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.

Sleep Over

Tori has been invited to a birthday sleepover this weekend. No doubt she will wake up early on Saturday morning and drive us all crazy waiting for 5 o’clock to roll around. It is at the babysitter’s house with her granddaughters whom Tori adores. Now that they are all in school, at different schools with different schedules, the girls do not get to see each other much. So, this is a BIG deal, and Tori is sure to remind us of that. We have already gone shopping, and Tori found Kylee a Monster High doll and journal. We've got it wrapped and ready to go. I am sure she will bring some other Monster High dolls with her so they can all play.

Tornado Tori

Tori can be quite the tornado, destroying her room in minutes. She loves to pull out almost everything she owns and create houses, towns, etc. There will be piles all over her floor, and because her room is so small, it is difficult to walk around without tripping on something. Some days I am fine with the mess. Other days I get fed up with falling on stuff. Last night I had had enough, and amazingly, Tori cleaned up her room without complaint. And, she did a great job! She put things away rather than stuffing them under something else. Now I can get in there with the vacuum cleaner.

Meltdown Over Videos

We’re getting ready for a yard sale in May, and last night, I sorted through items and priced them. Of course, I had to ask the kids about some of the items I had pulled. Tori was good about everything but some DVDs. She had a cow when we asked her to look at those and go through them. The tears flowed, too much, so I told her to leave it be. She could keep them all. She settled down, and before I knew it, she had gone through her collection of videos and pulled some really old ones that she had no desire to see. Then she was off and running, helping me to separate all of the toys into bags and price them.

In spite of her occasional meltdowns, Tori has really blossomed this year. She is a bit ahead at school and is starting to move into older things. Her current favorite is Monster High. The dolls resemble Barbie dolls in size but come from monsters, like Dracula and Frankenstein, hence Draculaura and Frankie Stein. Her favorite is Laguna Blue, daughter of a sea monster. She also likes Ghoulia Yelps, a zombie who does not talk. She has several of the dolls, plus the school. She has also turned her dollhouse-shaped bookshelf into a Monster High home, complete with Abby Abominable’s bed.

As for the LaLaLoopsys, well, they have kind of been put on the back burner. We are not sure if she has tired of them and is past them, or will return to them this summer. She has them all still, many undressed, so maybe one day she will play with them and her Loving Family dollhouses again.

Big Sister

Eli had a rough night yesterday, but lucky for him, Tori was there. She has been his buddy lately, and when he came downstairs crying about feeling so lonely upstairs, she went up and sat with him. She watched a movie with him and stayed with him until he fell asleep. What a lucky boy to have a good big sister to watch over him. Good thing Tori will still be around at school next year. Christian is off to middle school, and Tori will be in third grade and ready to pave the way for Eli. Eli knows it and even mentioned to me that Tori could help him at school in the bathroom—well, not exactly, but at least he knows his sister will be there.

Sleep Over

Tori loves sleep over's.  A few weeks ago, she was invited to 2 sleep over's in 1 weekend.  Unfortunately, she was too tired after the first sleepover to go to the 2nd.  We rescheduled the 2nd and now Tori is returning the kindness having Shaylee stay the night on Friday night.  

Tori is already making plans on what they will be playing, but she's constantly changing her mind.  The girls love playing together and they love playing with the cats together.  Squeaker and Jr. better hide away.  

Hopefully the girls will sleep in.  We plan on taking them to Jillian's to play games and lunch on Saturday before we take Shaylee home.  Tori will need the time to recuperate and need the extra sleep.  

Doll World

 Tori ended up with a lot of dolls, Monster High dolls and LaLaLoopsy dolls. She has 61 mini LaLas, 24 big LaLas and a dozen or so Monster High dolls. Somehow we managed to find a place for all of her dolls, but it was not easy. She has been playing with them for days, taking them to and from the sitter’s. The dolls are getting one heck of a workout.

Box Girl

With the holiday season here, we have received a lot of packages recently. The kids tear into them, and then Tori likes to collect the boxes. She colors on them, glues things to them and uses them for her dolls. Right now, she has a stack of boxes higher than her head. We've had some clashes over the boxes, mainly me needing them and her not wanting to give them up. I took one box, and that led to a big fit and timeout for Tori. With Christmas coming up and Santa watching, she has decided that she will let go of the boxes very soon in order to make way for toys.

Speaking of Santa watching, we have been reminding the kids of that often. The tactic does not work on Christian. He knows who Santa really is. It does work on Tori and Eli, very well in fact. Last night, the two were fighting upstairs when we reminded them that Santa was watching. Tori was mumbling something about refusing to play some game with Eli. Huts yelled out Santa was watching, and we heard this exasperated groan, followed by “Dang it!” We burst out laughing, and it was some time before we heard any further grumbling.