This is a summary for Kaitlyn from 8-8.25 years old. This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.
EATING
Eating is the same. She eats well, but she does not naturally love her fruits and veggies. Fruits especially have always been a challenge with her. She is much better in the summer. She has her fruits she loves. Then there are others she doesn’t really like unless they are fresh from our own home garden.
SLEEPING
Sleeping is great.
BAPTISM
The big news this time period is Kaitlyn’s baptism. She was baptized and confirmed in early May. It was such a special day.
FASTING
After our children get baptized, they start to fast. We fast once each month. As adults, we abstain from food and water for two consecutive meals, which ends up being 24 hours (so you start after dinner Saturday and go until dinnertime Sunday).
For our children so far, we just have them do breakfast Sunday and they then eat lunch. Our church time is currently from 11-2, so she has a late lunch. She was nervous for it. We talked to her about the purpose for it. She thought of something she would like to fast for and started it off with a prayer. Her first time was definitely her hardest, but she had a MUCH easier time than Brayden did his first time. She has done it a few times now and last time she almost forgot to eat when she got home from church, so it is definitely getting to be an easier thing for her. I think as she experiences the blessings from fasting, it helps strengthen her.
EXTRA CURRICULAR
During this period, Kaitlyn had several things going on. This included the end of the school year and summer.
She had a season of soccer. She was completely obsessed with soccer. She played it at every recess all spring.
She finished up piano for the summer and also finished up dance.
She took a ceramics class early summer and she loved that. She played softball. She enjoyed that although it can be boring at times in these younger years.
She also started playing on a competitive soccer team. She is really enjoying that.
FRIEND DRAMA
Last time I talked about some drama Kaitlyn faced with a friend. A nice thing about summer break is that you can take a break from certain friends if needed. This friend also played softball, but happily was on the other team in our town. This girl, however, took every opportunity she could to talk about Kaitlyn negatively. One day, her softball game was just finishing before ours. Kaitlyn was out warming up with her team and I was sitting on the bleachers. This girl looked out and saw Kaitlyn and then started letting her team know how much she didn’t like Kaitlyn and that Kaitlyn was her “frenemy” (seriously–where does an 8 year old girl hear that word?!?). I don’t know if she just didn’t realize that most of her teammates were some of Kaitlyn’s best friends or what. One of them lives in our neighborhood and she kept looking at me with this shocked look on her face (the friend had her back to me and didn’t know I was there). One girl started talking about how Kaitlyn is on her competitive soccer team and that she liked her…
As you might imagine, I had a whole range of emotions rush through me and a few fanciful ways to handle the situation zip through my head. In the end, I reminded myself that she is just a child and really I think a lot of the way she is has to be fueled by older people in her life (like a teenage sister or her parents). So I settled with just getting her to stop talking by walking up to the fence and talking to my neighbor girl for a minute. Then she knew I was there and stopped.
I struggled with whether or not to relay this to Kaitlyn. On one hand, I didn’t want to keep things like this from her. I don’t want to keep things from her at all. But on the other hand, I didn’t want to hurt her with the things her friend had said. I decided to say nothing. I have no idea if that is the right thing or not, but it is what I did.
A couple of weeks later, we played this other team. This “friend” was going around the bases when she struck up a conversation with Kaitlyn’s coach, who was standing just in the outfield. The girl asked the coach if she had a girl named Kaitlyn on her team. The coach told her she did and the friend started going off on how much she doesn’t like her! The coach told the girl that she loves Kaitlyn and that Kaitlyn is one of the nicest girls she knows…
The coach later relayed this to me. I was floored. How obsessive this “friend” was! I was shocked a little 8 year old girl would go up to a stranger adult and start bad-mouthing someone.
Again, I didn’t tell Kaitlyn.
A week or so later, we were at a baseball game where this friend’s brother’s team was playing Brayden’s team. Kaitlyn saw this “friend” and asked if she could go say hi. I said she could (reluctantly). So she went over and said hello and spent the entire game talking and visiting with this girl.
This girl has since moved away (and I won’t lie–I am so happy!). I don’t know how she feels toward Kaitlyn currently. I am glad Kaitlyn has stayed kind toward this girl. The only negative Kaitlyn has said about her is just that she isn’t nice to Kaitlyn sometimes. I am glad she has been able to remain kind through it all. Hopefully we can have a drama free school year with her gone!
FAVORITES
Kaitlyn loves to read. She seriously reads at least one book a day during the summer. She is a fast reader. I had suggested many times she read Harry Potter because it is just fantastic. She didn’t want to read it for whatever reason. When we drove to Colorado this summer, I bought the book Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone on mP3 (even though it was $30–bleh. Hard to spend that much on a book I own in print). It is really fantastic, though. The man who reads it does great voices. Kaitlyn loved it and quickly read the second and third books soon after we got home. She is now working on the fourth. She thanked me for forcing her to read the books.
Then we were at the library one day choosing books. She has read a lot of what the library has to offer. I saw the Babysitter’s Club books and suggested she read those. She stubbornly refused. I told her it was my favorite series when I was in elementary school and she still refused. I reminded her of my Harry Potter suggestion and asked her when I had ever given her a bad recommendation. Still, refusal. So I told her I would get the first book (The Baby-Sitters Club #1: Kristy’s Great Idea) and read it aloud to her. She was grumpy about it. A few chapters in, however, she was hooked. She has been whipping through the series and has again thanked me for forcing a book upon her and she has promised to trust my recommendations from now on.
SCHEDULE
Here is her schedule on summer days.
8:00–wake up. Eat breakfast. Get Ready, practice piano, chores, then sibling play.
Sometime–Independent play
Noon–Lunch. Then sibling and/or free play. I often like to have her do some times tables practice after lunch.
5:30–dinner
6:00–Family time
7:30–get ready for bed
8:30–bedtime
GOOD BOOKS
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