It's quiet here

Everyone is sleeping now, ahh, quite. I should go to sleep too, it is 11:35, but I am enjoying the quite (by wasting my time on the computer!). I just did the nightly kid check, everyone is covered up, those who need diapers have them on, all is well.
Sophia is, of course, devoid of clothing. She does, however, have a diaper on so that is the least I can expect. This means that when she wakes up sometime between 3 and 5 (most likely) and comes into my bed she will slip between Faron and me and place her freezing cold feet/arms/legs/back/whatever onto my back. She and Isabella both do this, Isabella actually runs her feet to the bottom of my shirt and slips her toes underneath until she finds a good entry point to access my warm back. Funny how they can do that in their sleep.
It use to be when I would do the final night time check and I would see Isabella and Sophia still and asleep that it would dawn on me that Isabella is just a baby. During the day she is bright and intelligent, whitey and grown up, I forget she is 3. However in the last couple of weeks it has been that final nightly check that has revealed to me that Isabella is no longer a baby, she is a full blown kid. She is tall and mature, her baby face is gone, her feet are not baby feet but the feet of a kid who will be a tall girl. It is amazing.

Isabella will be 4 in 2 weeks. This is not that hard for me to accept, it is amazing that she is only 4 really. She constantly amazes me with her abilities. She is learning to read. Today she read "This cat is sick. This cat is sad" along with a list of about 9 other words. She flies through her reading lesson in about half the time the book says it will take for a 5 year old. We worked on her math computer game yesterday, which we haven't played for several months. It has just taken her into addition, so she was adding 1+2, 2+1 and so on all the way up to 5+2, 5+3. She gets it, no problem. You have 5, you add 2 more, you get 7 ok, lets move on shall we.

I think that my biggest problems with her education will be keeping her motivated and not boring her with repetition. Once she understands a concept she really doesn't want to have to repeat it. Her reading lessons usually begin with, "maybe I won't read all my words this time, maybe just half" or "do I have to do all of them?". However, she is also sensitive to failure, she holds herself to a very high standard. If she fears she will not be able to do something correctly she would rather not try it to begin with. I can't imagine where she would get such a trait, what a lovely gift for me to pass onto my child. So I have to walk the line between helping her push past her fears and not putting more pressure on her than she needs.

Sophia is a funny girl. She is every bit as quick and smart as Isabella, but she doesn't care nearly as much as Isabella does. If giving the wrong answer suits her needs more than answering correctly then she will. Up until about 6 months ago she had me pretty convinced that she didn't know her colors. I would ask her, "what color is this" and she would look at it (or not) and just give me any old color that came to mind. I would say, "no, that's purple" and her answer is, "yes, purple". She got the right answer, she didn't have to stop what she was doing to think about it, and she got me to stop asking her questions. When not being questioned, however, I find that she knows all of her colors perfectly well.

"Can you count, Sophia?", "No, I don't know how" or "8, 3, 5, 7". Playing hide and seek with Isabella I hear "1,2,3,4 here I come".

If it isn't fun then what is the point? However, she could have a whole conversation with you about anything you would like, be it real or pretend. Feed her a joke and stop half way, she can figure out where you are going and finish it for you. Even when I think she isn't paying attention (why do we parents continue to think kids aren't paying attention to things?) she knows exactly what is going on. Leaving the Nature Sanctuary last week Isabella asked me why the tour guide was playing bird calls while we were walking. I had already answered this question at least 2 times so I said, "why was she, do you remember?". Sophia quotes my answer word for word, "to try to get the other birds to come over to us".

My biggest educational challenge with her: tell me why this is important to me, make it fun, make it quick!