B: 5 years old

 Brooklyn celebrated her 5th birthday this month. Because she shares it with my dad, we did a joint "party" for them in Spruce Grove while we were there for our mini family reunion. She wanted hot dogs and cupcakes, so we did a bbq, and she got to hang out with cousins, aunties, uncles, and grandparents. Then we finished the day at the park, to which she wore her new bathing suit and bright pink sunglasses. I'm a little sad I didn't get a picture of that part of the day.

We have yet to have a "party" or do her special "parent" date. However she has made her requests about me taking her to the pool (yay...) and having some friends go to an indoor playground here. Summer is hard though, so I'm not sure when that will happen!

Brooklyn 5th birthday interview

Favourite colour: purple, blue, and yellow and black and teal and golden and soover (silver) and rainbow and red and orange.

Favourite animal: zebra, owl, peacock (this was the first I've heard of any of this)

Favourite movie: Raya and the Last Dragon, Ariel (Little Mermaid), Elsa, Vivo

Favourite book: My new Superhero Girls book

Favourite food: McDonalds, pizza, noodles

Favourite thing about school: playing with the new toys, the fake hair salon

Favourite show: DC superhero girls

Favourite thing to do: play princess dollies, go to the pool, go to luv2play

What are you scared of: nothing, I just stay awake all the time

What would your superpower be? Lots of things-speed, strong, invisible, hearing seeing, rainbow

Favourite thing about being 4: let's not talk about that (I didn't think it was that bad of a year haha)

Most excited about being 5: I had the best birthday and going to kindergarten because there is lots of toys

Brooklyn is a highly sensitive, deeply feeling, and stubborn girl. When she's happy, she is the most polite, lovely, and kind little soul you'll ever meet. When she isn't, you had better pray you have nerves of steel, or that you succumb to a brief period of deafness. She gets frustrated very easily, and once she hits that slippery slope, no amount of nagging, negotiating, bribing, gentle parenting, validating...any other tried, true, or touted parenting technique can get her to cooperate or shift her mood. You often just have to weather whatever storm is about to hit and stick to your guns. A rhyme I've created and started saying to her is "When my inner beast begins to roar, I must count 1,2,3,4, four deep breaths to calm me down, turn my frown upside down."  It actually never works, and usually she just plugs her ears and yells "STOP!" or "BLAH BLAH BLAH" at me. But I do the 4 deep breaths, and it helps me stay calm, so I'm keeping it around haha. Plus, the kids have started to say it to each other when they see someone getting frustrated, more to annoy the other person than anything else, but maybe one day it will work😂

This year Brooklyn completed a year at french immersion preschool and picked up French quickly. She knows all her colours, some animals, and every day words like coat, shoes, chair etc. She practiced really hard to learn how to write her name.

She did swimming lessons and gymnastics and overcame her need to be glued to the teacher in the pool, gaining confidence to swim out on her own to retrieve toys her teacher would set out for them in deep water, while wearing a life jacket.

                    

Brooklyn loves to pretend. She has been well tutored by her big sister Scarlett and invents all sorts of games. She is happy to play by herself in her room, surrounded by barbies, and lego, and stuffies. I can often hear her talking to herself and inventing all kinds of voices for the different toys. Her and Scarlett like to dress up, pack backpacks and pretend they are going on all kinds of excursions.

Brooklyn also loves to dance, sing, and do anything theatrical, but only in the comfort of her own home or company of people she knows well. She can be quite shy otherwise and it takes a lot for her to come out of her shell. She has a list of favourite songs that will dance to over and over again in the living room. She often listens to music to go to sleep.

                                                

She likes being outside, going to the park, riding her bike, playing in the water, jumping on the trampoline, catching caterpillars... 

Speaking of caterpillars, last week the kids brought a caterpillar in the house, intending to keep it. B was quite intent on making it a little house in her Hatchimal egg toy, and named it Fuzzy. She mentioned she saw its family outside, and I suggested maybe the caterpillar was sad it she took it from its family. She said "mum, I can talk to animals, and when I was outside I heard *insert weird clicking noise while she starts wiggling around* and they said 'can you *click click* babysit Fuzzy *click click*'". 

