9 Years Old

Height: 4' 3" (31st percentile)
Weight: 61 lbs (39th percentile)

Happy pandemic birthday to this 9 year old who wanted to make panda (still a favorite animal of hers) cupcakes on her actual birthday.  This year's celebration was a little different since Chrissy Yee Yee was home in October so she had an early combined birthday celebration with Ethan.

This year, she's in a 4th/5th grade split class and loves her teacher Mrs. Freels.  She also loves that she's in a class with her friend Emma.  The school year started off with remote learning and then transitioned to in-person learning with cohorts (she's cohort B because her class split by grade rather than last name) and she's been doing a good job handling the changes.  During her free time/break time when she's remote learning from home, she and Emma call each other via Messenger Kids video and talk.  These two chatter away - sometimes they'll work on homework together, other times they're working on different crafts but can see what each other is doing and when the home office isn't occupied, she'll even go play piano over the video with Emma.

   

Over the summer, despite pandemic times, she got to try a few new things like "surfing" and fishing.  As you can imagine, she wasn't a huge fan of having to hook the worm but she enjoying trying to catch the fish.  She also finally got to make the air-fried donuts she's been asking about.  I've been encouraging her to cook more so that she's more comfortable around the kitchen appliances.  On a related note, she's been more willing to try and actually like foods other than mac n cheese (favorite is still Kraft) and plain, sauceless pasta (although those are still 2 of her favorites!).  When we went Mackinac Island towards the end of September and stayed at the Grand Hotel, she even took advantage of the all inclusive meal plan an ordered off the adult menu!

 

She was also been able to keep up with gymnastics during the pandemic.  It started off with zoom conditioning workouts and then once it got warmer out, she met with her team outdoors to practice and eventually her gym was able to safely get the girls back into the gym for practices.  Because of all the COVID restrictions, parents aren't allowed into the gym at pick up time but her coach has been so wonderful to send videos of what she's been working on.

 

Still, at 9 years old, she's a great sleeper - on the days she doesn't have gymnastics, you will most likely find her napping around 4pm.  One time I found her napping in the basement:

Looking forward to seeing how this girl grows this year and what things she will no doubt accomplish!

(Online) School's Out!

No one would have predicted that this school year would end with remote learning from home March through June.  Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, school was transformed into remote learning composed of daily online i-ready math and reading modules, weekly Zoom meetings with teachers and classmates, google classroom assignments, specials (art, music, Chinese, PE) via Weebly  and anything else I could find to keep the kids busy while trying to work from home.  Sophia was really disappointed that she wasn't able to return to school to see her friends and have the opportunity to stand on the bleachers for the 2nd/3rd grade concert (because 3rd graders get to stand up higher on the bleachers!).  Thankfully she's a pretty good student and required minimal guidance in completing her weekly work assignments which helped ease some of the stress/demands for me while working from home (Covid-19 pretty much shut down the state for a couple of months!).  As usual, her end of year report was outstanding and her teacher had nothing but praise for her.  This comment nice to read: Your kind heart, thoughtful ideas and growth mindset will be put to good use for the rest of your life.  When I think of you, I especially think of your confidence and interest in learning!  So with that....on to 4th grade in the fall!

During this time, however, she learned a few things that would not have been taught if she were at school such as learning to use kitchen appliances (with supervision)!  She cooked eggs on her own for the first time, used the oven on her own to heat up some Brazilian Cheese Bread and refined her knife skills when she cut up fruit for crepes and apples for her own homemade apple pie!  We also attempted making macarons and pretzels!

During this pandemic, she was able to keep up with her piano via virtual lessons, gymnastics via Zoom meetings and rollerblading via roller blades at home.

When asked "what do you enjoy most about this pandemic": Being able to sleep in every single day!!

Yep, she still loves her sleep! 😴🛌

8 Years Old

Height: 4"

Weight: 53lbs

8 years old!  Still loves to sleep.  Still loving gymnastics.  Just started piano lessons this August and is loving it so far.  We recently had parent teacher conferences and not surprising, she is doing great in class.  She's every teacher's model student - getting her work done, listening and following instructions, helpful and happy.  Her teacher had a difficult time giving us something that she needs to work on!

At home, she's still attached to her beloved blanket (aka bobee), loves arts and crafts type of projects and now enjoying playing games on her hand-me-down iphone 8.  For her 8th birthday, she just wanted to invite a few friends over to play and hang out (Her best friends now are Emma, Brooklyn, Alyssa and Emily).  I was busy planning out activities that they could do and Ms. Sassy pants response to me was "Mama, why do you have to over plan everything?  Can't I just play with my friends?!"  Because I'm an awesome mom (and did not want a group of bored girls for 2 hours), I still prepped to have them make shrinky dinks, decorate cupcakes and make scrapbooks - all which they had tons of fun doing!  Fortunately, she was thoughtful enough and had the courtesy of thanking me afterwards for doing all that for her. :)  

She's now part of the developmental pre-team at GTC and has been spending longer hours at the gym.  Despite not making it to every single practice, her coach says she's keeping up with the rest of the girls.  They had a showcase back on October 20 where her team performed a very fun and energetic routine.  So proud of all her hard work in picking up the routine despite being out of commission for a couple practices (she contracted an unfortunate case of head lice!).

Self Portrait

Our Mui

Sophia is Sophia.  Silly, whiny, strong, sleepy, determined, cute, smart, thoughtful, did I say whiny?  It amazes us how the Sophia we know at home is actually this incredibly strong and determined 7 year old doing double back handsprings at the gym (actually, she can do them at home now too)! Despite her increased hours practicing gymnastics, she still played basketball this year and is looking forward to playing again next year.  She's come a long way in many things (basketball, gymnastics, being a second grader, being a big sister etc) but sleeping remains an all time favorite (more like requirement!) for her!  However, we hear that sleeping is good for the brain and it rings true with Sophia - she was selected to take a special math test at school to see if she should be in a more advanced math class.  Regardless of the test results, we're proud of her and her accomplishments.  As she builds up her confidence in everything that she pursues, I know she will achieve whatever she puts her mind to.  As for now, her mind is set on cute cuddly animals (not the real deal...just cute animal dolls), drawing cute animals, 2048 the cupcake version and going to New York so that she can show her grandparents that she can now swim in their pool!

Gymnast

I signed Sophia up for a gymnastics class earlier this year (end of May) at her request to try it out.  At the completion of the 8 week class, her instructor suggested that I take her to an evaluation session to make sure they can place her in the proper class level since she seemed to be doing so well at her age-level class.  I was expecting them to place her in the next age bracket class, but instead she gets an invitation to join the developmental team - totally not what we expected!  After explaining to Sophia about how much commitment would be required, she still wanted to give developmental team a try so I talked my manager at work and was able to arrange my schedule so that I could actually drive her to and from practice twice a week (~2 hours per practice) this summer, starting mid-July.  When school started, practices were moved to Wednesday nights from 6-8pm and Saturday 1-4pm.  Despite the long hours and amount of energy needed, Sophia has been loving gymnastics and progressing amazingly!  Here are some videos from her recent skills performance showcase:

Before this showcase, she didn't know if she would be able to complete a round off back handspring - by the end of the showcase, she made it look like there was nothing to it!!  

This girl will no doubt be able to accomplish whatever she sets her mind on!

Absolutely amazing!