A Paige Post

Since Reed is changing fastest, most of my posts end up being around him.  Lately I've been thinking how I need to do a post about each of them, to make sure I get down the things I want to remember of them at their current ages.  So I'll start here with Paige.  

She has always been such a good reader, but didn't really ENJOY reading all that much.  I read constantly when I was little, and I still love to when I can.  So it made me sad to think she didn't love it, especially when it came so naturally to her.  Then Harry Potter came along and she realized how great it can be.  Now she reads all the time.  I LOVE it.

 A couple of weeks ago she was sick and missed a couple of days of school.  

One of those sick days, she was on the couch all day long, and we didn't want her watching tv the whole time.  So Jess found her a new book.  She read all 372 pages that day, in basically one sitting.  Just took breaks for a drink or to use the bathroom.

She's an interesting girl.  She is smart and adventurous and crafty and imaginative.  One of her favorite things to do is climb our trees.  She'll climb up there and just sit and think.  

We had the fig tree out back, and she could climb that without help, so when she found out we were going to take it out she wasn't happy.  It was the culprit behind our expensive plumbing problem last year, AND it had to be "pruned" all crazy to make room for them to work.  So we planned to take it out and put something fun for the kids in that space.  Paige staged a protest when Jess tried to cut it down.  

Our little tree hugger.  She recovered after it was removed, and spends her time in the bigger trees instead.

 She has her own opinions about what is "girly" and what is "boyish", and gets annoyed when Neely wants to play with superheroes.  Yet she has no problem throwing on a skirt and playing video games.  (Not that I do either, just wondering why that's okay and superheroes aren't)

We were washing couch cushion covers that day, if the picture has you wondering.

She LOVES a game called Rubik's Race, which she got from Grammy a few months ago.  It's basically a 2 dimensional rubik's cube game.  You have one side of the cube in front of each of you, and can slide the colored squares around.  There's a mini version of it that you shake, and then the colored squares randomly settle into position.  Then you slide the colored squares around on your side, trying to match it to the mini version.  For a few weeks, I was the champ at our house.  Then Paige took over.  She beats us all regularly, with ease.  She is so excited to be the reigning champ.  She challenged Grammy one day, who is pretty good at it herself.  They played 10 games, Paige won 7 of those. 

 Another thing she likes to do is set up some kind of business, and set appointments for us to come in.  One of her favorites is a massage parlor.  Today she played that.  We all came in for our massages at Hummingbird Express.

 She's our dramatic child, for sure.  

She can get rather upset with us, very quickly.  The easiest way to calm her down is by making her laugh.  Usually it makes her mad first, but ends up working.

 She and Reed have really bonded lately.  I've asked her to hold him for a second or two for me a few times while I did something, and she felt pretty big, holding him while standing up.

He LOVES her lately.  Any time he can make eye contact with her, he'll give her the hugest smiles, and start kicking and squealing and just gaze at her.  I don't know if it's because she's more of a novelty to him or what.  She has never been the one to be constantly in his face like his other siblings, and lately she is paying a lot of attention to him.  She even lets him pull on her hair.  It will start to hurt so she'll try and escape, and he'll get upset, so she gives her hair right back to him.  Ha.

 

She may be the dramatic one, and cause some fighting around here sometimes, she also makes it a lot of fun around here, by being a big weirdo usually.

 

She tries to act tough, and gets embarrassed to show affection.  If I catch her doing something sweet with her siblings, ESPECIALLY Cason, I get this face:

I woke up one weekend to the sound of her reading Cason his superhero book.  Since she isn't into that stuff, it was obviously just to make him happy.  I came in to sneak a picture, and she knew I knew she was doing it to make him happy, so....immediately embarrassed.

Other times she'll be acting tough, and Cason will do something sweet or cute, and we'll make eye contact and she gives me the funniest smile, and kind of tilt her head and admit that "that was cute".  Haha.