Hairspray Girl

Tori decided to let her bangs grow a bit so she can sweep them to the side. In the meantime, she has been training them with hairspray—loads of it. She puts on a headband, pushes her bangs over and sprays and sprays and sprays some more. She smells lovely and her bangs are extra crunchy, which causes her to play with them until they fall back into place on her forehead, I don’t know that we’ll ever get to the side swept bangs at this rate.

It's Official

Tori can swim. Saturday was her last swim class, and she swam, freestyle, on her own for several feet. She also passed everything else on the list. Now, all we need to do is get her some time to practice.

Tori also learned how to tie her shoe and ride her bike this summer. She is timid, but she can do it. And, she can now change her own earrings. Hooray, Tori!

Side Bangs

Tori is changing her hairstyle to sideswept bangs. I am supposed to get some hairspray and help her start pulling them over. I wonder how long this will last—as long as the nail polish on her fingers? That comes off pretty quickly.

Tori has grown up a lot this summer, doing more for herself and making her opinions better known. She can pretty much ride her bike and tie her shoes. She can change her earrings too. She can also make her bed and clean up her room when she feels like it. And, there is no need to help her in the bathroom anymore. She can care for her hair all on her own now.

My little girl is little no more!

Shocking! She's Ready

After a weekend of boys, Tori announced she was ready to go back to school. She can’t wait to see her friends and find out who her teacher will be. She is the only one of our three who is a returning student, so she does not have to attend registration. We are hoping they have the classroom assignments posted then anyway so we can see who will be her teacher. She has a two-in-three chance of getting a male teacher again. I think she is ready for that; in fact, she even mentioned she was hoping for Mr. Hagan, whom Christian had. We’ll see.

Tori has also started talking about middle school. We’ve told her that she is going to Mark Bills, and she is ok with that. She may even be looking forward to being at a different school than Christian. Anyway, she is already talking about walking home. I am not real keen on that idea, as it is about a mile away from our house and there could be bullies. We’ll see what happens. She still has two years to go!

Party Time

Last weekend was Tori’s party, and this weekend was her friend Dakota’s. They played together for three hours, doing crafts and swimming in the pool. Tori came home happy but exhausted and hungry. The snacks were good, but after all of that swimming, she needed more. We got her McDonalds and a yellow Minion and she scarfed most of it down. She was really tired this morning and stayed home too.

School is less than a month away. Only Tori can fit into her clothes from last year. We got her a few new shirts and are looking for shorts this weekend. She needs something she can fasten and unfasten with ease. They get short bathroom breaks, and the buttons on her short are just too tough for her little fingers to undo—mine too. Wish us luck shopping!

Birthday Party

Next weekend on our anniversary is Tori’s birthday party. Yes, we are late, way late. We had so much going on in June that we had to push her party to July. She is having three or four girls over, and most of them are staying the night. She asked us to plan the actually party—pizza, cake, gifts, water fun and shirts (decorating T-shirts), and then she is taking over. She has got lots of things in mind for the sleepover. Whether she will get to do any of them is another matter. She had things in mind last year, and the party took on a mind of its own that night. One little girl that is coming adores our cats, so watch out, Squeaker and Junior. Shaylee and Tori are coming for you!

Anyway, we are prepping for the party this weekend. We have to get the shirts and the decorating supplies. We also have to get some water guns. We already have bubbles, and the sprinkler, and the water balloons. We also have to get a cake next week. Lucky for us, Tori has had a cake already and is looking for anything special. We’ll pick up a sheet cake from Walmart or Kroger, and that will be that.

Uh-Oh

Tori got her ears pierced in May, and she finally got to change out her earrings this week. We started off fine, but now we may have a bit of a problem. She has been wearing larger earrings, in her sleep, and they appear to have irritated her ears. There was a bit of pus and blood this morning when we changed them. So, tonight, she is going to pull out her earrings before she showers and then douse them with peroxide. Then, we are going to pick out some smaller, flatter earrings that she can wear overnight. Hopefully we can get this irritation under control and avoid a trip to the doctor.

Tori still loves her earrings and she has mentioned getting her American Girl doll, Cory, earrings. I don’t know if the store pierces doll’s ears, but Tori seems to think so. At least we won’t have to worry about an infection with Cory’s ears.

Happy Birthday Tori!

