your stuffed bunny Mr. Bun.  I think piano lessons have been amazingly good for you.  Even on those occasions when you get frustrated or discouraged, you have never suggested quitting.  And I think it’s wonderful that as you prepare to enter kindergarten, you have already had several experiences of not knowing how to do something, then having someone help you learn, then beginning to understand and practicing over and over, and finally feel capable and confident in the task.  This pattern is going to repeat hundreds and hundreds of times throughout your life, Gwen, and I think your being aware of that will serve you very well.  We definitely want you to continue with music classes next year!

This month also saw your first experiences with needlework.  When I added embroidered flowers to the sweater Grannie knitted you last year, you were fascinated by the process and even helped me a little bit.  So I started hunting for the type of ‘learning needlework’ kit I remember using as a child.  I was able to order a couple of kits from the local needlework boutique, The Stitcher’s Muse, and you were very excited to receive them!  So far you have not wanted to do more than about 5-10 minutes’ worth of work at a time, but that’s a pretty good stretch for a five-year-old attention span.  You really seem to enjoy working on your butterfly and although it can be a bit challenging to remember the mechanics of the work, your skills are coming along really well.  It would certainly make me happy if you continued to enjoy needlework, and will be one more hobby that you and I have in common!

Your interest in reading and writing has continued to grow, which is wonderful with kindergarten just around the corner.  You are very keen to have various words read out to you, and sometimes work on sounding them out yourself.  It’s great to see this curiosity grow.  You are also writing more words.  I hope you’ll write us another story soon!

I think I wrote last month that we went to see your first musical, when the local Christian school put on “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”.  I think this was your first experience with seeing children your own age and older in a large-scale theatre production.  We talked a lot about it afterwards, and I encouraged you to understand that any kid (or adult) who wants to be in a play can audition, and practice, and learn their part, and then perform.  It helped to refer back to my own recent panto rehearsals: “Remember when I was in the play, and I had to go out all the time at night to go practice?  When I started practicing, I didn’t know my lines yet, or where to stand, or how to talk, or what to do.  Nobody did!  But the director helped us learn, and we all practiced together, and soon we all knew what to do.  And then we put on the show!”  As soon as you understood this, you told me you wanted to be Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”.  Great choice!  Since seeing “Joseph”, you have been singing the songs nonstop, which is pretty fun!

Another mind-opening experience we’ve had recently is that we got to go to BookFest for the first time.  BookFest is, essentially, a literacy convention for children.  Authors attend and put on panels, there are books and merchandise for sale, you can meet the authors and get your stuff autographed – some people even dress in costume.  We attended three author panels and we really enjoyed the event.  The highlight of the day (at least for me) was getting to meet author/illustrator Barbara Reid, who creates incredible illustrations out of plasticene.  We got her latest book autographed and you had your picture taken with her.  It was awesome!  At the end of the day I asked you what your favourite part about BookFest was – you said, “Everything!”

Well, that’s it for this month, Gwen.  It’s been another amazing month and I have a feeling the upcoming months are going to keep getting better and better.  Thanks for being such an incredible daughter.  I love you a million, billion, kajillion, and five, and am so glad to be your Mom!

Love,

Mama

Gwen's 5th year slideshow

Dear Gwen: Month Sixty

Dear Gwen,

Today, you are five years old.

The past few months have seen some incredible changes.  You have become really interested in drawing and colouring, for the first time.  You are also very interested in writing and often ask how to spell certain words.  It makes me think that writing, rather than reading, might be the key to literacy for you – it makes sense that you would be more interested in figuring out how to communicate your own messages, rather than interpreting others!  Anyway, it’s exciting to see these parts of your brain unlocking.  I am always thrilled when you show me your latest picture and tell me the story it’s portraying!

 

A great example of this was your participation in the recent Sunday School Talent Show, where you chose not to sing, play piano, dance, do gymnastics, or any other active performance that might be expected from a girl of your physical energy – you chose to read a story you had written and illustrated.  I admit I didn’t think this was a great idea as a performance piece, but I was proven wrong as you shared your story with great presence and confidence and received a multitude of compliments from audience members of all ages.  I think the compliment that meant the most to you was from a ten-year-old boy (who, as we all know, do not pull punches when it comes to critique, and are much less likely to be swayed by factors like “adorableness”).  He told you your story was great and that he loved “the part where you said it was written and illustrated by Gwen Buechler.”  I loved that part too!

