Big M

Sometimes I can't believe we have a 6-year-old!  Six seems so old!! If the next six years pass as quickly as the last six have, we'll have all five girls in school, with a 7th grader in the mix, before we know it!  Yikes.  Every night I kiss Megan goodnight, and I'm always reminded of my little tiny baby Megan, or my 3-year-old, or even 4-year-old Megan.  Her little face is the same, just a bit bigger.  She has a way of continuing to grow while I way have a way of willing her not to.  Why do kids have to grow?

We're only a few weeks into the school year with our first grader, but already she's showing more maturity. She has homework a whopping four days a week, but she's given the whole packet at the beginning of the week.  I think it's a good sign that she asks if she can do the whole packet on the first day ;)  I love over-achieving first-graders.  Another responsibility every night is reading to us for twenty minutes.  There's something about the fact that she has to do this that makes me set aside other duties to listen to her plow through an I Can Read book.  Dishes can wait while we listen to her little voice and her laughter as she cracks up as she's reading a new story.  The twins have been steadily supplying her with library books every week too, which keeps her from memorizing anything we have around the house.

Megan's taken on the responsibility of guiding Bridget at school, too.  I think some kids might want to distance themselves from siblings while they're at school, especially siblings so close in age.  This is so not the case with these two, and I couldn't be more proud.  I love hearing about the occasional recess they share, if the schedule works out, when Megan actively seeks Bridget out (among those lowly kindergartners) and then invites her to play with the 1st grade crowd.  Thankfully, Bridget doesn't seem to be having trouble making new friends in her own class, but I'm sure her blossoming confidence has a lot to do with a certain someone making the transition as smooth as possible.  Just hearing about them waving to each other in the hallway, or playing tag at recess together makes me so happy!

Because Megan is so cute, and is so helpful and sweet (almost) all of the time, here she is doing one of her favorite things...playing Legos.  These used to be pretty foreign objects in this house, but they're making up for lost time and quickly multiplying around here.  In her elusive downtime, Megan loves to carefully build something from one of her little sets...and then build it again and again.

She's wearing her favorite get-up, too.  She loves to come home from school and change out of her uniform and into something comfy. I would say that clothing issues are the one thing that she still gets upset about, or melts down about every now and then.  If I someone tries to get her to wear something that she doesn't like, she just doesn't feel comfortable and can't get past it.  She loves her little uniform at school, thank God, but she loves her little uniform at home just as much, and it's usually leggings and a t-shirt.  Sometimes a little skirt thrown on top of her leggings, but it needs to be a short skirt.  God help you if you try to get her to wear a long skirt.

Other than that, she's just an easy girl these days, and generally a joy to be around.  I love this little baby, I mean big girl!