Miss Jules turned 5.5 last month! It feels like we’re racing toward Kindergarten and SIX and new horizons at lightning speed. We were recently looking at old pictures and I told Juliette about all the hours I spent rocking her to sleep in our cushy gray glider…those days feel like a lifetime ago. Now our most precious Mama-Jules moments are spent reading together at coffee shops or wandering the home decor aisles of Target as we sip our Americano and steamer from the in-store Starbucks. Good Lord, I miss those baby-days, but this whole buddy thing is pretty great, too.
Juliette is the oldest kid in her class and seems more and more ready for new challenges, so we’ve been looking for ways to engage that mile-a-minute attitude of hers. Shane ordered a legit keyboard and signed her up for piano lessons at the neighborhood community center, so we could put those busy hands to work. She was a bit shy heading into her first lesson, but immediately became rapt with the way her teacher translated circles on a page to sounds from the piano. Jules followed each direction with the utmost concentration, carefully plodding her way through The Caterpillar Crawl. She’s a quick learner and has impressed her teacher with her quiet, determined focus – I’ll admit I didn’t know this girl had it in her.
We’re also in the thick of swim lessons – we head to the pool on Friday afternoons for a dip with her best buddy. We’ve come a long way since that first class a few months ago when both kids bawled at the thought of getting in the water without their mamas; things clicked a few weeks ago and now Juliette’s doing blast-offs, kicking her way from one edge of the pool to the other. She says her teacher asks very hard questions like, “can you kick your legs and paddle with your arms?â€, and she still flashes me the occasional look of frustrated despair when she can’t get something right the first time around, but she always presses on and it looks like she’ll be doing laps before summer hits! Little fishes!
Juliette had a dentist appointment back in January (during which she cried zero tears! progress!) where we discovered a loose bottom tooth. She wiggled that chomper for weeks until it seemed it was hanging on by a thread. Shane gave it a little tug one evening and next thing I knew, Juliette walked into the kitchen with a tiny little tooth in her palm and pool of blood near her lip. She said it didn’t hurt a bit and left in on the counter before dashing to the bathroom mirror to admire her new gap. I then proceeded to knock said tooth on the floor, where it disappeared into the abyss of the joint between our tile floor and cabinets. Thus, Juliette left a note for the tooth fairy under her pillow that night explaining “I lost lost my tooth†(lost it, then lost it!), which the tooth fairy took in return for two whole dollars.
Much as I love bopping around with Jules, she still knows how to push my buttons, like when I want to chill out in peace after a day of running from playdate to birthday party, but Juliette asks me if the neighbor kids can “please, please, please come over to play?” To which I replied, “CHILD! You spent all day with friends! Settle down and read a book!” Her little chin quivered while she looked up at me with watery eyes and choked out, “I know I played a lot, Mama, but it’s just so fun that I can’t stooooooop…â€Â In that moment I understood that Juliette craves the presence of people in the way I crave quiet and a cup of tea. Our little extrovert…who would have ever thought?
Finally, a few pics from a visit to UW a couple of Fridays ago, when we were up north and figured we’d pop into the Quad to see how the blossoms were coming along. We were early, bloom-wise, but had fun playing hide and seek behind the trees and dreaming about the day Juliette will walk these paths as a student (start ’em young!).
She looks good on campus.
Ok, finally finally a few pictures of the five and half year old in her tutu, because…
Girl’s got style.
I love you, kiddo, so much it hurts.