 

 Obviously, the biggest event in the past month was our big trip to California – Disneyland, SeaWorld, and the San Diego Zoo.  You loved all of it and were so well-behaved!  You got a lot of practice at standing in line, and although I admit that you are still not the world’s most patient person (neither am I, for the record), you kept your cool and just accepted that instant gratification was not the order of the day.  One of the highlights of our trip was the day you got a Princess Makeover at the Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique and became “Princess Gwen from the faraway Kingdom of Canada”.  It was really amazing to see this side of you come to life, and of course you loved every minute of it.

Another recent event was your bout with scarlet fever.  When the doctor at the walk-in clinic gave this diagnosis, I felt panicked – it sounded very serious!  In fact, all you needed was a course of antibiotics to get back on track, and within a day or two you were back to your normal bubbly self.  Which was too bad, because we still had 4 days to quarantine you away from other kids!  A bouncy energetic Gwen who is confined to her house … well, it wasn’t an easy few days.  Your face just dropped when I told you why we couldn’t have anyone over for a playdate, even though it was a “Mom and Gwen day”.  However, we did lots of fun stuff on these days: we turned the kitchen table into a fort, we set up your mini tent in the living room, we watched lots of movies and played lots of board games and spent lots of time online at pbskids.org.  I’m not sure if you were about ready to hit this developmental stage anyway, or if the enforced isolation actually made it happen, but right around this time you got in touch with your inner introvert (for which I am REALLY grateful).  You started being able to – and interested in – spending 20-40 minutes playing by yourself, whether in your room with your dollhouse, at your craft table with your art supplies, or in the living room with your ponies and other playthings.  I had started to think that you were never going to be that kind of kid, but I’m really thrilled to be proven wrong! 

 Along with this new development, you and I have had some discussions about boredom.  Like every other human being on the planet, you dislike and/or fear boredom.  But I am trying to help you understand that your boredom is no one’s responsibility but your own.  You are forever flapping around underfoot asking me, “What can I DO right now?”, so the guideline we’ve come up with is that if there is a job to be done – getting ready for school, eating a meal, brushing teeth, etc – then I will tell you so.  And if not, then it is up to you to figure out how to fill your time.  As I have said several times recently, “I am not in charge of entertaining you.  This is YOUR time.”

An amusing side note to this is on the very last day of your quarantine, you had serious cabin fever and were very tired of entertaining yourself.  Rather than point out all the things you could play with (seriously!  There are so many toys in this house!  HOW CAN YOU BE BORED?), I asked you to open one cupboard and point out every activity/toy/game inside, while I wrote them all down.  Then the next cupboard.  Then the drawer.  Then the shelf.  Then each basket.  And so on.  Until I had a huge list of things like “play a board game”, “do Hello Kitty crafts”, “colour in colouring books”, “do stickers”, etc.  Then I cut up the paper so each activity was on its own slip, and told you to pull one slip out of the jar and do whatever was on that slip.  Because you are externally motivated, this totally worked, because now you were being “told” what to do instead of figuring it out for yourself.  Some activities lasted three minutes, some lasted 25.  But I never had to tell you what to do, and that counts as a win for me!

This past weekend we had your birthday party, with a record-breaking nineteen kids in attendance (counting the birthday girl), ages ranging from almost-three to six-and-a-half.  A great time was had by all with a piñata, goodie bags, time in the gym to burn off energy, and an amazing Pinkie Pie birthday cake.  I really loved having your many friends from different areas of your life come together to celebrate with you.  It brought me a lot of joy to see all these people who love you gathered together to make your day special.

 Well, that’s it for this month, Gwen.  I love you a million, billion, kajillion and FIVE, and am sure that this year will be the best one ever!

 

Love,

Mama

This Girl ...

 This girl is five tomorrow.

Dear Gwen: Month Fifty-Nine

Dear Gwen,

Today you are fifty-nine months old.

I am writing this letter almost two weeks ahead of time, because we will be in California the day you officially turn fifty-nine months old.  I can't adequately capture the awesomeness that is you in this in-between fashion, so instead, I'll just get to the good stuff, the stuff that everyone wants to see when they open this blog ... the pictures of my beautiful, charming, bursting-with-personality girl.

 

Happy almost-birthday, my girl.  I love you!

Love,

Mama