Onomatopoeia

This post has nothing to do with words that sound like what they are (crash). I just like saying the word onomatopoeia.

It has been some time since I updated you all on what is going on with Gracie.

Gracie is now in second grade. It is entertaining to watch her mature and become more outspoken and questioning of life in general. As she grows her life and relationships become more complicated and she struggles to understand the rules of life ( or lack there of ). She attends Hamilton Maineville Elementary this year and should have been there next year as well, but due to budget cuts and a levy failing 7 times in a row at this point, her school is being closed. In the near future the district may be dissolved entirely and pushed out into the surrounding areas.

She is enrolled in tumbling classes at TNT Nitro Tumble Dance and Cheer. She has learned to do a cartwheel, roundoff, and is so very close to a back handspring. She can do it with a spotter and the spotter hardly touches her, but she still lacks the confidence to do it if she doesnt feel that hand on her back as she goes over. It is a beautiful thing to watch. I can remember not all that long ago, watching her at 15 months try to learn to crawl. She was so far behind at that point. Now she can almost fly, it makes me want to cry. ( hey, I rhymed ) She has cheered for Little Miami's Youth league for 3 years and we now have her enrolled in TNT performance cheer. She loves to cheer, that much is clear. ( Hey, I rhymed again ) When she found out she got to cheer for TNT she wanted me to explain the difference between performance cheer and competition cheer because she wants to be a flyer in competition. She was happy just to find out that there will not be a game going on behind her, seems that is a distraction, people are watching the game and not the cheerleader, or more precisely, not watching her. Her self confidence still has its spells, she plays shy sometimes when it makes no sense, but by and large she is a ham. A wonderful, sweet, talkative, loving, and kind ham. Spoken as the proud parent that I am. ( stop rhyming, I mean it. Anybody want a peanut?)

Gracie has a new best friend. These two girls are so sweet and loving together, they hug, they giggle and they are priceless to watch. They used to be in class together but her friend switched schools because of the levy issues, now we just arrange for them to spend time together. The girls and the mommas are taking a trip to Chicago in April to go to the American Girl Doll Museum. It is interesting for me to watch them as they develop their relationship. They get frustrated with each other, they get grumpy with each other, but they never get mad at each other, they know it will all be okay and they will work through each issue.

Gracie is doing well in school. She reads well ahead of where she should, she does this because she loves to read and does it all the time just because she wants to. I now have a Borders club card and we go there or Barnes and Noble and pick out books to read. She has read all of the ," Diary of a Wimpy Kid " books ( a little too old for her ) and all the Junie B. Jones books, and now she is working on the Geronimo Stilton collection. I may need a library room for her. Geronimo Stilton is an odd little mouse dude that she is just loving at the moment. Gracie prints and spells very well, she prints neater than I do. Her vocabulary is scary. ( stop rhyming ) She loves big words and uses them surprisingly well. Her week point is math. We were working on counting money the other night. She can add change very well as long as she works at it. I made the mistake of asking her what a half a dollar was though. Half a dollar is 30. Not even 30 cents, just 30. This will come....

Gracie's momma, my lovely wife, really works hard on teaching manners and proper etiquette. This is good because if you know me, Gracie is going to get real world life, but not lady like demeanor from me. Gracie was upset with a little girl and her mother the other day at tumbling. The lady had moved Gracie's coat without asking Gracie and the little girl is 4 and wants to talk to Gracie but seems to want to do so while being 1/2" from her face. As we were leaving Gracie informed me that, " that little girl is rude and she gets it from her mother" Note that she didn't say her mom, her momma, or her mommy, which is what she says about my wife. She said, "mother". This is the equivalent of using a child's middle name I think.

One of the biggest issues in the Wilson house is the sin of interrupting someone. It is not polite to interrupt someone when they are talking. It is twice as bad to interrupt two adults talking when you are 7 years old. Momma is the teacher of manners and etiquette so she keeps on Gracie about this issue. Ironic issue, this is not mommas strong suit shall we say. Gracie is having issue learning this proper behavior. At this point, the standard mode of operation is Gracie will wait for that 1/2 second of dead air when the ongoing conversation might be over or at least at a pause and they say, " sorry to interrupt, but..........." It makes no difference that she is still interrupting, but she is interrupting politely, right !! Personally, I am happy with this, but we are still working on it. Gracie, particularly with me, has a strange ability to talk without pause or breath. She talks fast because she is afraid someone will tell her to stop and she still has words to use.

Speaking of sin, Gracie loves her new church. Well, its not all that new, we have been going for over a year now. She goes to Sunday school and children's church both and loves it. She has memorized all the books of both the testaments and several different scriptures.

We have had some issues. She has one little girl who is a player and is playing my naive little Gracie. This girl sits relatively close to her in class. She is nice to her, but she keeps manipulating her mind and trying to control her. This will stop, Gracie is working it herself right now, but we are aware and the teacher will be made aware just to keep it from getting out of control. The next issue was much larger and we are still dealing with the after effects months later.

If you have an adopted child, I would advise you play it safe and just skip the movie Tangled. There is nothing inherently bad about the movie, but it can have some bad effects that manifest themselves differently with each child that reacts to the movie. Bottom line is there is a character in the story who stole a baby and pretended to be the mother. This character did not love the child, only raised them and the kids are smart enough to pick up on this. The saccharin nature of the character and the eventual demise can be stressful for some younger kids and they cannot articulate well the reasons for the feelings they don't really grasp fully. With Gracie, this led to not wanted to sleep, not wanted to go to bed alone, and not wanted to be by herself upstairs to shower. We have largely overcome these problems, but they are not gone entirely. We worked with our pastor and did our best as parents to get past this irrational fear. With making some compromises, Gracie now goes to bed, sleeps though the night, and takes a shower without me sitting outside the bathroom door. The shower curtain , however, is rolled up out of the way only leaving the clear liner so she can see out into the hallway. Her dog echo sits in the hallway and just watches in fascination. Gracie sings , ( loudly and badly ) to entertain herself and keep the 'bad thoughts' away.

Well this has been a brief update , there are more things I could talk about, but I will stop for now. We are going to St. Louis to visit the "Hunan" sisters next weekend. I should have pictures and stories from our travels then.....