Lucy finished kindergarten this week. Right now she is obsessed with Barbies, her favorite game to play with them is ‘wedding’. She has one Ken doll and one wedding dress and she rotates between the Barbie dolls that get to marry him – the rest of them dress up and solemnly attend the ceremony. Her favorite name right now is ‘Emily’ and all of her Barbies are named Emily- as are most of her stuffed animals, it gets really confusing sometimes.

She constantly asks me to tell her all of the stories that I remember from my childhood, we talk about them over and over, she knows them so well that sometimes I ask her to tell me stories from my childhood. When I refuse to keep telling these same tales over and over again she peppers me with details about my wedding.

She is super particular about the clothes that she wears, so much so that we have screaming arguments about it. As I write this she is wearing her dance leotard, just the leotard. She didn’t like dance class but man, she really loves that leotard.

Another one of her favorite games is playing dog – we pretend that she is a little puppy (named Emily – of course) stuck at a pet store run by an evil man and I come along and rescue her, she is too expensive for me to buy so I steal her and take her home with me (to my apartment where I have neither a husband nor any children) and I become her mother and love her endlessly. She can play this game for hours. We usually play it when we are taking a shower together in the evening – I get her to let me wash her hair by telling her that if I get her fur really clean the mean pet store owner won’t recognize her.

Her best school friends this year are Gracie, Milayna & Josie. Her favorite non-school friends are Angelina, Lizzy & Norah. She is in love with babies and dotes over her ‘little cousins’ – Charlie, Nora & Ellie Bea.

Lucy has gotten really good at reading and can read entire books that are first grade level – but she still prefers for me to read to her. At night we are in the middle of a ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ which she really likes – her other favorite is Beverly Cleary, anything with Ramona in it.

She is a terrible eater and somedays I’m not even sure how she stays alive, breakfast is a constant struggle unless I give her pancakes, but I limit those to 2-3 days a week which means 4-5 days a week I threaten her to choke down one hardboiled egg – on average one bite of food during breakfast takes about 12 minutes. Breakfast can last for a REALLY long time. For lunch her Dad packs her a well-rounded lunch with fresh fruit, a sandwich, cheese, some kind of fun snack (popcorn or pirate booty) and yogurt. She generally come home with 98% of what he’s packed her, sometimes there is a bite taken out of the sandwich – sometimes it doesn’t look like she opened her lunch bag at all. Dinner is pretty much a repeat of breakfast. Both her Dad and I try to be patient but it doesn’t always work – she’s still alive though so sometimes I wonder if we should just stop worrying about it so much, I do make sure she gets a multivitamin every day.

Lucy is in love with Marley and Spalding (most of the time) and they love her too, the second her door opens in the morning both of them (who just seconds before could have been in a deep sleep) will jump up and run upstairs to greet her, she usually rewards them by picking Spalding up by his neck and jumping on to Marley’s back. We have the most patient animals I have ever met.

Lucy also really likes being a good helper and few things make her happier than letting her help me in the kitchen – last week we made two dozen cupcakes for a school party, I let her ice all of them and by the time she was done she had giggled so hard that she had icing all over her face and half way to her elbow, it took an hour to clean up the kitchen after but it was well worth it.

She is very devoted to her stuffed animals, her ‘stuffies’ she cannot go to sleep unless they are all in bed with her – this means that 45 stuffed animals take up about 75% of the full size bed that she has and she curls up around them in the remaining 25%.

Lucy is very sensitive and gets very upset when she gets in trouble, sometimes when she does something wrong, even before I say anything to her she will hang her head and go up to her room to cry, sometimes I have to stop myself from apologizing to her when she breaks a rule.

She has no concept of money and will gladly give it all away if someone asks for it -we haven’t started giving her an allowance but it will be coming shortly and once that starts she will need to start using her own money if she wants something.

She loves riding her bike and wearing red lipstick – when she grows up she wants to be a teacher and play the violin.