What Gabriela's up to these days

Before our life changes completely with the addition of baby #2, I wanted to update you all on what Gabriela's up to these days.

She LOVES to draw. She sits down for multiple drawing sessions a day. One of her favorite things to draw on is 3x5 cards.  Gabriela has her little art bag that Auntie Liss made for her, and she uses it every day now!

Gabriela adores mail. She has a couple sets of stationary and she will sit down to draw pictures and dictate letters for quite a while. She's a pro at putting the letter in the envelope, affixing the stamp, and putting her letters in the outgoing mail. If you send us a letter we will definitely send you one back!

Gabriela remembers how to spell her name and is getting pretty good at writing it.  The other day, during one of her drawing sessions, she randomly started practicing writing the letter B. She was so proud of herself, she practically squealed with delight and would say, "Look at my perfect B, Mommy!" with each one.  Later, we were drawing pictures of words that started with the B sound.  She thought of a bunch by herself, then turned the paper over so SHE could draw the B words that I thought of.  Gabriela drew a bat and then I told her how to spell it. She grabbed another paper, rewrote the word in giant letters and drew a new bat.  It's pretty exciting to see her so focused on her letters, especially since I haven't been trying to drill her on them or anything.

Gabriela is still a major fan of playing blocks. She loves building neighborhoods and bunk beds and then pretending with all her tiny dollies who live in the structures she builds.  Things just got more exciting around here because Auntie Liss got an old school Little People dollhouse for Gabriela with tons of little people and furniture to go with it.  We play dollhouse every day.

We've been reading chapter books too. Gabriela really follows the stories and asks for us to read more.  So far this year, we've read:

Charlotte's Web
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
The Wizard of Oz
James and the Giant Peach
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

We have ourselves a little counter.  Of course, Gabriela has been able to recite her numbers for ages, but now she's getting the hang of counting the actual amount of something instead of just rattling off the numbers.  She insists on counting everything - the number of grapes on her plate, how many people are at the table, how many shoes are lined up on the floor. I think it helps that she has this cute counting placemat.

I wish we were getting outdoors more often - I've been pooped with this whole pregnancy thing. Hopefully after baby is born, we can spend more time outside at the park, on nature walks, at the zoo, and Gabriela can ride her bike more too.  We'll see how the weather cooperates with that plan.