Pierced!

For Makayla's 6th birthday we promised her that she could get her ears pierced. It's the one thing that I've been putting off since she was born. I had really hoped to do it when she was a baby...then put it off...then when she was under a year I wanted to..but she was in daycare and my fear of another baby yanking at her ears and ripping out the earring made me worried...so I waited. Then I wanted to do it when she was a toddler, but I figured that she might be the one to yank at her ears...so I waited. Then when she was 5 I thought about it, but if she was going to play soccer I didn't want her to have to take them out...so I waited. Six seemed to be the *perfect* age...so I asked her if she wanted to...instant YES!!

So it was supposed to be for her birthday...and here it is almost the end of July, BUT she is still six...so that counts...right?

We took her this last Friday to the mall and she was so excited. She had to wait until I got home from work. That's all she talked about to Brandon all day. He thought that he was going to get his ears done also and got quite upset when she told him it was only going to be her. Mike had to keep reminding him that boys don't get their ears pierced (although Makayla kept correcting Mike and told him that she has seen boys with pierced ears -- who she is talking about we have no clue). When I got home from work was the first time she asked..."Is it going to hurt?" I couldn't lie, so I said yes, a little...okay so it was tiny white lie.

So we were off...to the mall...to pierce my precious baby girl's ears. So sad. We got to the mall and I had already gone online to see our earring choices and knew what I wanted. I told Mike that she would probably want the Hello Kitty studs, which she did and which we cleverly steered her away from. We (meaning ME) chose a lavender daisy stud (she wanted the rainbow daisy stub)...um...I won no doubt!

(before )

She practically jumped up into the chair and waited for the lady. The lady marked her ears and Makayla squealed with excitement! Then both ladies came at her with the guns, I think that stopped the excitement.



They did it quickly, she jumped a little and her face turned white and she looked in shock. Poor girl, she held back her tears and I quickly tried to stoop in to redirect her thoughts from the pain to the prettiness of the earrings. It shocked her for maybe a couple of minutes, but she was back to herself in the Claire's store...asking for every.single.item in the store.


so pretty!!! - she is still in shock! ;0)


So now she LOVES having her earrings and loves to tell me that she is six now and has pierced ears. Oh boy!

Kindergarten...what? where?

Kindergarten? Over???? Already? How did this happen?


I was just crying a year ago about how my little baby was starting Kindergarten and how life would now be spiraling!

{first day of Kindergarten - August 2010}

Boy was I right! It's over...her Kindergarten year is actually....over. *tear* She LOVED Kindergarten, she LOVED her teacher, it was a great experience all around. I was scared that the kids would be mean to her...those kids are all little too, I guess I forgot that! She met some really great kids and I'm excited to see them all grow up together. Her friend Kiersten aka Kiki from preschool got to be in her class this year so that made me very relieved that she would know and have a friend on her first day of school.

She learned and absorbed so many wonderful things and it was so fun to hear some things that would just pop out of her mouth. My favorite was when we had rainy weather she would say "inclimate weather" because that's what her teacher would call their schedule for that day since they had to on the "inclimate weather schedule."

She learned how to read and write, stretch out words to read or spell them. She's done a great job trying to stretch out words and write letters to people or make a pretend shopping list. She adds and subtracts and we practiced rhyming words all the time.

They had a clip system and we would ask her everyday if she had to move her clip. If she moved it up to blue, it meant she got a "blue ticket" to put in for the treasure box. If she stayed on green that was good, if she had to move it to yellow she got a warning, orange was a note home and red was a visit with the principal. She moved to yellow maybe a handful of times and to orange once! For playing in the bathroom! Go figure. Other than that she was good. I just loved how she would spill her beans if we forgot to ask her about the clip. All of a sudden she would say "I think I moved my clip down today" then I would have to prod the information out of her. And if she wasn't up to confessing right away I would just say my magic sentence..."Then I'll just have to ask Mrs. Perez-Anderson what happened." Boy did that ever work! She knew that I "worked" with her teacher and that I would ask her what happened, so I usually got all the info I needed in seconds.

She had homework that had to completed daily and turned in every Friday, was that ever stressful! Sometimes I couldn't even figure out the answers...to much creativeness for my wee brain! :)

Overall, she grew a lot and is very much ready to be a 1st grader! They even got to pretend to be 1st graders and play on the 1st grader playground. That was a BIG deal that last week of school.



{Last day of school with Mrs. Perez-Anderson - June 2011}

Drive Safe-a-lee

Makayla has the sweetest heart and says the most sweetest things sometimes. For about a year she says to me every morning..."Drive safe-a-lee Mommy." Every-single-morning! It's very cute and at first I wasn't quite sure she even knew what she was saying. She must have picked it up from someone. AND, what made it cuter was if she thought she had forgotten to tell me while I was still in the house, she would run out to the garage to tell me again.

She got in the habit of telling me and Mike to drive safely before he left for school during the evenings and for me going to work. Then when Mike's parents were watching the kids for us during Mike's externship, she would tell her Grandma and Grandpa to drive safely every evening when I got home from work and they left.

The other day, the kids were playing in the pool we had set up and I was watching them while Mike went on a run. Makayla comes to me and asks where Mike went and I told her that he went running, she asked me..."did you tell him to run safe-a-lee?" How cute!