Allison is Five!

So, the kid is five years old today.

She’s been looking forward to her birthday (and presents!) for a long time now, asking almost every day how many days her birthday would be in.

She woke up early this morning and Diana made her chocolate chip pancakes.  We got all ready for school, and I dropped her off with a bag of little toys and pencils that she can distribute as little prizes for her classmates.

I guess I haven’t written about kindergarten yet!  The long and short of it is that it’s going really well.  She is always excited to go and excited to be there, and there hasn’t been a single tear or extra hug or anything needed at dropoff.  It’s been great, and the school really seems like it has its act together.  There is a very strong community of parent involvement, with multiple parent helpers in the class every day (already booked out for the year).  Diana works in the morning, but has had the opportunity to volunteer for an afternoon or two, which was nice.

Allison has made a few friends already (Ella, Qunicy, and Layse (“lay-EESE”)).  I think she spends recess looking for bugs or chasing boys, which is funny to me.

Academically, I don’t think she’s particularly challenged at the moment, as they are reviewing individual letters and sounds, but it’s always good to establish a baseline and move forward from there.  I’m not worried that she’ll be bored or anything.

So, in general, that’s all going really well.  I drop her off every morning, and Diana picks her up in the afternoons and takes her to the pool or finds something fun to do.  I didn’t really relish the morning routine every morning, but it’s been working out pretty well.

Allison is tall and lean still.  At her fifth year doctor’s appointment, the doctor noted that she’s been 95th percentile in height and 75th in weight at every appointment.  She’s directly on the same curve each time, which is unusual.  My mom measured her today, and she’s 3 inches taller than a year ago, and two inches taller than I was at her age.  I’m kind of hoping that she slows down growing a bit and lets the other kids catch up!  She’s one of the youngest kids in her class, in some cases by a full year, but also one of the tallest.

She still wears an eyepatch for two hours every day and glasses for the rest.  Her latest eye appointment showed improvement in her left eye (from 20/25 (-1) to 20/25 (+2)), but still a discrepancy, so still patching.  But it’s not a struggle at all (especially since we moved from stickers to a cloth patch that fits on her glasses!), and I’m glad it’s not a more serious problem.

Allison loves drawing, and her art has improved considerably.  She mostly draw’s people, but the level of detail has expanded quite a bit (with eyelashes and fingers and belly buttons, teeth, etc).  Her absolute favorite toys are her “squishies”, which are little rubber stretch bugs/animals/fish/sea creatures/robots.  She has probably around 70 of them and is always arranging them and using them to tell little stories.

So everything is good.  She’s a great kid and we love her every day.

Apart from Allison, life is going well.  Diana is back to school and busy working.  I haven’t worked on any new games, but have gained some success with Hidden in Plain Sight (which came out almost a year ago).  It’s been nominated as a finalist in a pretty big indie games festival (IndieCade), so that’s pretty cool.  I’ll be going up to LA in a few weeks to be a part of that.  Otherwise, just playing games and doing my thing.