Ingrid is 7!

It makes sense to me that Henry is 8.  Heidi cruising toward 4.5 and 5 seems like a really good phase.  Fritz was obviously destined to be two years old.  But Ingrid?  Is seven?  What?  It makes no sense.  She's maybe five, tops. 

For the past year, Ingrid has been telling me she wanted two things for her seventh birthday: pierced ears and cat.  This seemed very Ingrid. Straightforward requests, firmly adhered to. I started buying and setting aside fun earrings and wrapped them up for her birthday.  And then Ingrid changed her mind and decided she wasn’t ready for pierced ears after all. This also seemed very Ingrid. Not a big fan of physical discomfort, that one.

But -- our cat-lover got her cat!  Meet Martha, Ingrid’s best beloved.  We started searching for and meeting kitties back in July.  We met several, and found this gorgeous girl who was unfazed by Gunnar and four kids pawing at her.  She requires special food for allergies, s o we looked at more kitties, but none compared to this tiny tiger, so we brought her home just before Ingrid’s birthday. Ingrid adores this cat.  She carries her around, moves her from place to place unnecessarily, and cuddles her when she needs a quiet moment. Ingrid named her Martha, which we think (?) was a reference to a character in a Clifford story that Ingrid used to love.  Until Grandma Carol said the name Martha reminded her of Sweet Martha’s Cookies at the MN State Fair. We have all accepted this adorable after-the-fact explanation for her name and ate a bucket of cookies in her honor. Ingrid loves her so much that she cleans the cat litter with minimal complaining.

Ingrid seems very mature and knowledgable lately.  She made loads of academic progress in first grade.  She had the same teacher Henry had, who really challenged the kids.  She started first grade a bit behind, which is not surprising since she’s the youngest kid in her grade, but finished several months ahead of the benchmarks.  She cranked through all of the Dog Man, Captain Underpants, and Bad Guys books over the summer, along with some more text-heavy series like Ivy & Bean. She has a goofy sense of humor and prefers the slapstick funny books usually billed to boys, along with classic comic books like Garfield.  She tries to tell me the stories and can’t finish because she cracks herself up. She loves art class, loathes PhyEd, and is completely indifferent to math, science, and social studies, though she seems to be doing fine at all of them. When I help her with her infrequent math homework, it often takes some time and some improvised manipulatives before she gets the concept, but once she gets it, it sticks.  

Ingrid had a busy summer of running around with her friends and doing camps.  She did swim lessons, art camp, Engineering for Pets camp at the local STEM museum, playground camp in the neighborhood, and horse camp.  I signed her up for all these things because I thought one of them might spark some interest that would stick. She said she enjoyed all of them, with art camp and horse camps being the clear favorites, but she still declined my offer to sign up for fall art classes or riding lessons.  Oh well. At least Ingrid will be cheap this year.  

Second grade is off to a fine start.  The first couple of weeks were a little rough; Ingrid would come home a little mopey and want to cuddle.  She doesn’t report anything sua sponte, but we finally teased out that she didn’t have anyone to play with at recess, or that they weren’t doing anything interesting in class.  It does take her a long time to get comfortable with a new routine, and I think she just hadn’t quite worked out where to meet her friends at recess, or didn’t anticipate who would be playing with whom after last year’s buddies were all reshuffled into different classes.  Everything seems to have smoothed out. They have figured out how to meet up before the whole recess flies by, and her class is doing real work instead of review.  

Of the four kids, Ingrid is the is the most content to do things by herself.  When we were hiking this summer, she was the only kid who would march alone, or companionably holding hands with me but not talking.  I was at school the other day, and her teacher said Ingrid told him that sometimes she likes to find a quiet place at home to just sit by herself.  I laughed and told him that Ingrid was exactly the child Karl and I expected to have, unlike the other three extroverts we produced. Which is true, but funny, because Ingrid also spends every single available minute with her neighbor friends.  I wonder, if the neighbors weren’t right there and getting off the bus with her every day, if she would seek out so much activity. She doesn’t harass me to set up play dates like Henry and Heidi do. 

