Fiona is Seven. And a Half

Fun fact: In June, my blog will be eight. Want to know how I know that (besides the fact that I can just look at the archive on the side)? Because Fiona was seven and a half this week. Which means she is now closer to eight than she is to seven. EIGHT! Yikes!

Seven has been a bit of a bumpy year for Fiona. She has a lovely teacher at school who is very by-the-book and expects the class to run that way. That’s just not Fiona’s style. She’s incredibly smart, but her focus wanders and the stories in her imagination simply pull her away from math worksheets and spelling words. This has translated to a bit of a confidence hit, as well as a dramatic uptick in sassiness and defensiveness. With some adjustments to our expectations at home and her realization that she is not going to be punished for having a “yellow” day, we’ve settled in enough that we should be able to ride out the school year. 

However, reading confidence is increasing and she is becoming quite the voracious reader. Turns out, reading is more interesting when you know more words and the story is good. We currently have three different chapter books at various stages of completeness spread across our living room [plus my book, Dec's book, and Quinn's writing journal]. And while I don’t like clutter, I have been dealing just fine with that! She also informed me yesterday that she passed the reading level she needed to be able to check out chapter books from the library. Day was made!

She continues to be our perfectionist (I know. A daydreaming perfectionist! There are not a lot of parenting books on how to shape that personality ...). We are pushing her to test her limits and challenge herself without fear of failure. For example, she didn’t want to take the math tests at school to see if she would “exceed” grade level skills – because she might not. There is no punishment for not passing that test, so we are talking it up at home as worth trying – just to see where she is. We celebrate when she goes outside her comfort zone.

We also haven’t found her “thing” yet – the extracurricular activity that makes her incredibly excited. She likes skating, swimming, and gymnastics fine, but nothing has really clicked yet for her passion. I’m doing my best marketing to convince her to be a in community theater play this summer. We’ll see how good my skills are!

What we most want to remember about Fiona at this age is how she is the best blend of “kid” and “big kid.” She’s crossing that line into some serious big-ness … like walking over to friends’ houses alone across the big street (and Mike and I will stop watching out the window while she does ... soon). She loves snuggles, sings loudly in the shower, and is currently writing her own joke book. The first joke:

Knock Knock.
Who's there?
Cow.
Cow who?
Why do cows wear clothes? They don't.

It's probably going to be a bestseller.

**I would also like to note that I had to make her take a picture for this post because I have NO good pictures of her from the last few weeks (at least ones that I haven’t already shared). This goofy face stage ends – right?