Kylee

Kylee is pretty easy to take pictures of.  It’s me that’s the problem.  I can’t figure out any different poses or angles.  I get stuck with the same picture every year.  This was my favorite.

I give Kylee a hard time about acting like a 14-year-old.  She acts like she’s so grown up and so above the things that the kids do.  When school got out and I started letting Sadie and Dylan stay up a little, Kylee thought she would get to stay up even later as well.  She was really upset when I told her she had to go to bed the same time as Dylan and Sadie.  Like, super upset.  She really loves the time she spends with us once the kids are in bed.  Ryan took her with him on a walk at 9pm one night and now she asks to go on late walks almost every night.  I still try to get her in bed at a decent time, and the other kids don’t get to stay up all that late either, because they have golf in the morning and I have been dragging them out of bed to get ready for it.  And they’ve been tired and cranky.  So that’s fun.

Kylee is really good with Kaden.  She will pick him up and walk around with him if he fusses without anyone having to ask for her help.  He likes Kylee.  Not quite as much as Mom or Dad, but he does pretty well with her.  She enjoys things like feeding him solids and changing his diaper.  She asks to hold him all the time.  I knew it would be fun for her to have a baby, which is why I was so surprised that she was not excited when I told her we were having a baby a year ago.  She was really just not that thrilled.  None of the kids really understood what it would be like.  And now I have them asking if we are going to have another baby at some point.  They would love it.  Me, I might die if I have to do another pregnancy.  So no.  No more babies for us.

Kylee has Severs Disease in her heels and she has been dealing with a lot of pain.  Not just at gymnastics, but anytime she is active.  I got her a brace and she likes to wear it.  But it doesn’t cure her.  All last year Ryan would say, “let’s just stop doing gymnastics.”  Whenever she would come home from gym exhausted and whiny, he would say it’s not worth it.  When she started hurting, he got concerned and again told her maybe we should stop.  When she whined to me five times a day about pain, I told her she can quit gymnastics at any time.  It’s annoying to have gym right in the middle of the day three days a week.  It takes up a lot of days in our summer we could be doing something else fun.  And I’ve been stressed because the schedule for the school year for level 4 is 4-8pm three days a week.  That is not only a LOT of gym time, it is right during dinner time.  How would I feed her?  Make dinner at 3:30 and pack it for her to eat at break time at gym?  Just give her snack foods all the time?  She wouldn’t even see the other kids on those days since they go to bed at 8.  Seriously, I’ve been stressed.  I figured we would try and make it work, but I didn’t know how.

She had a week off of gym the last week of school before they switched to the summer schedule.  When they went back, she was hurting.  Not only her heel, but her whole body.  They really worked them in conditioning.  Her neck, back, abs all hurt.  She got one day off and had to go back again.  She did the same hard conditioning again.  That’s when she came home and said “actually Mom, I do want to quit gymnastics.”  Considering that she’s always freaked out when we talked about pulling her out, I was pretty shocked.  I talked to her about it for awhile and told her to think about it.  We told Ryan, and he was pretty surprised as well.  He said it would give her more time to do so many other things, but he understood that she might regret it so he talked to her about how Lexi will keep doing it and go to competitions and get better and Kylee might miss it.  She said she was okay with that.  She said she likes soccer and swimming and basketball and wants to do all those things too.  She’s not someone who makes rash decisions or changes her mind a lot.  She was sure.

So I told the gym and we are going to finish out June and then she will take an advanced tumbling class once a week for now.  There’s a chance she may change her mind and want to go back.  I don’t know.  We will discourage her going back.  It’s a lot of money and a lot of work and commitment.  And she will be behind in her strength and skills if she did.  I’m so relieved because I want to PLAY this summer and not drive to gym all the time.  And I don’t have to worry about dinners during the school year!  Perfect.  Sure I just bought her grips (actually I made her pay for them, she’s been earning money for almost two months to pay for them) and a brace (though I think she could still use the brace, it’s not like Severs Disease is exclusive to gymnasts).  And had her jacket embroidered.  And a part of me really enjoyed the meets and it makes me sad.  But I think in the future when she’s a bit older she will find something that she loves and we will get to watch her compete in that, whether it’s soccer or gymnastics or whatever.  It’s just a bit much to chase around a 9-year-old for this stuff.

