All About Lily: Age 6 Edition!

Stats:
Weight: 43 lbs- 40th percentile
Height: 45.25 inches- 52nd percentile
vision- 20/25 in both eyes

Motor skills:
Fine motor- Lily is learning how to write sentances in school, including leaving appropriate amount of space between words and using punctuation. She has also conquered the lower case b and d- no longer reverses them, which was definitely a challenge! Lily's major triumph in the fine motor department this year, however, is finally learning to tie her shoes the "grown up" way- not the "bunny ears" way:)
Gross motor - Lily has really spent the majority of her free time mastering some cool skills over this past year. In order from first to last, she learned to ride a bike without training wheels, learned to go across the monkey bars, did her first cartwheel (Weeell, close enough), and just recently learned to jump rope(thanks, Grammy!)- double jump, single jump, forwards and backwards! Take a look!

What a show off;)

School skills:
The biggest achievement in this area, I would have to say, is that Lily went from basically sounding out words to really reading. Of course, she is reading beginning reader type books, but has really come a long way in her ability to more smoothly read and with real inflection- it's so cute! She is also learning to add, subtract, count by 10's, 5's and 2's, identify the name and value of coins, and tell time. I think one of the other important things she is learning is to manage her time so that she can get her work done on time- she's come a long way with this this year! Her teacher even recently told me that Lily moved her own desk to the wall one day so that she could concentrate and get her work done! Of course, the whole plan back fired as her school mates also thought this was a good idea and followed suit, creating a whole uproar, but that's a another story altogether. . .

Personality:
She's oh so friendly, sweet, and caring. Equally, she has her points throughout the day in which she is overly emotional and irrational- sometimes related to needing a snack, sometimes not. . . She can also be distractable and a bit spacey(I know, I know- the apple doesn't fall far from the tree), and finally, she is very competitive! Being distractable and competitive can, at times, be a bad combination. For example, her teacher tells me that Lily is almost always the first to (very emphatically and urgently) raise her hand to answer a question. However, after being called on, about half of the time Lily has to ask her what the question was- oh brother!

Favorite things:
Food: meal-pizza  vegetable- zuchinni  dessert-ice cream with chocolate topping
TV show: My Little Ponies (the new version)
Book: The Bible
color: purple
Song: America
Movie: The Search for Atlantis
What she wants to be when she grows up: chef/hair stylist

Favorite activities:
1. Playing outside with her best neighborhood buddy, Carly- Many, many, many hours have been spent together outdoors on bikes, on trampolines, jumping rope, playing 4 square, roller skating. . .  Interestingly, Carly (who is a year older than Lily) accomplished many of the same gross motor skills listed above just before Lily did. Coincidence? Definitely not! As soon as Carly mastered something new, Lily just about killed herself until she was able to do the same. Describing her as competitive is sort of an understatement!
2. Leap Pad (thank you Grandpa Bill!)- Well, lets see, she can take pictures, take video, make her own story book using her pictures or choose to illustrate it herself, take care of a virtual pet, play games, etc. The girl's in heaven! So much so that she burned through 4 AA batteries in less than 2 days- the one down side.
3. Arts and crafts- Lily still loves to draw, paint, and craft. She did a couple of really nice drawings of the Little Mermaid and Pocahontas earlier this year(see below), but she doesn't draw her usual princesses/barbie's nearly as much as she used to. This year, I'd say this has definitely been overshadowed by her new found passion for the first two favorites. Rather than draw pictures, she also recently loves to write little notes/cards to her family or friends and sign her name in cursive, which is basically just her name printed with a bunch curly cues added any and everywhere:)

What a great gal!