Twelve Years Old!

Nadia turned twelve-years-old today! One year from today she will become a teenager. Yikes! If she leaves the nest when she turns eighteen, we are 2/3 of the way through her years at home with us. Thinking about that makes me very glad I have the privilege of homeschooling her. I want to savor the next six years as much as I possibly can! It has been my privilege to be her mother for twelve years; I look forward to seeing how she will grow and develop over the next year, and I hope that she has a very special birthday celebration. Here is a description of Nadia Renee, age 12:

1. Loves several different shades of blue with turquoise being her favorite at the moment. Strongly dislikes the color pink.

2. During the school year she becomes irritated if she doesn't get up promptly at 7:00. She likes to start her math lesson on the computer first thing after she wakes up, even before she eats breakfast. In the summer, she likes to sleep in. She's almost always the last person up in our house. In the summer she usually gets up sometime between 8-8:30am. When her brothers were at a sleepover at someone else's house recently, she didn't wake up until 9:05!

3. Her current bedtime is 9:30. When she has a friend over for a sleepover she typically stays up until 1:00-1:30am and once she stayed up until 3am! She's having a "virtual" sleepover with her cousin, Rachel, this evening and her friend Abby is coming over for a sleepover tomorrow night. She definitely didn't inherit her night owl tendency from me! Even when I was her age I fell asleep long before midnight when I attended a sleepover. Why are these events called "sleepovers" when there is very little sleep involved? Because she enjoys staying up late, I said that her new privilege when she turns 12 will be that once a month she can stay up until 10:00. She can choose the day, and sleepovers don't count. Her new responsibility is that she must do the dishes after one meal each week and also whenever she cooks or bakes, she must clean up the dishes she creates while cooking/baking.

4. She loves her two guinea pigs very much. She's now lobbying for a hypoallergenic cat. Jenna will be turning 4 years old in the fall, and Peppa is about four months old. She had a rabbit for two months earlier this year. 

5. She's a member of two youth groups plus a Bible quizzing team. She meets with them online on Sundays and Wednesdays. Thankfully, one of the youth groups split in half to meet the requirement of having fewer than 25 people gathered together and resumed meeting in person on June 7 after a three month hiatus. From December through early May she memorized all of 1 and 2 Peter plus the first nine chapters of Hebrews. She has begun memorizing Matthew, which is the book she will be working on for the next year.

6. She uses my phone more than I do primarily for texting, in part because she knows my password and doesn't know the passwords for the iPads. She uses the newer iPad or my phone for texting, Zoom, FaceTime, Messenger Kids, Marco Polo, YouTube, Houseparty, and Skype. She regularly uses Zoom or FaceTime to video chat with her cousin Rachel and her three Bible quizzing teammates - Abby, Evanna, and Ava. She doesn't use the Wii or Switch. She uses apps on the iPad a little bit. We haven't decided at what age we will let her have her own phone. Considering she and I are almost always in the same place at the same time, I am fine with sharing my phone and the iPad with her for the time being. 

7. I believe that physical touch is the primary love language of both of her brothers. For Nadia physical touch is probably at the bottom of her list. Once my friend, Tab, said that "food" was her love language, and by that she meant preparing food for others was a way she would show love to others. I've never heard of that as a love language. I'm guessing it would fall under "acts of service"? Anyhow, if such a love language exists, that might be Nadia's. She rarely hugs me, but I'm most likely to receive a spontaneous hug from her when she's grateful for something related to food. Last Thursday I gave her two early birthday treats, one of which was an XL Oreo hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts, as they had given me a coupon for a free drink for my birthday in April which I hadn't used. 

