Wizards+Style+Charm+ A Great Report!

Can I just say.....I love this kid. From the day she was born, Kennedy has been a pure joy to me. I love that her personality is so complex.....she is sometimes spontaneous, sometimes skeptical.......she can be a totally playful kid one moment and a deeply thoughtful intelligent little-grownup-type-kid the next. She loves to pretend she is a puppy and cuddle under a quilt with me.....but she also reads and understands things well beyond her years. She challenges me to be a better person and to be the best mom and person that I can be. She keeps me firmly grounded in what is truly important in this world.

This is a photo of Kennedy on Friday night. We were preparing to go out for dinner with the other families on our coaching staff....and she was upstairs for a long time. She came down with this outfit on......complete with purple socks, sparkly gold shoes, a pink camo. purse, and rainbow headband. And of course, her jean jacket, "so I can be just like you, Mom!". Does this girl have style or what? And that camoflauge purse? It is filled with all of her makeup and perfume. And we had to negotiate the earrings...she can down with some huge black hoop clip-ons, but we decided that those should be saved just for special dress-up play :) I just love this girl's sense of style.....a woman at the restaurant approached me and said "I just want you to know that your little girl is charming." Yes, she is. Charming is a good word. Love this kid.

On the way home, from the backseat of our new minivan, we hear, "Mom, can I read Harry Potter?" What? Did I really just hear that question from my child? Why can't we stick to Pippi Longstocking and Little House on the Prairie and Animal Ark a little longer? I expected this question eventually, but not out of my 6-year-old. Can I pretend that I didn't hear it and just shove another "Little House" book into her hands? Her reading skills are very well developed, and she just can't seem to get enough chapter books. But she doesn't tend to like many of the Junie B. Jones books (which is fine with me.....this is NOT my favorite series) and is drawn toward science and animals and the like. So, we have talked, and we decided to read the first chapter of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" together to see how she processes the material. Of course, we also had a detailed discussion about magic and witchcraft and wizards and pretend and fiction vs non-fiction. Whew.

And tonight, she is nearly finished with Chapter 5. She read for more than 170 minutes today alone. It is hard reading material....and she is handling the words just fine. And when I ask her questions to check her comprehension....she is right there. She gets it.

And I guess she comes by this interest honestly. When I was young, I loved books with a science fiction edge. My favorites were "A Wrinkle in Time", "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" and "Bedknobs and Broomsticks." But I was much older than 6. And I don't recall my mom having much of an opinion one way or the other about what I read.

So, we are reading Harry Potter together and discussing the ideas and characters. And she is just drinking in the imagination of it all. In fact, one of the characters in the book made a statement about hating imagination. And she exclaimed, "How can you hate imagination? I love imagination!!!!" Oh, if I can somehow get her to hold onto that attitude as she grows up, so she doesn't become an adult who no longer values play and creativity and imagination....now that would be a life well lived.

Tonight, we had our second parent-teacher conference of the year. We are so proud of how hard Kennedy is working and what she is achieving. We are so thankful for our wonderful school and our amazing first grade teacher and for our intelligent, thoughtful, creative little girl. We can't believe that we are nearly 3/4 of the way through first grade....where has the year gone? What an amazing gift God has given us in you, sweet Kennedy....just wanted you (and the world) to know. You are charming, Girl.