Lauren

Here are my two birthday girls. These two crack me up. I love that Lauren loves sharing a birthday. Its one of the first things that she tells people when she meets them.


So on their actual birthday we decided that we would go to Chuck E Cheese. Our good friend, Mary Ann and her kids, went with us. It was all worth it seeing how excited she got over everything.

Rachel loved all the rides. When she was playing the game where you roll the ball up into the targets, she kept on chucking the balls every which way.
By the time we left there I was a little overwhelmed. We headed home to decorate Lauren's birthday cake. She wanted a Word Girl birthday cake - Word Girl is a show on PBS. I had grandiose plans for her cake. I was going to do it with fondant, but after a failed attempt at doing another cake with fondant, I gave up that idea. This was what we ended up with.

Lauren liked it, although she asked me where Word Girl was. I told her I wasn't talented enough to draw her on.

Here she is doing Word Girl's pose as she says, "Word Up!"At Lauren's 5 year old check up, I had them check her eyesight without her glasses and then again with. She had been saying that she didn't want to wear her glasses - that she can see fine, "They just make everything big." The original doctor said that she thought Lauren would grow out of the glasses. They check her vision and said that it was fine without the glasses. It was 20/20 in one eye and 20/25 in the other. We decided she would no longer have to wear her glasses. She has been ecstatic about that.

She was in the 98th percentile for height and 75th for weight. Lauren is almost 4 feet tall and gets mistaken for a 6 or 7 year old a lot. Our second Sunday in church the Primary president asked me if she was just 4. I said she was and she said, "Wow, she's so tall." Lauren is usually the same height or taller than most 6 year olds.

Lauren talks almost non-stop. She has heard me say on various occasions, "Let's just have a few minutes of silence." Lauren is so social. She talks to everyone and always wants to invite someone over for dinner and playing. In Arizona, she really got into swimming. We did lessons at the local Aquatic center and it amazed me how quickly she caught on. She can swim totally unaided. Lauren is also very sensitive. She's made the comment, "I don't want them to laugh at me." She can get her feelings hurt very easily, but she also bounces back like a champ. She is my "super helper," she loves to do anything that will help me out. She is so good to her little sister.

Words I would use to describe Lauren at the age of 5 are: sweet, talkative, social, smart, kind, helpful, friendly, active, and inquisitive.