Serenity in January
Friday, January 31st, 20141/6
Serenity has started playing lots of grown-up strategy games lately, especially with her Daddy. She plays Civilization with him on the computer. She’s playing Hero Academy on the IPAD (turn based strategy where she plays against Eric.) She helps him draft for magic. My favorite, however, since I actually get to play too, is that she plays Dominion. And she’s GOOD at it! She pays attention for the entire game, takes her turn, knows what order to play her cards in, everything!  Eric and I usually play with some kind of handicap, like certain cards we can’t buy or extra win conditions, because we have a LOT of practice playing Dominion, but except for that we play to win and she holds her own. It’s awesome! A couple of times we’ve even let her stay up past bedtime to play. She gets so excited and cute, dancing around in the windowsill when she gets a particularly good run of cards. And she always ends with a good game, even if she’s sad that she lost.
1/25
It’s been an interesting month for Serenity. She adores Maia. She asks to hold her and wants to touch her and talk to her all day long. She even watched her for me while I was in the shower. I could hear her singing and entertaining Maia the whole time. She told me that when she grows up she wants to be a Mama like me. And she wants to have a girl, then one boy, then another girl, just like me. =)
She and Donovan do a good job playing together for the most part, although occasionally they get on each other’s nerves. Which is natural I suppose, especially since they’re getting more alone time together while I take care of the tiny baby. Serenity will sing a song repeatedly, even when Donovan asks her to please stop, and I flash back to Jason and me as kids. =) So when they start wrangling I seem to say “please use kind voices” a lot. And reminding them that trying to boss each other around isn’t going to work out well for anyone. Serenity is great about helping Donovan when he needs it though, whether it’s on the computer or getting him a snack out of the pantry. Donovan is always counting the minutes until it’s time to pick sister up from school each day, and I look forward to it as well.
We went to Science Saturday at school this month. It was a blast! I especially liked human conductivity, where we held hands and tried to complete a circuit, which would turn on lights and sounds in the little baton-like circuit we had. The kids learned that aluminum foil conducts, and string doesn’t. Whole apples don’t but cut open ones do. Serenity’s friend Lorelai was in the group with us, and they were so cute together! So fun! Serenity liked the sink and float experiment with oranges and lemons, and Donovan liked Snack Science. (dancing raisins and getting the letters off skittles)
Serenity got a few new books from the book fair in the fall that she’s been reading as bed books since then, especially her new Big Book of Space. She’s learned all about the planets, and dwarf planets, and knows more about them than I do already. She even knows all the names of the dwarf planets, which Pluto got demoted to. We have also discovered a new favorite book series, the Rescue Princesses! We got the first from the book fair, and once we finally read it she immediately wanted the next one in the series! The princesses learn ninja skills and rescue animals, it’s absolutely perfect for my girl =)