It’s a first! And other proud moments

UPDATE: Since I wrote this post I’ve added more wheel action to the video, as Sophie has really got the hang of it now (I envisage a few serious scrapes in the forthcoming weeks!).

Sophie cracked riding without stabilisers this weekend! She’s always been a fast learner, with her big sister leading the way, and when it comes to wheels and speed she loves the thrill. Her balance is awesome and at the local rec centre I’m always getting asked how old she is and how did she learn to roller blade. There’s no magic secret – just lots of visits and practice I guess. But, both the girls found it useful to have me gliding along on blades next to them for their first time. I held their hands and reminded them to lean slightly forward and keep a straight back and away they went!

Anyway, here’s a short video clip of Sophie on her bike (blink and you’ll miss it!) and roller blading with her big sis. It won’t be long before she really picks up the speed on her bike and is chasing her big sis along Lyall Bay and around the house!

And whilst Sophie, at three and a half, is wowing us all with her wheel skills, Charli, at six and a bit, is wowing us with reading and writing.

We recently went along to the half-year parent/teacher meeting and are so proud of her progress at school. She has blossomed so much in this past year and her social skills and ability to integrate with her peers has improved tremendously. She’s definitely benefited from being put in an older class and given more challenges. She’s now at the reading age of an average eight and a half year old. She also scored extremely high on her writing, spelling and maths. Her teacher is wonderful in finding new and interesting ways to keep Charli interested and challenged, without being pushed and feeling distanced from her peers. At home she is so creative and forever writing and drawing. She is such a joy.

Sophie, meanwhile, is now writing her name and some other letters and numbers. She is eager to learn and loves books. She has incredible empathy for her age and an amazing sense of right from wrong. She is such a happy soul. Her speech often has us in giggles as when she says anything starting with ‘sm’ it comes across as ‘f’… so ‘smart’ is ‘fart’; ‘smile’ is ‘file’ etc. She also doesn’t say ‘y’ at the beginning of ‘yes’, so we get ‘es’ instead. The other one is ‘th’ – so ‘the’ becomes ‘le’.

This week the girls received wonderful magazines in the mail from ‘Chicken’ Grandma and Grandad and they always have a knack of arriving on a wet day (thank you!). The girls get so much from the magazines and one of Charli’s ‘Art’ mags spurred a two hour creative session of building a village and model cars. The dining room table is often covered with work in progress, but I don’t mind. It’s wonderful to see them working together and being so creative.

I’m wondering what they’ve been getting up to whilst I’ve been writing this blog post, tucked away in the upstairs office… they are both at home today with colds – nothing bad, just in need of a bit of R&R and we don’t want to spread germs. I’d best go and find out!