10.5 years old!

Nadia gets to open gifts on her half-birthday and birthday every year since her half-birthday is on Christmas Eve.

1. Nadia enjoys wearing a variety of earrings. Her collection drastically grew following the passing of her Great Gram. She loves the fact that she is no longer restricted to wearing post earrings, and she likes being able to sleep at night without earrings now that her ears have been pierced for more than 6 months.

2. Nadia has mastered her headstand and cartwheel. She is making a lot of progress with her handstand. She does umpteen handstands and cartwheels every day in the family room. She smacked Paul in the face once, but thus far she hasn't hit the tv (which is a fear of mine). She has really wanted to be promoted to Level 3 in gymnastics, but it hasn't happened thus far. The kids have been in gymnastics the last four months. They'll be taking a break in light of basketball starting up again.

3. She still loves to read! Her favorite books lately have been the Mr. Lemoncello's Library series. She received eleven new books from us today when she opened her Christmas gifts. I'm curious to see which one she'll pick to read first! Four of them are related to Adventures in Odyssey, three are Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, one Rush Revere (that our library doesn't have), one Fancy Nancy book, and two that are supposed to be books that you'd like if you liked Wonder, and Wonder is the book she's reread the most times.

4. Purchasing an online 5th grade math curriculum has proven to be a wise choice. Every once in a while she still has a meltdown over math, but in general math has gone much better this school year.

5. She is working on her very first science fair project. We'll be turning it in next month at the Children's Museum. She's exercising every day (doing jumping jacks) and measuring her pulse and vital lung capacity.

6. Her favorite tv shows are Big Hero 6 and Odd Squad.

7. On the iPad she usually plays Disney's Crossy Road or Trivia Crack.

8. This summer she started attending the Middle on Sunday nights, which is a youth group for grades 4-8 at a church 5 minutes from our house.

9. Nadia has continued to play with Legos more than she had previously. She also still enjoys playing with paper dolls, Calico Critters (which she plays with Ian), and her Barbie dolls. When she plays in her bedroom alone, she listens to music (either on CD or via the Echo dot), Adventures in Odyssey, or the Brinkman Adventures. She received two Lego sets today - one from Ian and a Moana set from us. She had a LOT of Lego sets on her wish list. I guess the one she wanted the most was an Incredibles one. I did give Oliver an Incredibles Lego set (a different one than the one Nadia wants). I did give her an Incredibles Mad Lib book and two Incredibles dolls.

 10. She would eat a ham and cheese hot pocket for lunch EVERY day if I bought them that frequently. If she can't have that she'll either have an egg and toast, egg salad sandwich, hot dog, yogurt, or a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese. For breakfast she alternates between blueberry oatmeal, Captain Crunch, Frosted Flakes, and Golden Grahams. Lately she's been having Golden Grahams every day, which works out well because I bought quite a few boxes of that cereal because they each had a $5 coupon for Ticketmaster, which I'm hoping to use for tickets to see a musical in 2019. Her favorite ice cream flavors are chocolate chip cookie dough, cookies and cream, and chocolate fudge brownie. Her favorite part of baking is licking the batter! I always get her string cheese for her birthday, and I think a new tradition will be to also get her a bag of Sun Chips. I never buy that kind, but I got a bag (for the first time ever) for her as one of her Christmas gifts as I know she loves them. Similarly, I also got Paul a bag of Middlesworth sour cream and onion chips for Christmas as I usually only buy those once a year as well. Normally if we have chips we get them at Aldi's (a generic brand). Some of her most favorite things to eat for dinner include tuna noodle, macaroni and cheese, goulash, rigatoni and meatballs, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, cheeseburgers, and pizza.

We love our princess SO much! She used to like all of the princesses. The only ones she still likes are Mulan, Jasmine, and Ariel. I'm hoping to take her to see a production of Mulan, Jr. in Lancaster in June as part of her birthday celebration. We saw Aladdin in Buffalo in August. Happy half-birthday, Nadia! Merry Christmas everyone!