Naomi is 12!

I didn't think it had actually been that long since I'd posted here, but it has! 

In the meantime, Naomi has turned both 11 and 12. So it's time for a little highlight.

Last year, Naomi held a tropical-themed smoothie party with a bunch of friends. We unwrapped prizes from a ball of Saran wrap, played "kick the flip-flop" and combined all kinds of frozen fruit for the smoothies of our dreams. It was amazing.

This year, with our crazy-busy summer, we kind of opted for slightly more minimal birthday celebrations. Naomi prefers birthday playdates anyway, and she got to enjoy several on her birthday!

In the morning, as per tradition, all three girls assembled in the decorated dining room, and chowed down on Lucky Charms for breakfast. Kalina downed some "real" cereal first, which made sense since she had several classes to attend later and wanted her brain to actually function.

Naomi opened a few presents, including a cat shirt, an elaborate tiny house craft kit, a slime-making kit from Elise, and a book from Kalina. Naomi, as expected, changed into the cat shirt immediately after breakfast and then set right to making slime. Elise helped, looking for any excuse to delay the inevitable Geometry.

The slime turned out to be a bit... slimier... than we'd thought it would, but the girls got it sorted out before we had to go pick up Naomi's friend Ellie for the first birthday playdate. As always happens, the moms started chatting, but Naomi pulled birthday rank and got us out the door and home so that she could enjoy as much playdate as possible.

The girls visited the guinea pig, and then walked to the park. When they came back, they started making a stop-motion Lego video, and only stopped for lunch. The video was fairly elaborate, with a fancy choreographed ball going on in the background and various animals running across the table and causing other trouble in the foreground.

For lunch, we had a puffy oven pancake--one of Naomi's favorites, and also one of Ellie's (and Elise's, and Kalina's). Then it was back to Lego stop-motion, until our next playdate showed up and joined them--Eva, Grant, and Katya, the kids of a college friend who just moved to town.

When the playdates were over, Naomi unwrapped a couple more packages, and pretty soon it was time to head to Jason's Deli with Grandpa and Marianne. I'm not sure Naomi will ever get tired of macaroni and cheese with softserve ice cream for dessert. At least, we hope she doesn't!

Naomi chose a Dairy Queen cake, which we enjoyed with more gifts and conversation back at home. It was a simple birthday, but lots of fun! 

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At 12, Naomi is a fun, smart, quirky girl who's gaining confidence in all kinds of things. She's invoked her courage throughout the past year to do such things as ride a gondola across the Royal Gorge (not super voluntarily... at all... but she did eventually enjoy the ride!), perform in a trio in her homeschool orchestra, and try cucumber more than once. 

When Naomi has free time, you'll most often find her reading a book. She usually has half a dozen going at once, plus she's happy to pick up an old favorite and flip to the best parts to reread. Fantasy, historical fiction, realistic, and adventure are her favorite genres--plus anything that's a little silly. Which means that her book stack might contain pretty much anything. 

When Naomi's not reading, she prefers to be playing with friends. We now have a couple neighborhood 8-year-old girls that she spends time with (they recently tried to dig a swimming pool along the trail, and will also set up obstacle courses, crochet, climb trees, and play in the stream). She also loves spending time with girls her age, creating stop motion Lego movies, building houses and worlds with Legos, crafting, and playing games. She most easily bonds with quirky, creative, interesting types (like the rest of her family). And while she still plays regularly with a girl she bonded with at the neighborhood park over princesses when they were both about 4, she has made a few new friends at church lately. She's truly a "make new friends but keep the old" girl.

And when Naomi isn't reading or playing with friends, she'll probably be crafting. Over the past year or two she's become very adept with a glue gun, and she's perfected her strategies for making anything and everything cute. She's also been drawing with Matt, and they've both improved their skills. Her animals are still always adorable, whether cartoony or realistic. The cartoony animals always include extra flair, such as a coyly raised paw/hoof, or a bow around their ear. Captions with witty sayings are optional (but often included).

Naomi has gotten
increasingly tech-savvy
and loves to entertain
us all with my iPhone's
capabilities.

I'd never thought of Naomi as particularly sporty, but this year we discovered that she really enjoys running (and is quite swift) and is quite decent at swimming. After years of saying "no" to swimming lessons due to multiple mediocre/expensive experiences in the past, and after years of anxious hesitation toward the finer points of swimming from Naomi herself, I finally signed the girl up for some private lessons this past summer. As it turned out, simply by going to the pool regularly in the summer over the years and being coerced into working on some skills, whether with me or with a sister, Naomi had acquired almost everything she needed to achieve multiple strokes, and her teacher was very pleasantly surprised at how well she could already swim. Even after the first lesson, she had figured out several strokes, and improved from there. Her teacher was impressed!

Other new challenges have included math. Once she heard last spring that she might be able to test into 8th-grade pre-algebra math for this year, skipping the 7th-grade review year, she was on a mission. She squeaked by the placement test, but insisted on 8th-grade math (probably for unhealthy reasons, to be honest), and has insisted on doing every problem herself with as little help as possible. She's nearly 1/4 of the way through and so far, so good! Mostly.

Naomi still adores animals and takes care of her one remaining guinea pig, and helps out with the cats. Around the house, she's become slightly more interested in food/cooking/baking, likes to help plant seeds, and will accomplish chores as long as they're on a checklist of sorts. 

Naomi enjoyed her art camp
again this summer!

Naomi has been really enjoying music, and still takes piano lessons and plays viola in her homeschool orchestra (and, recently, piano as well!). She's still interested in theater and is taking a class at our co-op. 

She has a quirky and silly sense of humor and a somewhat unstoppable giggle once she gets started. But she also can totally get serious when necessary. Naomi is interested in psychology and how the brain works, nature, younger kids, great books, missions, and cute art. She's not sure what she wants to be when she grows up, but clearly has a lot of excellent options.

But more importantly, Naomi is growing into a confident, sweet, smart, conscientious, helpful, independent, responsible, super-fun, and super-creative girl who is delighting our whole household.

Happy birthday, sweet girl!!