The Catch up- Tess

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Tess....Tessie is five years old, just turned so, in fact. She had a rainbow birthday. Very fitting, if you know Tess. She's very rainbow-ish.

Until the last few months, I would have called Tess my most challenging child. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm crazy about this little girl. She is a little flitty bird, singing and chirping around the house, spinning in tutus and hunting for treasures....


literally, she's drawn a treasure map here and begged me to come hunting with her. We finally found it. It was a "sparkly rock".

But she has a real stubborn streak, this one. She is often disobedient just because. Not always...many times she is easy and sweet. But other times...like, if you told her to she had to breathe air, she'd refuse to do it just to spite you. That kind of thing.


But, she's getting easier. The frantic need to assert her will seems to have mellowed now that she is moving out of those intense preschool years. She still has her moments, but overall she is easier and happier. She is a girly, girly, girly girl. Loves pretty things and sparkly dresses and the like. She totes her favorite things around in scrounged bags and baskets and arranges little displays all over the house. She calls these her "lections" (collections). She loves to color and has excellent fine motor skills.

A couple of "lections"....above, on a table in the playroom, a picture frame she scrounged from junk in the garage, and a couple of condiment cups filled with an assortment of beads, some gold doubloons, and a fake leaf from somewhere.

Below, inside her, ahem, "jewelry" box, an aquarium plant (aha, the source of the fake leaf!), some fairy food she made with Maria, and one of the munchkin baby feeders you can put fresh fruit in...Mary used that briefly months ago. She has been carrying that feeder around by the handle like a little purse. If you open it up, there is a bottle cap inside along with a few seeds from the trees in the backyard.



She is an extrovert, like her big sis, and loves to go meet with friends and family. She is always trying to talk one of her brothers into some game or another, and we laugh to hear her directing Henry in their pretend games. But she is also very contented to be left to play her own imaginary games. She has claimed the far back corner, which is nicely shaded by two pear trees, as "Tess-land". When she wants Henry to play with her, she will tell him it is "Tess-and-Henry-Land".


(Tess-land. Or, Tess-and-Henry-Land.)
She is starting kindergarten this fall, and we are both excited about that. I'm sure she'll enjoy it, and I'm looking forward to it myself. She is my most unschooled preschooler. Maria went to formal preschool and kindergarten. Kain did too. Jack taught himself to read and we mostly worked on therapeutic activities in kindergarten. Tess is raw. She has picked up counting, shapes, colors, a handful of letters, but we really haven't done any formal preschool, just fun activities when time allows and lots of reading aloud. And she has blossomed with plenty of free play, good toys, and lots of time outdoors.

Most days now, she's not as challenging. She is a sweet soul, a little fairy bird, my little rainbow girl.