Halfway point

The girls had a checkup with their pediatrician yesterday. All systems are go. They are healthy in every way. Both are blessed with perfect hearing and perfect vision. They are both in the upper two thirds range on height for their age and in the lower third range for weight. Doc says their weight and height gain are both normal and on a good trajectory. He predicts that Audrey will grow to be about 5'5" when she hits full height. (For some reason, he didn't make a prediction for Aria.)

So they are 4 1/2 and 7 1/2 now. Time really flies.

We enrolled Aria in a "home school collective" three days a week. This is a group of parents who were home schooling but decided they wanted more of the benefits of a group learning experience. So they pooled their resources and hired a teacher. Her teacher, Miss Leslie, is amazing. She's bilingual, so Aria is learning Spanish in addition to all the basics a 2nd grader should learn. Plus, they are doing lots of drama, field trips, and role playing. After just a couple weeks, Leslie said she could readily see that Aria's academic strengths are reading, art, and science. And she noted that Aria needs a little prodding in math and to participate in group activities. We figure those will come in time. In addition, she is continuing drum lessons - she can play beats with excellent time and is getting pretty good at reading notation - and she still likes to sing and play piano.

Audrey, meanwhile, is getting ready to be enrolled in Kindergarten in the fall. She is learning how to read already, plus she is getting pretty good on the drums and piano. She sometimes picks up the violin, too, but I think she finds it a bit frustrating at this stage. She's become obsessed with Robin (of Batman & Robin) - she wears a Robin costume almost constantly. She's trying to convince us to let her cut her hair like his. Actually, like Lego Robin. I don't think that's going to happen.