Brooklyn hates socks and would happily wear bare feet anywhere. I've actually arrived at places only to discover she got herself buckled into the van with no shoes on at all.  Getting her socks right before school can be the cause of much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I just bought her some seamless socks, so I'm hoping those lesson the drama. She LOVES flip flops and usually insists on wearing them everywhere. I tried suggesting once that flip flops weren't good park footwear and she just said "Mom, these are speedy flip flops! I can still run super fast."

She is the queen of selfies and I often find my camera roll inundated with pictures or videos of herself. Yet when we tried to take family photos when we were in Edmonton, she would not have any of it, as is evident by her face. 

She isn't boy crazy, but sometimes she makes comments that make me think otherwise. 
One day in church she told me "Mum there will be no boys for me to marry when I grow up".  I assured her this wasn't the case. She replied "Well you married dad, and I wanted to marry hiiiiiim". She was quite upset about this.
At Christmas she got a keychain in her Christmas cracker with a rock like a diamond on the end. I told her to bring me her backpack so I could put it on for her. She said "Mum, I thought this was a ring so that I could get married to a boy that I'm in love with." 
We had a friend, a boy, over for a playdate. She decided to wear a size 2T dress, shorts, and too small flip flops (this was the middle of winter). She says "Mum I washed my face, brushed my hair, and need a headband, so I can look good for my playdate!". 
I ordered some stuff for curbside pickup at Canadian Tire and the guy who brought our stuff out was maybe 19 or 20. After he went back inside, Brooklyn says "Mom that boy was BEAUTIFUL. I want to marry him." All I told her was that if Frozen has taught her anything it's that you can't marry a man you just met!

Brooklyn can be quite forceful with her words. When we were waiting for the kids at school one day, I told her she needed to stay in her seat. She replied with all the authority she could muster "Let me out or I'm going to banish you." That didn't sound so bad to me, a lot quieter maybe than listening to her whine. She has an iron will that does not bend easily, or at all most of the time. But despite all her patience testing we love Brooklyn as fiercely as she lives her life.

Scarlett: 7 years old

 Our Scarlett turned 7 at the end of June. She asked for a "spy" themed party, which I had one week to pull off after Gordon and I got back from our France trip. Because her birthday falls so close to the end of the school year, we always try and have the party before, so more friends are around. Initially it was a "frog" theme, so pretty sure I dodged a bullet there. I stumbled across a blog post about a family who had thrown a secret agent party for their kiddo and had some really great ideas. From there I tweaked a few things to make it age and time appropriate, and I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. 

We started by telling the kids the loot bags had been stolen and locked in a briefcase with a secret code.  Might be one of the only times I'm happy I let Gordon keep something we haven't used in years, as we had just such a briefcase. They had to turn into spies to complete missions which could give them numbers for the code. We had the kids draw a colour and an "agent code word" to come up with their spy name. I think Scarlett was the Green Ninja. And then we had 5 missions for them to complete, each giving them a number unlock the code on the briefcase. We tested their interrogation skills in a knockoff of Headbanz, their athleticism in a obstacle course at the park, their ability to detect poison in a smelling test, their sharpshooting in a water gun target practice, and their stealth in a laser course (aka streamers that we taped across a hallway that they had to traverse without touching in order to retrieve the briefcase). Once they had completed all the missions and received all the numbers, they cracked the briefcase open to find their goody bags. We had hot dogs for lunch and oreo ice cream cake. Then we finished the party with the sprinkler under the trampoline.

                                    

                                    

The kids had a really fun time, and Mia has already asked me for a duplicate party theme for her birthday in January haha. When I was asking Isaac for help planning some things, he said "this is actually pretty cool mum". And that kid doesn't pay compliments easily.

On Scarlett's birthday, we had crepes for supper, as per tradition, and I took her to get her nails done the following day. One of birthday requests was to get her ears pierced, which became Granny's gift to her. She was the first of our girls to get it done, and for a girl who started out so afraid to do anything, she's become quite determined and brave.