Kylee has a boy in her class named Talan who got ahead of her in math objectives.  Kylee would say she didn’t care.  But Talan cared.  He would always ask her how many she had.  Near the end of the year Ryan and I gave her a hard time about not trying.  She really wasn’t trying.  She wasn’t competitive.  But we convinced her and she asked her teacher to assign her one more objective than him, so at the end of the year she ended up with one more than him.  Keeping her at the top of the class.  She says she didn’t rub it in to Talan, though.  Which is good.  Her totals for the year were Math: 317 Reading: 406  Considering most goals are like 20-30 per term, she kind of rocked it.

Ryan taught her how to do the Rubik’s cube a few months ago.  When we got a new cube and her and Ryan were timing themselves to see who could finish fastest.  Kylee did in 1 minute 44 seconds.  That’s pretty quick!

This year at school Kylee had a little more drama with her friends than she’s had in previous years.  I’m not surprised.  Third grade is when I remember having drama as well.  I think it was a lot of learning for Kylee.  Her friend Sydni is someone that she loves.  She had her in her first grade class and they were besties.  They didn’t see each other as much in second grade, but they were in the same class this last year.  The only problem is that Sydni also had a new friend Kayla in the class.  Kayla lives in Sydni’s neighborhood.  The three of them played and had fun together, but it sounds like Sydni was kind of the leader and needed to have things her way.  She always got to choose which of them she was partners with.  She wanted to play a certain game at recess and even if Kylee didn’t want to play it, she would run off and play with the other kids anyway.  Even when she had promised Kylee she would play with Kylee.  Most of the year they were fine and had fun, but there were a few (quite a few) days when Kylee would come home with hurt feelings.  Some of the stories she told me seemed like she was overreacting.  Some of them I was surprised she handled as well as she did.  She really liked Kayla, just not as much as Sydni and she didn’t like sharing Sydni or being left out when those two wanted to do something and she didn’t.  I talked a lot with her about finding things that she can control and making choices that will help her be happy.  She can’t control her friends.  She can choose to hang out with other people, which she did a few times.  We had originally planned on bringing both girls for her birthday dinner but there was some drama and they were being pretty mean to Kylee so I told her we should take someone else.  I had thought it would be fun for her to see those girls outside of school, but right before her birthday things were pretty tense.  Her teacher sent me an email one day with info about accelerated math because I volunteered in class, but in the email he mentioned that Kylee had been pretty sad in class.  He even said, “sounds like the girls are having their weekly fight” or something like that.  So it was even obvious to the teacher.  By the end of the year, she seemed to handle it a lot better.  I think I convinced her to stick up for herself a little- the girls kept eating her food!  I told her to tell them not to.  She said she went to heat up her food in the microwave and they had eaten a bunch of her raspberries or something like that.  I asked her why they always want her food and she said their lunches are gross.  That cracks me up because I pack healthy lunches, with some junk food in there as well.  Anyway, she started putting her foot down with the food.  One day they got mad that she wouldn’t share so they totally ditched her and were rude to her when she found them on the playground.  Instead of letting it get to her, she played with someone else.  Then she came home and told me that Sydni and Kayla “are so much drama!”  But she wasn’t upset.  At least not visibly.

The friend situation is a hard one.  It’s just a lesson you have to learn and I stressed that she has to make choices that she has control of in order to help her be happy.  At one point she was upset and one of her ideas was to bribe them with candy, haha.  Good idea, but not a long-term solution.  I got so tired of seeing her upset that I wondered why she even bothered being friends with Sydni.  I told her to just find other friends but she really, really likes Sydni.  Sydni is really fun.  She’s a high-energy girl that is quick-witted and knows how to have fun.  So Kylee chose to sit with her at lunch and continue to hang out with her.  I think the summer will be a nice break from the friend drama, though.  Let’s hope next year works out a little better.