Highlights of Eliana's summer

Eliana had a busy summer this year.  She started kindergarten in August, so I feel like she did a lot of growing up this summer.  Time sneaks up on you.  I blinked and she has grown up into this wonderful, smart, loving young lady.  Remember when she was just a baby sharing our room in our one bedroom apartment in Fountain Square? Or when she was little and refused to ride in the stroller and tried to walk everywhere? Or when she was a defiant toddler and hated naps so she would make huge messes in her room during "quiet time"?  And now she is a big sister twice over, riding the bus to school, able to swim across the pool, and reading chapter books.  When did she become this big little person?

This picture is from our parish picnic.  Eliana has always wanted to have her whole face painted like this (they offer this at the zoo but I have never let her do it). She was so excited to be a cat.  She asked me to take this picture of her growling.  This picture is more significant though because it is the last one with all of her baby teeth!

Later that evening, with her face freshly washed, Eliana lost her first tooth!  She couldn't wait to put the tooth under her pillow.

Missing tooth selfie

This summer Eliana had her first sleepover.  She has probably been asking for the past year if she could have so-and-so over for a sleepover (boys and girls).  I finally agreed that she could have Adele over to spend the night.  Sometimes I feel like Adele could be her sister, they are so close.  Plus she lives down the street so if there were any issues in the middle of the night, her parents were close by.  Eliana had some very elaborate plans for the sleep over including camping in the back yard and roasting marshmallows on a fire.  In the end, they painted, played dress up, watched a movie, made s'mores in the toaster oven, and ended the night with a tea party at 10pm.  

 The girls slept in the basement on the pullout couch.  At 4am, I heard footsteps and got up to find a tearful Adele wandering the hallway.  I asked what was wrong, and she told me that she couldn't find Eliana.  I took her back down stairs and we looked together.  I found Eliana sound asleep on the floor right next to the couch.  She apparently rolled off the couch and didn't even notice haha.  Adele felt better that her friend was still in the basement and was able to go back to sleep.  Just until 6am... They were some tired girls the next day!

We went to a park the morning after the sleepover.

 Eliana also participated in Safety Town this summer. This is a two week class for kids entering kindergarten to teach them about safety related to things like bike riding, swimming, riding the school bus, weather safety, gun safety, stranger danger, don't do drugs, etc.  Eliana had a ton of fun and has now become my safety patrol when it comes to crossing the street or wearing a bike helmet. She is pictured above at her Safety Town graduation.  I thoroughly enjoyed Safety Town because Eliana took the afternoon session and, amazingly, almost every day that she was in class, her two younger siblings napped at the SAME TIME.  That meant two hours a day to myself!  I took naps, cleaned the house, folded laundry... you know, Mom Fun.  Awesome!

Eliana was in class with Adele.  Will and Hannah joined in for graduation.

Laney had such a fun time at Eliana's graduation ceremony that she couldn't even stay awake that evening to finish her dinner.

Shortly after Eliana lost her first tooth, a second one right next to it got loose. Now she has lost two teeth!

Eliana has been very excited about her tooth fairy money.  In fact, when she lost her second tooth, she had me help her write a note to the tooth fairy to tell her how much she loves her.  Eliana is just starting to grasp the concept of money and getting to use it to buy the things we want.  She took her money to Target and was very excited to pick a Unicorn out of the bargain area at the front of the store.  We had to have a long discussion about how she could afford the unicorn but not the big doll house in the toy section.  She said, "you can just buy it with your credit card!" so I had to explain that the card was not magic and that I had to have actual money to pay the bill for the things we buy with the credit card.  Definitely a tough concept for a little girl to grasp.  Now if someone asks what she spent her tooth fairy money on, she tells them that she gave it to Mommy to pay the bills at the bank!  Hopefully no one thinks we are desperate for money and having to ask for a loan from Eliana!