Pre-teen

Now, I don't know what age is recognized as official pre-teen, but I'm gunna say, Ella is definitely there. We've got the eye rolls, more grown up interests, and an overflow of emotions. It's getting a little crazy around here.
Ella has become obsessed with makeup and clothes. We have recently made a deal with her that for every chapter she reads she can earn a dollar towards whatever. She tells me she's going to use that money for exercise clothes and shoes.
She has switched from watching Sophia the First to Mako Mermaids and other preteen shows. Luckily it's more for the mermaid content and nothing to do with the teen romance that sometimes occurs. Though, she has been VERY excited for her school valentines tea, wherein she gets to have a boy accompany her, pull out her chair, serve her etc. The relationship with her little boyfriend last year was mostly forged during that very tea. So...we'll see if that happens again. If it does, I'm putting my money on Zach.
She is constantly wandering the house with her earphones in and MP3 attached to her hip. Lindsey Stirling and Taylor Swift are still her favorites, but she has also said that whatever she is listening to is her jam. Doing chores on Saturday she picked our Beatles pandora station (proud mommy moment right there.) She still loves her John Williams station as well and is way better at telling us which movie each song is from than daddy is. Again, proud mommy.
Ella may have the emotional roller-coaster going, but she is also starting to mellow a bit since my last post. She's just taken a while to adjust, but we are finally getting there. We've had a lot of talks about choosing to have a good attitude even when things don't go exactly how we want and they seem to be working. She still has her moments, as we all do, but she's no longer having meltdowns. Thank heavens because that was rough on all of us. Especially daddy. He only has the one sister and never really learned how to deal with girls. He can get a little impatient with the emotional aspect, but he's learning to mellow too. :)
Now, time to toot my horn! We had PTC for Ella this past week and nothing but good things were said. She has gotten 100% on all but one math test. On the most recent test she missed one problem due to rushing. On top of the "choose your attitude" we have added "do your best, not your fastest" to our list of mantras. Still, she is doing fantastic in her math. If she gets stumped, she is good to ask for help. And better yet, she doesn't whine when she gets coached through the problem rather than us just giving her the answer. She loves math and it shows. Then, there's her reading. She is reading at a third grade level and loving that as well. The only problem we have run into is she's so excited to read everything that she keeps starting book after book without finishing any of them. So, with our dollar/chapter deal, it has to all be in the same book or no deal. Still, she loves reading. She will read to Abby and Liv all the time and I love it. The constant praise Ella gets at PTC is her handwriting. She write beautifully and loves that as well. She is always writing notes to friends, writing stories, writing letters to the tooth fairy, Santa, or anyone else she can think of. And art as well. Basically, give the girl a pencil and paper and she will keep herself occupied for hours. She is so creative. And the last bit of PTC, she has straight 4's, which would be the equivalent of straight A's. She is excelling in school.
Ella is also excelling in tumbling. She is probably second best in her class and loves it. It's been fun hearing her "whine" about soar muscles as she gets stronger, but I can tell she is like me. She may say the muscles hurt but she is really excited to feel her body getting stronger. She is the smallest in her class which can be entertaining to watch. She's just this little thing (I doubt any of my girls will be tall) running around, doing cartwheels and handstands. She definitely has more energy than the other girls. While they wait patiently for their turn at a particular station, Ella is bouncing around, doing jumping jacks etc while she waits. It's kind of funny. It exhausts me just watching.
And we'll end with a little bit about Ella the biggest sister. Ella has been loving a little more freedom with Abby. I have let Ella carry Abby a couple of times (with me right there) and she can get her out of her bassinet to hold her too. Ella has said she doesn't want us to have anymore kids because she doesn't want there to be any more fighting, but once Abby is older I wouldn't be surprised if she tried convincing us otherwise (not that we're even thinking about it right now.) She just loves her Abigail. Seriously, the only pics I have of her this month are with Abby. See?
Oh, and she lost another tooth, a top one. That makes three.
Ella is really flourishing right now. She's such an amazing kid.