Franny turns 9

I'm not even going to say anything about how long it's been.  Okay maybe I will.  I don't even hardly recognize blogger anymore.  It's been a year since my last post!  I've been trying to get back to this for a while, but I've let life get in the way.  Now that Mabel is a year old and 2012 is over (thank goodness- he lived away from us for five months because of work), I feel like I might be able to find the time.  Then again, my to-do list for the next five months involves:  selling our home, packing our house, helping my husband find a job, preparing my children for the first out of town move that any of them can remember, and moving into a new house!  So... we'll see.

It's hard to know where to start after a year, so I'm just going to start with what's most current:  my Franny turned nine!  Today I'll be decorating our basement for her birthday party tomorrow.  She's going to have a "fashion" theme, kind of.  The girl insists that fashion is what she's interested in.  But the girl refuses to wear anything but jeans to school and I'm pretty sure she'd be happy wearing the same five t-shirts to school every week.  But I still it's cute that she says that.

Franny has a lot of things she's into right now.  She can tell you more than anyone I know about superheroes.  She has three very large books filled with anything you would ever want to know about superheroes, both DC and Marvel.  Her favorite female superhero is Black Widow and her favorite male superhero is Thor.  We let her watch Avengers and Captain America last December and she was in heaven.  One day when I was driving her to school she asked me a question.  I wish I could remember what it was- maybe something like, "Are there any villains with secret identities?"  And I said, "Um, yeah, in Spider-man there's the Green Goblin."  And she said, "oh yeah, you mean Norman Osborn?"  Hilarious.  For a while we couldn't get her to talk about anything else.  Around Christmas, she kind of lost some of her interest in superheroes.  (Kind of a bummer, because there may have been a bit of a focus on them for Christmas... oh well.)  Now she is crazy for Calvin and Hobbes.  She has seven books and has read all of them.  She just finished reading the first Harry Potter last night.  It's not uncommon for her to read three or four different books at the same time.  She just has a stack next to her bed and keeps her little bookmarks in them.  I'm so glad she likes to read.

It may be the Calvin and Hobbes, but she's really into expressions lately.  She has been using all these "old lady" terms lately like:  "beats me" or "I'll say" or "not on my watch!"  It cracks us up.  A few weeks ago she noticed I was irritated and said, "Are you ok, mom?  You seem kind of down in the dumps."

She's had her own room for about a year and a half now and it suits her well.  She likes having her own room and I think she especially likes being able to read out loud without having to worry about disturbing anyone while they're sleeping.

Franny loves to be on stage.  She's a good little actress.  She auditioned to be a community play last fall, had a call-back and got the part!  It was awesome.  She played a Yorkshire child in the play "The Secret Garden."  It was one of my proudest moments as her parent.  And she loved every minute of it.

She's involved in A LOT of activities right now.  A few too many, I think.  It might not be so bad if they didn't all fall on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  She's taking ballet, piano, and she's playing basketball.  Plus she has activity days for church on Wednesday nights.  We're lucky if we make it through Wednesdays without any tears.  But she enjoys them all, so it would be hard to know which to drop.  Basketball is over in a week and a half, so we don't have to worry about it too much longer.

Franny is a good big sister.  And of course her younger sisters love her.  I've noticed she often looks for ways to help them.  If Mabel drops something on the floor from her high chair, Franny is the first one to pick it up for her.  Although sometimes she's not the most considerate.  We've had a ton of sickness in this house over the last few months and a few days ago I was holding back Claire's hair while she puked in a bucket and Franny was covering her ears and holding her head down and said, "Please tell me when it's over!"  Ha ha.

This kid cracks me up!  I love her personality.  I love the direction she's heading.  She's a good girl- sweet, kind, funny and smart.  And beautiful.  I'm so proud of my little Franny! 

I made this video for Franny's 2nd grade class last spring when she was student of the week.  It's a little out of date, but I never posted it so I thought I would now.

Franny Student of the Week from COLE WARNER on Vimeo.