Katrina just keeps learning & growing & making us proud. Up to this past week, there is something I never did with her though, because I was worried she was too young, and/or it would be too messy… but, I finally gave in & decided to paint her fingernails. She has some pretty, light purple, “sparkly” (as she likes to call it), kids’ polish anyway, we just hadn’t used it yet. But, I figured school was going to be out for a while, so if it didn’t turn out that great, who would really notice, ya’ know? Well, it actually turned out really pretty, although extremely light & almost non-existent. We put it on (she let me use some on myself, too) Wednesday night. After it had dried (and had been dry for at least an hour), she had gone to the bathroom & washed her hands. She came out of there, telling me that her nail polish was gone, but since I could still see some, I told her it was still there & that everything was ok. I explained that nail polish has to be removed with a special kind of liquid (fingernail polish remover) & that it wouldn’t just wash off with soap and water… However, by the next day, I’d washed my hands enough that mine actually was *completely* gone! Upon further inspection of hers, it had been cleaned off of her nails, too. So, I guess it’s a “live & learn” thing – the polish they make for kids these days actually *does* wash off! I promised her we’d do them again, sometime soon, with one of *my* colors. She’s pretty excited about that, already… 😉

She is getting to be such a big reader, as well! Although she is just beginning to learn, she knows quite a few small words, just upon seeing them (her Kindergarten teacher refers to these as “sight words”) – things like “a”, “the”, “it”, etc. I bought her a Dora the Explorer book at her school book fair that has some of the words with pictures of the object above them. Every time we got to one of those, I would ask her to “read” that word for me & she got them all! I know that’s not *really* reading, but she actually *is* learning the words by looking at the letters under the pictures. The “Easter Bunny” also left a book like this in her basket. She likes them both & even took the first one to her Grandparents’ house for her sleepover days. Just last night, we were at Pizza Hut for dinner & she read the words, “for your” out of a sentence on her placemat that said something about, “…quality pizza for your family.” She asked us what the other words were & before we could tell her it, she had figured out the word “pizza” on her own, just by looking at the Pizza Hut logo, right above there. We had to help with “quality” and “family”, but then she kept pointing & reading all those words aloud, so she’s on the right track. We’re probably going to check out some more “easy reader”/”learn to read”-type books from the library this summer. It’s so exciting, seeing her skills develop!