Little Entrepreneur

Ally was selling Girl Scout cookies in our neighborhood this week. It was pick up cookies day and the adult volunteers set up a table outside for the girls to sell to people walking by.

Ally with her Daisy pinafore on over her coat - it was a FREEZING cold night. That is Stella next to her - Stella is holding her uniform - it was not ready to be worn yet - she just got hers.

Ally giving this nice woman her cookies.

It was really fun. I have such strong memories of selling cookies as a brownie and a girl scout.

Ally and the other girls got really into it calling out "want to buy some cookies" and we sold quite a few boxes. Frankly its hard to resist 5 year old girls on a cold night all giggly and shy-smiley selling yummy cookies.

Here is Ally in her pinafore at home - this was taken just before we left.

Love

Ally now likes to make us cards or notes. Sometimes she does that at school and brings them home. This was for MAMA

It says i LV WO (I love you)

Kiss for mama

kiss for Ally

And silly scary Ally pose for mommy's camera!

Fabulous Day

Today was the "Mini Olympics" at gymnastics. Ally was a bit nervous about it since she has missed the last 2 weeks of classes while we were in Florida. But wow did she rally and she was AMAZING. Her teacher was thrilled - and told us we need to have an audience for Ally every week!

Here she is with 2 other girls from her class waiting for their turn to perform. The way the program works is the younger (or more inexperienced) go first and then they work their way up. Ally's class is the highest level for this time slot, which meant they were last. I imagine she had no nails left to bite by the time it was her turn to perform.

Here she is on the bar. She did the hip circle and forward roll ALL BY HERSELF. This is so huge. Her teacher could not contain her excited and said to the girl after Ally "she just did all by herself". Jenn - her coach spotted her a bit on the first circuit and the the second time it was all just spotting and Ally did the entire thing with her own body and momentum. We've watched the video a bunch of times already and Ally is so proud of herself - she gets a huge smile and she told me the first time we watched "I like this one best (the 2nd time)...I did it all by myself." Such a big grown up girl.

I did take a video of the whole thing on our better camera and Becky took these on Ally's camera so we would have some pictures for the blog. I can't seem to get video up loaded well on the blog. If I did not send you the link to the video and you want to see it leave a comment or email and I'll share the video.

On the beam.

jumping to a handstand position

This is Ally's class - one girl was missing - but yes this is who she practices with every week. And the two girls on the right are 9 years old. I think the blonde girl is 6.

Another great thing is that Ally's friend River from our neighborhood group has his class at the same time as Ally and her performed today as well. Ally thought that was neat since they also did the year end show together last June. Friends are such a good thing.

After the program ended they had a short practice. Here she is waiting for her turn on the tumble track where at the end her coach helps her do a front handspring.

the handspring Ally was so thrilled she skipped all the way back to do it again

Then it was on to the big beam. Look at our big girl all by herself on the tall beam.

Ally reminds me its not the really tall beam - the regulation one is about 6" higher.

It was really great - we got to stay in the gym the whole time and could really see what she does.

After class - with her ribbon for taking part in the Mini Olympics

Ally took our picture

Then it was on to celebration time. We asked Ally this week what she wanted to do after gymnastics to celebrate her Olympics. She thought about it a lot a couple times and finally said "cupcakes". Because of course celebration requires cupcakes.

Becky and I thought too and came up with a few more ideas. Here is our day:

We went to the movies - we saw S.ecret World of Arietty - I highly recommend it. Ally is sitting with her "Booey Bear" Grandma Barbie gave her this red bear for Valentine's Day and Ally named it "Booey". He joined us for the post gymnastics celebration.

After the movie it was off to Ally's pick of restaurant for lunch - Panera of course.

We stopped at the toy store and then it was to a local cupcake bakery for cupcakes.

At the toy store Ally got a new book - its an I Can Read book and it turns out Ally can read a lot of it!

She was so tired she fell asleep in the car on the way home.

But when she woke up it was time to eat our cupcakes. We each picked out own flavor. Ally's was vanilla with white butter cream frosting. Mine was chocolate with chocolate frosting.

Ally loved hers

She ate every bite.

Becky's was a mocha-cino cupcake - and she ate every bite as well.

This afternoon at home we did some crafts, played with the dollhouse, and enjoyed quite time together as a family.

What a great day.

Birthday Party #3

So this post is almost a month late so I dated it correctly to post.

Ally attended a Yoga Birthday Party.

The whole class was invited and I would say all of the girls and a few boys attended.

Ally in position - I have no idea what that pose is called.

eating cupcakes with her friends

On the way home I brought 2 other friends home - yes 3 kids in my Civic - I was impressed with the capacity of the backseat.

