Tara at 5 Years Old

Tara is 5 years old already, and just lost her first tooth yesterday! She was very excited about it. But also worried 'Now how will I eat when I have lost all my teeth?' It was really lost, she was eating rice and it just disappeared... We suspect it got eaten up, but we are not sure. We wrote a letter to the tooth fairy instead, and put that under her pillow. This morning she woke up to a dollar under her pillow. She was very impressed 'Wow, this is my first ever tooth fairy dollar!' :-)

She was a very challenging 4yo and we had hoped that turning 5 would solve that, but that hasn't been the case yet. She is sure everybody has to do what she says, and preferably right now! :-) She has a love/hate relationship with her brother Tim. They either play wonderfully together, or fight. They haven't found a middle ground yet, but I hope they will soon.

She started taking karate when she turned 4yo and has really enjoyed doing it. She participates nicely in the class and has been earning some orange stripes on her white belt. She also does gymnastics, together with Jane and has a lot of fun in that class too. She has started swimming lessons, but there is a lot of room for improvement in that area, she has not put her head totally in the water yet :-)

She has started to really participate in our homeschool and wants to do school work just as the boys do. She is working her way through first grade math and is on the verge of reading. I don't think it will be long before it clicks, although those things are not always predictable. She seems to take after Cees in academics skills and work. Academics come really easily to her.

Tara is into doll play and can spend hours playing pretend and role playing. Her dearest wish was to get a barbie, and she convinced us to get one for her by asking for a barbie cake for her birthday. We tried to keep the barbies out of the house, but realized that we were fighting a losing battle and gave in on the barbie issue. So our house is being invaded by them now, since Tara's sisters follow in her foot steps. Oh well, actually it all started when Sander bought a barbie printer for a good prize. He was the one most opposed to barbies. I figured since he got the printer, that I wasn't going to be too militaristic on keeping barbies out of the house anymore either :-)

She is also into building lego, but I guess that shouldn't be a surprise in our lego addicted household. She figured out last year how to build from instructions and is a very good builder now. She prefers pink lego over the normal colors, but will build with normal lego if needed. Pink lego is much better though, in her humble opinion!

Tara likes babies and enjoyed watching the birth of Erik. She loves him to pieces and will carry him all around the house, smothering him with her attention :-) She has been drawing lots of babies inside mommies lately, it clearly fascinates her.

Not only the start of life fascinates her, but the ending too. She has been talking a lot about dying and who in our family will die first and will everybody die after their 100th birthday and things like that. Today she told me 'When Tim is dead, I will play with his toys!' Tim was listening to that and immediately came to the protection of his toys 'I will put Erik in my will, so HE can play with them!' Don't know what sparked the interest in the death issue, but she clearly has been thinking a lot about it.