All About Clara: Age 5

Cutie Clarabelle turned 5 in July!

Clara could have started kindergarten this past fall (she turned 5 a couple weeks before the cut-off date).  But as the date grew closer I kept feeling more uneasy about it.  We decided to keep her home an extra year and I am SO glad we did!  It was absolutely the right choice for her!  She is always happy to be home, and I love having more time with her.  She is a terrific sister and good helper and does very well at entertaining herself (usually by doing her workbooks!  She will get up an hour or more before the others and will just work in her workbooks at the kitchen table, haha!).

This was Clara's 2nd day of her new preschool class.  (She was sick the first day.)  She is a Peer Helper in the developmental preschool class at our elementary school.  She started off going two mornings a week for 3 hours each time.  Her teacher soon realized that Clara needed speech therapy (so she actually would have qualified to be in there for her developmental needs, but it all worked out).  We got her IEP set up and she also switched to 4 days a week in the afternoons instead.  The afternoon class had more children who were 5 like her, whereas the morning class had mostly 3-year-olds in her class.  Clara seemed to be acting unsure of herself, and mimicking more of the 3-year-old behavior.  She's doing wonderfully with the switch!  (And it was the absolutely perfect switch for me as well!)

Clara plugging away on her workbooks.  One of her very favorite pasttimes is cutting with scissors! Once she's worked in a workbook about 100 times over then she cuts things out of it, haha!  Her new preschool class is play-based so there's no worksheets there.  But Clara enjoys writing, coloring, and cutting so much she definitely spends enough time at home on it!

Always a sweet and helpful sister!

Here's the recording of Clara's 5-year-old interview.  She's so quiet in it!  Clara is sweet and shy but can also be very wild and rambunctious.

About Clara at 5 Years Old:

Height: 44 1/2 '' (85th%)

Weight: 39 lbs. (45th%)

Favorites: Being included by her big brother in whatever he's up to, playing pretend anything (neighbors, doggies, veterenarian, etc, as long as someone's playing it with her!), singing and dancing, making & eating treats, watching shows (some favorites are Sofia the First, True and the Magic Kingdom, and Julie's Greenroom.), cutting with scissors, seeing real babies, and reading with Mom.

Unfavorites: Sitting down to eat at the table, being told to go to the bathroom (that girl will almost always say she doesn't have to go!), brushing her teeth, staying in her own bed, letting go of her paci

**Finally stopped having accidents at 4 1/2!  Still wears a pull-up at night though (and definitely needs it!)

At Clara's 5-year-old check-up she had to have shots.  She became INCREDIBLY worked up and was thrashing around and screaming as I was holding her and two nurses were trying to give the shots.  She ended up pulling on nurses's shirt and yanking off the other's glasses!  It was awful!  We finally had to lay her down on the table while another doctor came in to help hold her down.  I felt so sad for her that she took it so hard, and of course felt terrible for the way she treated the nurses.  When we went home I talked to her about it some more and she felt sorry for the way she acted.  She made an apology card and we picked up some Starbucks giftcards to give to the nurses.  What an ordeal!

This past winter I signed Clara up for her first dance class!  It was called "My First Dance," and was for children ages 2-5.  There were about 6 kids in the class, held one morning a week for 6 weeks.  The teacher, Miss Jennifer, is very sweet and patient with the children, and it's a very happy and fun atmosphere.  It wasn't really learning to dance, just making movement to music, which Clara still absolutely loved!  We signed her up to do another dance class by the same teacher, this time a hip-hop class.  I love giving Clara a chance to participate in something she loves so much, and that we have the time to do that now before full-time school in the fall.

Clara went through a phase (at least a few months long) where she was OBSESSED with hugging people!  Anywhere/everywhere we'd go she would go up to strangers even and latch onto them!  It was insane!!  I was watching a boy and girl Eli and Clara's age through the fall, and she would hardly let them play while they were here because she'd hold on to them so tight.  She'd do the same with kids at church, and every time we'd visit Eli at school for lunch/recess or events she'd try to latch on to every 2nd grader.  They named her the Hug Machine!  Hugging strangers was the most frustrating and worrisome.  She was like a magnet, no matter how much I'd pry her off people and tell her to keep her hands to herself or to just hug me, she'd stick to them even harder!  I remember waiting in line for an hour to get into the Headless Horseman event at Conner Prairie.  David was still at work so I had to wait with all 3 kids.  Clara would NOT stop running off to hug some kids that she had decided she was attached to.  It was so embarrassing!  I'm not sure how the phase passed, but thank goodness that it did!

We were watching a little boy from church who loves safety helpers.  He came wearing his own police uniform and we have the exact same one.  So both he and Clara were police officers and played all kinds of imaginary scenarios with Grammie, who was visiting that day and was a great sport.

While Clara is generally very cheerful, she can also be very fussy and sensitive, bawling at the drop of a hat!  While temper tantrums have never been her issue like they were for Eli, meltdowns definitely are.  Thankfully they aren't too frequent, as long as we try to keep those triggers (sleep and eating) level.

Clara loves pretending to be a mama!  She has several baby dolls and enjoys carrying them around in her mini carseat or putting them to bed in their cradle.

I'll do more about winter in another post, but am including this one short video of Clara sliding down her snow pile like a penguin.

Clara's been asking for a sister lately.  I feel a little sad when I tell her we aren't having more kids, but she makes the best of things by playing with her brothers.  I tried to tell her that one day her brothers will get married and then she WILL have sisters with their wives.  But that conversation was way too confusing for her to comprehend.  :)

A funny thing about Clara is that for many months she has randomly brought up her worries in who she should marry!  When she's feeling extra love for one of us in our family she'll say she wants to marry that person.  Of course we tell her you have to marry someone you aren't already related to, and it has to be a boy (because she's brought up wanting to marry her buddies from school, too).  A couple different instances months apart she had a lightbulb moment where she finally figured out who she would marry!  (One time was a boy from church, Calvin.  Another was her friend's younger brother, James. Haha)  I have no idea where all these marriage worries come from!

Dress-up time with Little Brother.

 

Here's videos of Clara's hip-hop class.  She had a grand time!  Ezra wanted so badly to join her on the dance floor!

How much I would miss if we didn't have such a sweetheart girl as Clara is!  Her joy and delight in all of the small and simple things in life help us all to feel more love and gratitude.