Sofia at 61/2!

Sofia is growing up fast, and is now 54 lbs and is 50 1/2 inches tall! She still loves and prefers wearing dresses or skirts to pants and really loves wearing pjs around the house. She loves staying home and playing and is still great at coming up with stories while she plays. Her favorite toys to play with are her toy horses and the new knock-off American Doll horse that we bought at Target (Olivia has her "Papa Neigh" which is an older model American Girl horse and they are continually fighting over it). She'll set up the horses' barn and jumps and make up all sorts of stories about what they are doing. She just recently started playing once again with her Thomas Trains after her friend Ansley's little brother was playing with them during piano lessons on Tuesday. I left the box of trains out and she's now spending all of her time setting up track, telling stories of Thomas, Edward and James and her newest fun is to play with the Thomas Train set Tidmouth Shed with turntable, which I've actually had in Olivia's closet for the past year after buying it for $30 at TJ Maxx. I bought it originally thinking of giving it to Sofia at her birthday, but after it was clear that she wasn't interested in trains anymore, I thought we could give it as a gift. Now, I'm glad I forgot about it and she can play with it. It's so great that she's interested in trains again!

Sofia recently had her friend Emma over for a play date and after playing horses, Sofia went over to her train track and immediately started moving her trains around and telling some sort of complex story. Her friend just sat there looking at her, not entirely sure what to do. We love that she's got such a great imagination and hope she keeps it forever!

Sofia loves First grade and adores her teacher, Mrs. Schultz. She's a great student and routinely gets 10/10 on her spelling tests, even though I've only gone over the list with her once. I actually didn't even know they had spelling tests on Fridays until months into school. She is a fantastic reader and still loves her Magic Tree House books as well as Amelia Badelia. She really loves reading and usually after we read her a few books before bed, she'll stay up and read a few extra chapters in her Magic Tree House book. During recess, she likes to play "fairies" with her friend Kelly or Emma and she said that they make little fairy homes and then clear away all the other kids' footprints because fairies won't come to the house if they see people footprints. Sometimes she plays horses with her friends too.

She finally is getting used to riding her bike and will ride it to our favorite place, Hidden Lakes which is probably a 2 mile round trip. Her bike still has training wheels on, but I think they could likely be removed soon. She has said she wants to ride her bike to school with Olivia and me, but I'm not sure we want to welcome that option since she's never biked and had to deal with streets and cars. Sofia has piano lessons on Tuesdays and we have been taking them with her friend Ainsley and her instructor Sven comes either to our house or theirs for the lesson. On Wednesdays after school, Sofia has tennis lessons which she doesn't ever want to go to, but once she's there, she loves it. Usually after her lesson with Coach Brian, she tells me that she wants to start playing three times a week! By the next week, I have to bribe her to go to tennis. Soon, her soccer will start again and she'll have tennis on Mondays, piano lessons on Tuesday and soccer on Wednesday.

Ultimately, Sofia prefers to stay at home and play over just about everything offered, but she loves play dates and we've been meeting her school friend Kelly at our local park on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, which is really fun. We've also been going to the gym's indoor pool, which she often doesn't want to do, but once we are there she loves it. She pretends she's a dolphin and swims back and forth the length of the pool telling some sort of story to no one in particular. She also loves going down the slides.

Our big girl!

Can't believe how big she is!

Our sweet girl!

Sisters

Playing with her trains