Happy 9th Birthday Flor!

Oh my gosh, is it really so? I am finally blogging about poor Flor's birthday?? Yeah, it's true.

I am only 22 days late.

I think Flor hits the shaft for birthdays on so many levels. Can I just name them?
1) Flor's birthday is immediately after Christmas (Jan 6) so that makes it hard to do back to back presents
2) Flor has no real interests or things she just loves, so that makes shopping extra difficult since she can't really tell us what she wants, nor does she play with toys all that well. So, clothes it is generally.
3) Flor doesn't really know what is going on & she doesn't understand what a 'birthday' is, so even though she loves the extra attention and the cake, she still doesn't really get what it is about. Therefore, her parties are usually more low key- just us at home. We did make her a rice dinner (her fav) and that has to count for something. And I also made the cake homemade & that really counts for something because I am awesome at boxed cakes.
4) Flor's birthday doesn't get blogged till 100 years later because I am a slacker.

So, POOR FLOR. Does anyone feel bad for her? I do. I am feeling a bit of guilt, can you tell?

All in all, though, we had a wonderful birthday celebration with this girl. She is as cute and spunky as ever. I love her smile and her laugh and her social butterfly-ness. I can't believe that she is 9 whole years old. That is really, really mind blowing to me. She hasn't grown much taller, but she is getting a bit of a belly these days. She still has her little bird legs, so she kind of looks a bit lopsided sometimes. haha, poor thing.

Flor is working hard at school on some goals like walking up the stairs with one hand, sorting objects, carrying her own lunch tray, putting on her own socks, washing her hands alone, tracing lines, sticking to an activity for more than one minute (yes, ONE MINUTE-- she has no attention span at all!), etc. She is also doing speech therapy and has adaptive PE where her PE teacher says that she is one of the fastest in the class going around the laps in the gym three times on PE day- that is when she decides to do it instead of plopping herself in the middle and not participating. Can you tell she has a personality?! This girl knows what she wants.

Flor has new primary teachers (yes teacherS- two teachers for two kids in the class) and she is really giving them a run for their money so far. Both appear very frazzled and a little out of sorts at the end of class each Sunday. Bless their hearts. Please pray with me that Flor will calm down, stop throwing crayons and pulling hair, and be a good little girl in Primary. It is true that she knows when and with whom to push buttons. I am in the primary presidency, so I am in sharing time with Flor. When I am sitting there looking at her, she is such a little angel. Nice, no getting out of her seat, nothing. Then, as soon as I stand up to do sharing time (I have had the month of January), she is out of her seat, getting into people's bags, pulling hair, making a ruckus, laughing at everything, throwing herself on the floor, pulling her dress over her head, and on and on. These two poor ladies try their best to get her to sit down, but she just loves having free reign of the room while I am occupied. See how smart she is?

Anyway, there is a little info on our 9 year old Flor. We love our Florinda Perry Perry to pieces and adore the personality she came with, even if she is hard on other people sometimes. :)

All her loot. Even a chair as we were optimistically hoping she would actually sit in it from time to time...