Amelia Bedelia

As we know, Amelia is always full of energy, words and will. Still true, yet I have seen a bit of a calming occur since we've been here. And I'm grateful for it.

Maybe it's, in part, because she is addicted to TV. Mostly SpongeBob. She would watch it all day long over and over if I let her. We have about 50 episodes recorded and she has watched them all till they are almost memorized. She can even quote a couple word for word. I know I shouldn't let her watch it so much, but when I'm doing hours of homework with the kids everyday and Dave is still working, it's the only way I've found that keeps her out of our hair. We recently limited her to 1 episode of SpongeBob a day, but she can watch other PBS shows during homework time.

Or maybe it's because we have been doing a lot of crafts. She especially loves painting and has ruined at least 3 shirts. We use cornstarch to make goop, make homemade salt dough, play with playdough, popsicle stick crafts, foam crafts, beads, glitter, whatever we can find at the local Papeleria. There is no such thing as a craft store here, so we take what we can get.

As said in Jane's post, Jane and Amelia do lots of make-believe together, but Jane is usually busy from 7am to after 5pm or later when homework is finally done. So Amelia also has started to play with Charlie some. Right now in fact she's pretending to read a book to him. Usually their play consists of running around the kitchen table screaming.

Amelia had also been busy at piano. Every time we go to the church to practice, she insists on her 5 minute long practice too. She's learned where all of the C's are, how to say the notes from A and not say H, what a middle C note looks like and we're currently working on what a whole note looks like and how many counts it gets. That one is tougher than it sounds for a 4 year old.

Amelia is also animal crazy. And there are plenty of animals here to keep her on the subject of a pet pretty much every day. To give her an animal fix, every so often we head to the animal shelter and let her torment the kittens. We have been meaning to take one of the dogs for a walk, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Right now we are trying to decide if we should send Amelia to preschool in January. The current improved exchange rate makes the tuition cheaper and she is so bored at home. But a part of me has liked to spend oodles of time with her. (And I mean oodles, she takes no naps). We get on a little better now and I sort of feel like I'm giving up on that. At first she wasn't too keen on the idea because "they speak Spanish", but then I told her she would get to take a lunch box to school and that clinched it.

We still have a lot of laughs and a lot of tears with Amelia, but I think she's growing up a bit.