Birthday Interview

Favourite colour: dark pink

Favourite food: peaches, watermelon, pizza, spaghetti

Favourite animal: cat

Favourite movie: Jurassic park (I have my doubts on this one)

Favourite book: Ramona and Beezus (we're on #4)

Favouirte TV show: superhero girls

Favourite subject in school: lunch (baha), art

What are you scared of: lots of things (truth), the girl from the ring (no they have not watched this), pennywise (or this)

What do you want to be when you grow up: a mom and a nurse (every year she says this and it's my favourite)

What would your super power be: the power to make everything

What was your favourite thing about being 6: my birthday party, the petting zoo, going to Granny's house, camping with Grandma and Grandpa

What are you looking forward to most about being 7: getting my ears pierced, going to Granny's house, going to Grandma and Grandpa's

Scarlett is still our tiny person. People often mistake her for a 5 year old because of how petite she is. But oh man can this girl be feisty. It's unsettling sometimes how such big emotions and words can be contained within such a small human. We are trying to curb the whip that can be her tongue. Just watch out everyone. She can be a whole lot of spicy.

She used to be quite shy, especially in kindergarten, and would only ever want one or two friends over for her birthday parties. Something happened this year though and her confidence, as well as her group of friends, grew exponentially. She was invited to a birthday party nearly every weekend starting in April. After the 6th or 7th, I joked we might have to take out a loan to fund her friends presents.

Scarlett's French improved immensely this year. There were many times when I would hear her talking to herself while playing (happens a lot) but she would be speaking to her toys in French. She'd be saying things I imagined her teacher had said like "don't put too much glue on your paper" and "come sit down on the carpet". She actually won the excellence in French award for her class this year for her efforts and ability to always speak French in the classroom. 

She is a very creative girl and loves to design things. Clothes, makeup, barbie houses, food... Some of her favourite videos to watch are cake decorating tutorials on YouTube. She has wonderful fine motor skills, and her printing is so neat and legible.

You can often find Scarlett playing some imaginary games on her own or with her sisters. I think I've said this in almost every blog post about her, but she can make a game out of ANYTHING. Broken pencils, kleenexes, scraps of tin foil. The most mundane objects become part of her playworld. Slippers are beds or planes. I've seen candy wrappers turn into clothes for Barbies. Shreds of tissue become a cast for a wounded doll (not that I enjoy this use of Kleenex but I do admire her creativity). Today she was doing a Disney princess puzzle, and instead of simply putting the pieces together, she would say things like "aaah where's my head?" or "oh no my face is melting" when placing or removing a piece. It's honestly fascinating to watch how her mind works, and I'm a little jealous that mine was always a little too literal to play like that.

Scarlett likes to be active and spends a lot of time outside in the summer. After months of asking me, she did skating lessons this spring and loved it. She does also like to swim, do gymnastics, and ride her bike. She's even jumped into a few judo sessions with Gordon and Isaac.

Scarlett knows how to push everyone's buttons. Many mornings, getting her out the door for school sometimes was like banging my head against a brick wall. Sometimes just because she was being ornery, and sometimes because she knew which kid woke up on the wrong side of the bed and had no problem aggravating them.

She can be quite quippy when she wants to be. When Gordon told the kids how old he would be on his next birthday, Scarlett says "My teacher is older than you. But her hair isn't old. That's because she only has two kids." Gordon's hair isn't old either, but mine sure is getting that way.

Isaac was going through he stash of toys in her little compartment beside her seat in the van. As Isaac's emptying them she yells "Not my stash of who hash!"

Scarlett isn't an overly picky eater, but she is definitely more finnicky than she used to be. Fruit is her favourite, and often her lunch requests involve 3 different fruits on the plate. She would probably eat 3 or more peaches a day if I let her.

She has a lot of spunk and likes to play the boss most of the time. She has no problems making herself heard. 

Happy birthday miss Scarlett. Can't wait to see what things you accomplish this year.