Today, Jillian started her second year of preschool and Mark began the fall term of his program Early Achievements Program at Kennedy Krieger. Despite verbally prepping everyone a day ahead of time, we were still unable to get “the shot”, but these captured the moment 🙂
You ask her name and she will proudly state, Jillian Faith Auldridge!
One recent evening we were playing one of Jilli’s favorite board games before bed, and the tradition holds that throughout the game she will subtly cheat her away to the lead so that by the end she has miraculously won, each and every time. What I find interesting though is her method, and I think it says a lot about her personality. She is deliberate about her actions, only moving her game piece ahead by one or two moves depending on who’s watching, is mindful of those around her and carefully calculates her moves. I love watching her gears turn.
The social media trend has been for each child on the first day of school to hold a framed piece of chalkboard that details their grade and what they want to be when they grow up. Well I’m too wordy for that and I want Jillian to read what she was like, right here in this four year old moment of hers.
I want her to know that she roots her brother on, rejoices with us in the little victories, and that she always has someone on her heart when we are praying together. She loves praise and responds best when she knows she can earn a prize through her efforts. She prefers lunch food over breakfast foods, often choosing to eat ham and cheese over cereal and waffles. She tells the best stories, most recently she acted out a running scene with her friends that had me dying of laughter. And her vocabulary, as usual, is out of this world. Not only does she use big words, but amazingly they are always in context. She uses adverbs when she should, which makes her grammar lovin’ mama proud 🙂
Each year we pick a summer song and this year, though it’s a tad out of date, she chose Cool Kids by Echomith, and as I watch her in the rear view mirror mouth the words “I wish I could be like the cool kids…”, I think you are one cool kid, Jillian Faith Auldridge.
To read other reasons why the Bean is such a cool kid check out her section of the site: the Bean