Adalis, Grant and Ally - they had so much fun.

When we got home Ally and mama played together.

Ally had an imaginary game about insects and queens. It was all very complicated.

Then Becky decided to bake pies - but not a big pie, rather small individual serving pies. They made mixed berry pies.

Florida - quick post

I took 299 pictures and 7 videos this past week on vacation in Florida. It was great. We had amazing weather, a wonderful time and basically it was was everything I could have hoped a vacation could be. I have several posts planned for different aspects of the trip. But I thought I'd start with a quick summary.

Our first day at the beach. It was actually quite cold at the beach - windy. So windy one day we tied our kite to my beach chair and it stayed in the air un-assisted until we got cold an hour later and headed back to the house.
Ally played on her leapster a lot this trip. She kept saying her bed was cozy and enjoyed having time to herself there playing.

She started the week in a life jacket or with her noodle in the pool.

I am SUPER proud to say I went for a walk every morning - that is 7 days of vacation and I walked with Ally in the stroller every single day at least 45 minutes and sometimes we were gone for 90 minutes! It was great.

One night we played shuffle board.

Ally asked to go back to the Jungle Gardens - we visited there 2 years ago.

"The bird restaurant" is a must do. Another fun part of the trip was that Aunt Martha was there all week and Uncle Phil for part of the week.

We went to a state park and took a boat tour to see alligators and other wildlife.

Uncle Phil, Ally, Becky and I all climbed up the observation tower.

Here is Ally wearing her goggles and diving for coins was a favorite activity as was counting our fingers underwater.

Towards the end of the week Ally was leaping into the pool.

You'd think Ally was the bride in this picture but she's not. My cousin Katy is getting married in May and last year when she went dress shopping I ordered T shirts for her, my mom and my Aunt. Katy's of course says Bride. But these two just had to wear matching T shirts one day.

Ally just had such a great time every day on this vacation.

The last night we walked down to the beach to try and catch the sunset. It was cloudy and so not really possible to see the sun set but we had fun any way.

Hair Woes

Hair has been a huge battle for us lately. Well as huge a battle as anything ever is with Ally. Frankly I think we're so spoiled with how easy going Ally is that what would be a non-issue for other families is an issue for us.

A few months ago Ally decided she wanted to grow her hair longer. Her 2 best friends have school have really long hair, this fall I let my hair grown long again. And I think she wanted to be more like "everyone else". We cautiously agreed. It is her hair and her head. But we had one big caveat - long hair means you have to wear it back. Pulled back in ponytails, barrettes, braids, something.

For a while she would put a bow in for school and then take it out when she got there and put it in her backpack - she did this daily for a while. When I asked why she told me she was afraid it would fall out.

I've shown a few posts of the cute braids we worked on in January.

The kicker was gymnastics - its policy to have long hair pulled back out of your face.

One week I put Ally's hair - the front / top section in a pony tail. She freaked. On the way to the gym she would not stop talking about how nervous she was, how she just did not like looking different, that she was afraid it would hurt when she did her tricks etc. We talked about it and how long hair meant pulled back. We got there and there were tears - lots of tears. I finally asked her coach if she had to have it pulled back. Her coach said Ally's hair was not that long and that if Ally did not really want it back it was OK as long as it did not bother her. So we took out the pony tail.

Then I took a video at gymnastics of her doing their floor routine. After every trick she pushes it out of her face!

At our last Guatemala Girls group the other moms gave Becky and I a tutorial on french braiding so we could french braid Ally's hair.
The next week Becky worked hard on braids:


Mama in deep concentration while Ally watched TV before gymnastics.

But it was a repeat of anxiety in the car. We offered bribes for her to keep them in:

A new toy at Target

A trip to get ice cream

Another treat of her choosing

But she was "too nervous" and "worried" about it.

We explained that she could take them out, but if she did then she was getting her hair cut short again.

Becky went in with her and reported that there were tears again and so she helped Ally take out the braids and come her hair back to normal.

This was Saturday.

On Monday I made a hair appointment with our stylist Feri and brought Ally in after school on Tuesday and here she is:

New (old) back to short haircut!

Ally and I talked about it on Monday and again on Tuesday before the hair cut.
I was pretty stunned at the level of anxiety she had for looking different (hair pulled back) - such a high level - that she chose the consequence (short hair) without any complaint at all.
I suspect she really does enjoy having short hair and so that is part of it - the desire for long hair just wasn't as strong as the desire to look like "herself".
And to be honest - this is Ally - she typically takes the consequences well - she may not always like the choices and will sometimes say "I don't like those choices" but she does comply with making one and almost always adheres to the program.