six years of mae

Happy 6th birthday, Mae!

It has been amazingly fun watching this kiddo grow over the last year. She just continues to become smarter, sillier, and more fun every day!

Mae has been trying out some new activities recently. She just finished up her first season of track and field! We had so much fun watching her track meets and cheering for her in the 50m, 75m, 4x100m relay, softball throw, and long jump! She even brought home a first place ribbon in the 75m! She put her best effort into every race, and is so proud of her ribbons! All of us, especially Colin, loved yelling "GO MAE GO MAE GO MAE!" at the meets!

She has also mastered her front and back rolls and is hard at work on her cartwheel in gymnastics. We pump ourselves by shouting affirmations in the car on the way there, focusing on trying our best and keeping our bodies healthy!

She thrived in kindergarten this year. She loves reading, and her favorite book series are Owl Diaries/Unicorn Diaries, Narwhal and Jelly, and Catstronauts. She is constantly quizzing us on math problems of increasing difficulty (adding 2-digit numbers and simple multiplication). She loves showing off her school worksheets to us every evening, and she's been very eager to work on each of the little homework projects she's brought home throughout the year.

She loves her little brother and proudly shows him off to everyone at school and on the playground. They love jumping off the couch, rolling around on my bed, and just generally increasing the level of chaos in the house together. Nobody... NOBODY makes Colin laugh like Mae does.

Her sense of humor is a fine balance between silly kindergarten-level knock-knock jokes and surprisingly dry wit. I recently introduced her to the "cube rule of food," and she successfully used it to defend her position that quesadillas (with a folded tortilla) are technically a taco and therefore an acceptable dinner on Taco Tuesday.

I have loved walking her to school in the mornings. We pretend that the school is a sunken pirate ship and use our imaginations to create a whole underwater world around it (light posts = jellyfish, grass = kelp, SUVs = whales). I could play this game every morning and not get tired of it. Good morning, glowy jellyfish lamps!

Her favorite foods are hot dogs, pizza, and spaghetti. She still loves Octonauts, but has been watching more Bluey and Magic School Bus recently. She loves the music from Encanto, but her favorite movie is still Totoro. We are in a classic parent-child battle over these "Brain Break" videos she likes to watch on YouTube, which she loves and I hate (for no reason other than I am an old, crotchety mom). She is still adamant that she will be a zookeeper when she grows up, and relates all life skills and schoolwork to how necessary they will be when she is a zookeeper.

It was a busy weekend leading up to her birthday. Friday evening, Mae and I ran a 5k as a fundraiser for her school. Saturday she attended a birthday party for a girl down the street. (Her first drop-off party. She was SO EXCITED to go without us, and even asked if she could walk to the party by herself while I watched from the yard. She turned back to wave and give me the thumbs up every 10 steps, the whole way there.) Sunday we had a little picnic for Mae at the playground, complete with pizza and cupcakes. We had lots of fun visiting with friends and family! Today she took cookies to share with her class, and we had dinner at the Mexican restaurant so she could order her favorite quesadilla (see above regarding quesadillas, tacos, and Tuesdays).

Thanks for being such an amazing kid, Mae! We cam't wait to see what the next year brings for you!