The Lee Family: Sofia at 9 years old!

Our big girl is 9 years old and time seems to be zooming by! She's grown up so much in the past year and is now 55 1/4 inches tall and weighs 78.5 lbs. She is very tall for her age so she wears a size 10-12 clothes so her skirts are long enough. She loves wearing skirts with shorts in them and shirts with a design on them (a horse, birds, sequined star, etc). She pairs that all with her purple sparkle Crocs and glasses. She's pretty good at wearing her glasses, although she tends to take them off when she's reading. She also is so used to not wearing them that it doesn't seem to bother her when she forgets them at home, but she is wearing them more often than not lately. She also loves wearing her hair long down her back and she really does have beautiful hair with a slight wave to it and a lot of blonde streaks due to swimming and playing outside. Even with the heat of summer, she still prefers to wear her hair down.

Since school ended in June, she doesn't ride her scooter as often with Antonio and Brandon as she used to, but it's also pretty hot to be outside scootering around. She does meet up with them and play out front about once or twice a week and also has gotten into riding her bike. About a week ago, she suggested we ride our bikes to the park, which we did and then she wanted to ride bikes everywhere - lunch, the gym, the library, ice cream. Olivia hangs out in the bike trailer while Sofia and I pedal away. Sofia has become quite comfortable riding her bike now and has gotten pretty fast up hills. Her new bike is just what she needed and she's great at shifting gears. She isn't as interested in swimming as she was last summer, but has enjoyed going to the gym's pool and playing dragons with Olivia in the swim shelf area. Both girls have enjoyed watching How to Train Your Dragon episodes on Netflix and then pretend to be different kinds of dragons. Sofia has also created a bunch of different kinds of dragons that aren't in the series and they pretend being those too. She's drawn them out to "create cards" of each dragon and explains what they eat and different characteristics of them. When she does want to swim, she loves being invited over to Antonio's house, since they have a diving board. Of course, Antonio prefers coming over to use our slide so we've tried to switch back and forth when they've gotten together to swim.

Sofia still loves to read, although she keeps reading the Percy Jackson series over and over. This summer she has enjoyed The Secret Zoo, The Sisters Grimm, and the Emily Windsnap series, although she keeps coming back to read Percy Jackson. In the past month, she's also gotten into reading CK and my old Calvin and Hobbes books, which she loves to read out loud to me during her bedtime. I love it since they are so funny! She enjoys checking out books from the library to read to Olivia, which is great for both of them.

If asked, she says she wants to be a "dragon rider" when she grows up. Of course, when I point out that that may not be a profession in the future, she says she wants to be an author and a scientist although she isn't sure what kind yet. She also says she doesn't have a favorite color, but likes them all. Her favorite animals are horses, frogs and dragons and she still loves to cuddle and sleep with her lovey, Green Beup Beup. Her favorite foods continue to be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, oranges, watermelon, apples or apple sauce, and has specifically asked to have salmon, cauliflower and canned clementines for her birthday dinner. She also likes chicken and steak, sweet potatoes and broccoli, but still isn't a fan of salad. For breakfast she loves pancakes made into a "volcano" with "smoke" (whipped cream) and "lava" (syrup). She eats scrambled eggs, toast and cheese omelets as well as biscuits and loves bacon. Recently she has started to love root beer, which we let the girls have on occasion when we go out to dinner. Otherwise, she likes Ovaltine chocolate milk occasionally and water to drink. Her favorite shows include "How to Train Your Dragon" episodes as well as anything to do with dragons. She really loves dragons, unicorns, mermaids, and fantasy characters in the books she reads and shows that she watches.

She keeps saying she isn't excited for school to start, but I know she'll be happy to be back learning new things, being with her friends and getting back into the groove. As much as she loves just relaxing in the summer, sleeping in, swimming, playing and reading I know she also loves to learn and grow and school is a great opportunity to explore new ground. I intended to have her work on math and language arts during the summer, but I finally decided that she needed time just to be a kid and play. I hope she gets back into school and loves it and continues to learn new things as much as she's enjoyed the summer.

Sofia's perfect day would include her staying in her pajamas all day, playing with Olivia, painting, reading, eating pancakes for breakfast and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and maybe an ice cream or something for a sweet. She enjoys playing with friends, especially Brandon or Emma, but she's equally happy to stay home and play with her sister. Oftentimes she plays with Olivia even when she has friends over and sort of ignores her friends a little. I do love how much they get along, although I also want them to know that they need to play with friends if they have someone over. The girls do argue at times and fight, but not often really. Also, both girls really need to have time to themselves and like to play without the other nearly every day. We're lucky that they get along so well and love to be with each other and I hope their relationship just continues to grow us they get older.

Such a big girl!