Tori is 8 today. She had a celebration last week at Grandma and Grandpa’s house and came home with loads of goodies. She opened her presents from us last night. She already knew what they were. She has money to spend two weeks from now in St. Louis, and she is having a party on our wedding anniversary, July 12. She is psyched. She took donuts this morning for all the babysitting kids and she is eating at McDonalds—ugh—tonight. It's the birthday that never ends!

Too Busy To Care

Tori has been at her grandparents’ house in Kansas City all week long. While her brothers have taken the time to skype with us, she has generally been too busy, at least the first few nights. Huts saw her for a second on Monday night, a few minutes on Tuesday night and finally, a lot on Wednesday night. I am wondering if she is starting to feel a little homesick. She is having a great time with her cousins, but I bet she is starting to miss her room and friends here. She may even be missing her parents. She turns 8 on Monday, so that should give her something to look forward to.

Shopping For Clothes

We started packing for the kids’ visit to Grandma’s next week, and it became clear that Tori could use a few more clothes. She wears her clothes out faster than the boys—probably due to all of the changes. She has several shirts for hot days, but few for warm days. Tonight we are headed to Penney’s to see what we can find for her. We are also going to pick a few things for the boys, but they are not into the shopping, so it is up to us to choose for them.

Tori loves to shop but gets distracted easily. She likes to weave in and out of the clothes racks, picking out little. I will have to keep zeroing in her focus, else we will never get out of the store.

Sneaky

Like Christian, Tori came home with a backpack crammed with school supplies from the past year. Some were used, and some were not. Instead of showing us, however, she took everything upstairs and jammed it all into drawers. She loves to play school and thought she would use it all until we went through it. That’s when she found a lot of trash. We kept all of her old books and notebooks and tossed all of the scraps. She is all set for school with the girls this summer at the babysitter’s.

We discovered this week that Tori has a dentist appointment on the Saturday that was supposed to be the end of her sleepover birthday party. We are going to St. Louis the weekend after, so we decided to move the sleepover to July. It will be hotter then for better water fun, and that gives us more time to prepare—which is great because she has a lot planned.

Sparklers In Her Ears

Tori has been very busy as well, with the end of school approaching. She worked hard and made her AR goal, testing on two books in one day. She has been doing well on her spelling tests, acing some of them when I was certain she wouldn’t. She had fun on her field trip days--thanks, Annie for going. She is looking forward to third grade and being the big sister for Eli.

Tori has grown up a lot this year, and she just got her ears pierced to prove it. She was going to wait until her birthday, but we decided to just do it. She was very nervous of course, but there was no way she was leaving Claire’s until she got them done. She picked out birthstone earrings, held my hand and went for it. One ear, a minute or two, and then big tears. The other ear, and more tears. Two minutes later, the tears were gone and she was picking out earrings to wear six weeks from now. She loves her new earrings and her new jewelry box, and she, not me or Huts, has been caring for her ears. She is very careful with them and very diligent in washing them. The result? Her ears look good. Only five more weeks of diligent care. Then, we’ll see how careful she is with new earrings. Bet she loses a ton of them.

What A Mess

Tori can make a mess of her room in no time. Last night, her dad got tired of tripping and told her it was time to clean it up. Now, we’ll see if she listens. She has selective hearing and tends to forget the things she does not want to hear.

Tori has become a good reader, and she is inching closer to her AR goal. She thought she was done, but her teacher misread the report. She has 1.9 points to go, or 4 short books or 2 long books. I read a book to her this morning. Hopefully, she will take a test on it very soon. She seems to be liking the chapter books, so maybe she will bring home another one of those. She’ll get there.

22 Days and Counting

Tori started off this morning at school with a meltdown. She was tired physically and did not feel like she could bear another day of school. Lucky for her, she is in the home stretch. I reminded her there were just a few weeks left, and she smiled. Then, I told her to go show Ms. Lynn her latest boo-boo, a big red splotch on her forehead. She was zooming along yesterday on her scooter when she hit a bump and fell face first. Apparently, they were playing a game where they were running out of gas with zombies behind them. I felt bad for her, but at least it slowed them down.

The weekend went by fast. Tori played a lot with Eli outside and a lot with the kid next door. He is Christian’s age, but lately, they have been worlds apart. So, Tori plays with Matthew, looking at stuff on the iPads and playing games on the trampoline. Christian, it seems, has gotten too old for that. Eli also like to join them, shoving Matthew around and yelling at him like he was his brother.