8. Nadia usually has cold cereal for breakfast. She also enjoys blueberry pop tarts, apple strudel, and blueberry oatmeal. Her brothers and I enjoy monkey bread, pancakes, waffles, and French toast, but she's not a fan of any of those. Her favorite cereals include Frosted Flakes, Cap'n Crunch, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch; she eats a much smaller quantity of food at breakfast than her brothers. Her first choice for lunch is definitely a ham and cheese hot pocket. When we don't have those, she usually has a hot dog or a grilled swiss cheese sandwich. Nadia enjoys a variety of fruits including grapes, nectarines, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, clementines, plums, and raspberries. If none of those are available, she will have baby carrots with ranch dressing or a banana at lunch. There are many snacks that she enjoys. Some of her favorites include pretzels, raisins, fruit snacks, Wheat Thins, and SunChips. For dinner some of Nadia's favorites include rigatoni and meatballs, tuna noodle casserole, lasagna, macaroni and cheese, fish sticks, pizza, meatloaf, goulash, bread sticks, garlic bread, and Jell-O. If we have breakfast for dinner, her favorites include scrambled eggs or an egg on a bagel. Yesterday in conjunction with Ian's eye doctor appointment we picked up 6 donuts at Dunkin so that we could enjoy our birthday tradition. Two of her birthday gifts from me were a box of Wheat Thins and a bag of SunChips. She requested that I make cherry dump cake for her birthday dessert and rigatoni with meatballs for her birthday dinner. She'll either have a hot pocket or something we pick up at the elementary school for lunch today.

9. She still loves listening to Adventures in Odyssey. Her favorite TV show the last two months was Sabrina the teenage witch, which she watched on the CBS app. Other shows that she really enjoys include Full House, the Brady Bunch, Stuck in the Middle, Worst Witch, and the Cosby Show. 

10. She owns a bike and rollerblades, but the vast majority of the time she uses her scooter. She loves to go skiing, ice skating, swimming, zip lining, climb rock walls, and roller skating.  She asked for a skateboard for her birthday. When I asked her what she wanted to do on her birthday, she asked me what she could do that didn't involve wearing a mask. I suggested that we swim either with the Schrecks or at my friend's house. We are headed to my friend's house this afternoon. We chose to swim there in part because Paul's parents want to deliver her presents to her. Grandma says she'll stay in the car, but at least she can see her grandkids from a distance. We haven't seen Paul's parents for six months. My friend lives a lot closer to their house than we do, and she has an inground pool. Yesterday I purchased a membership at a pool about 15 minutes from our house. Nadia and Ian passed the swimming test, which means they can be in the deep end and use the diving board. Hopefully she will enjoy being able to swim more often this summer!

11. I still have to remind her to brush her hair, but she's doing a better job of taking the initiative to shampoo it more often on her own. Sometimes she sleeps with curlers in her hair so her hair will be curly. Her hair is longer than it has ever been before. We shall see how long she lets it grow! She has been painting her fingernails and toenails far more regularly than she ever has in the past. I told her I would buy her a perfume of her choice last week as an early birthday present. She chose a vanilla scented body spray. I also got her lip gloss for her birthday. 

12. She recently completed an online personal finance class produced by Dave Ramsey. 

13. She has a growing collection of fabrics that she uses to make clothes for her Barbie dolls. She has given most of them haircuts. 

14. Her three most favorite book series include: The Mother Daughter Book Club, Mr. Lemoncello's Library, and Harry Potter. She quickly read four Adventure in Odyssey books recently - three were in the series called Candid Conversations with Connie, and the fourth was a book of mysteries. 

15. Playing the piano is not one of her favorite things to do. Lately I've been considering letting her quit sooner than I anticipated letting her make that decision. 

16. Three of her most favorite things to do are spend time with cousins, ride roller coasters, and go to overnight camp at Camp Susque. I'm not sure how much time she'll spend with cousins this year or whether she'll be able to ride a rollercoaster due to COVID-19, but she is going to spend six nights at a camp in the Poconos next week. Hopefully she'll have a great week even if it isn't Camp Susque. 

17. She loves to listen to Christian contemporary music. Her favorite radio station is WGRC. Her three favorite bands (in order) are #1 For King and Country, #2 We are Messengers, and #3 Lauren Daigle. She was bummed that the Creation music festival was cancelled for this summer and that we probably won't be attending another concert until 2021. Thankfully we did attend one concert shortly before everything began to be cancelled.