For Claudia's 5th birthday in April, we took her to Disneyland! We joined our friends the Martinkas and their girls and did 5 days in California, with 3 at Disney. We're thankful for our families for helping, Glen's family for paying for our flights and my family for watching Teagan while we were away. I've been several times as a child and adult, but it was Glen & Claudia's first time. It ended up being unseasonably hot, in the low-100s, so we also spent a lot of time at our awesome hotel pool. Claudia loved Dumbo of course, and by the end of our trip, got more daring and went on a ton of rides in California Adventure. She also liked seeing palm trees everywhere we went. Her favorite thing was just the general magic of Disneyland and she really believed in all the characters and was fascinated by them.
The girls and I are loving this warm spring/summer weather and getting out about about a lot, visiting friends and family, swimming in our pool, and going to parks. On the rare times we're just hanging out at home, they like to pretend to be cats and they crawl around the house saying meow and eat "kitty food" (Cheerios) out of little bowls on the floor. Their alter egos have names too, Isabelle and Lizzie. They're surprisingly physical with each other (initiated by Teagan), which sometimes gets out of hand, and they often fight over toys. But when it's good, it's really fun to see their kindness to one another, especially how Teagan worships Claudia and copies everything she does.
Teagan loves the TV show "Caillou" and I've created a monster by introducing her to it because she goes to the TV and begs "Caillou, Caillou" in this cute whiny voice. Claudia had very minimal interest in TV from age 1-3, so it's yet another way that Teagan is different. She also has a strong interest in books and will just flip through pages on her own, or ask me to read them to her. Her favorites are one about baseball and another about a frog. She loves frogs and tries to jump around the house like one, although she hasn't yet figured out how to get her feet off the ground. She also has good verbal skills (amazing considering she sucks on a binkie half the day) and she's at that stage where she mixes up opposites, like hot/cold or up/down. She doesn't mix up mommy or daddy though. I think Claudia used to call me daddy sometimes when she was this age.
Claudia graduated from her pre-K class at Concordia Lutheran and is super excited to start Kindergarten in the fall. She has matured so much this last year. Her "academic" skills have not changed that much, but her social skills have improved tremulously. She's much better at communicating with her teachers and friends and now they're all getting to see the chatty girl that Glen & I have at home.
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