She remains utterly immune to parent or peer pressure.  Though she is generally compliant about following the household routines, if she doesn’t want to do something I tell her to do, there’s no persuading her, short of a drag-out fight to time out.  It’s the annoying flip-side to not caring what her friends are doing, which will serve her well. Her friends are all in sports or activities of some kind. Ingrid does not care or want to do any of those things.  At her checkup, the doctor asked if she was in any sports or activities, and Ingrid unabashedly said, “Nope.”  

And yet she’s seldom idle.  The doctor gave me the side-eye about no activities and followed up with questions about screen time, but Ingrid is hardly ever on the computer or iPad.  Every now and then she’ll get obsessed with some terrible show (recently, Garfield and Nailed It!) and binge-watch, but she is not drawn to the magic screen like Henry is.  She’s just running around inventing elaborate games with her friends, or styling Fritz’s hair, or moving the cat, or reading a book that makes her laugh. Which, in my humble opinion, is exactly what a seven-year-old should be doing.  

We were at the cabin for her actual birthday, which we celebrated with the traditional bakery cake from the local Minong, WI grocery store. 

For her friend party, she originally requested Chuck E Cheese, but I loathe the place with a burning passion and told her she could do anything else.   It became a running joke between us, where I would offer increasingly-ridiculous extravaganzas, and she would demand only Chuck E Cheese.  I literally offered to have ponies in our backyard instead. Having been denied the glories of cardboard pizza and overpriced crappy trinkets, Ingrid opted for a small sleepover with her besties.  That worked out perfectly, because we had zero August weekends at home and a Friday sleepover was all we could really manage. She just wanted the girls from the neighborhood plus OtherIngrid. I was surprised she didn’t want any school friends, and I was worried that it wouldn’t feel festive enough because the invitees are at our house virtually every day, but it was a charming celebration.  Ingrid planned the whole order of events and did not want me to stage any games or activities. We ordered pizza, opened presents, ate rainbow DQ ice cream cake, put on a movie that no one watched, and put the girls to bed 57 times before they finally fell asleep at 11:00. The highlight was listening to them in the next room, hearing the conversation turn to their dead pets and relatives (yikes), then hearing Ingrid, in dramatic hushed tones, tell everyone that she heard her great-grandma's dying words: "I love my family." Which is very Ingrid, in that it was both very sweet and a rampant falsehood. Gunnar woke them up at 6:30, Karl made them waffles, and they played before dispersing to their own houses as they got sick of each other (5 of the 6 attendees live on our block).  Ingrid was entirely satisfied with it.

And now, the birthday interview!

• What is your favorite color? 
• Teal
• What is your favorite food? 
• Mac and cheese
• What is your favorite dinner that we cook at home?
• Brisket with mac and cheese
• What is your favorite treat? 
• Birthday cake
• What is your favorite subject in school? 
• Art
• What is one thing you want to learn this year? 
• Addition
• What is your favorite thing to do on weekends?
• Play with my friends
• What is your favorite movie? 
• Addams Family
• What is your favorite tv show? 
• Garfield
• What is your favorite book? 
• Princess in Black
• What is your favorite song? 
• Down By the Bay (stinker child)
• What is your favorite restaurant? 
• Quang
• What is your favorite vegetable? 
• Peppers
• What is your favorite fruit? 
• Watermelon
• What is your favorite place to visit? 
• Grandma Jane and Grandpa Alan’s house
• Where do you WANT to visit someday? 
• The North Pole
• Who is your best friend? 
• Ingrid A (aka OtherIngrid)
• What’s your favorite thing to do with Henry? 
• I don’t know
• What’s your favorite thing to do with Heidi? 
• I don’t know
• What's your favorite thing to do with Fritz?
• Play wrestle
• What’s your favorite thing to do with Dad? 
• Cuddle
• What’s your favorite thing to do with Mom? 
• Cuddle
• What do you want to be when you grow up? 
• Veterinarian
• What are you really good at?
• Gymnastics
• What do you wish you could do or be better at?
• Gymnastics, because I’m not really good at gymnastics, and I could get better
• What is something that you wish for? 
• Another sister
• What is something you wonder about? 
• How are bugs made?
• Who is someone that you miss? 
• Grandma Joan
• What makes you sad? 
• That Grandma Joan died
• What makes you happy? 
•  That I have friends and my family
• What would your perfect day be like?
• Playing with my friends all day, eating at their houses
• What age do you look forward to – and why?
• 17 because I want to be a teenager because I’ll be closer to making my own choices

Actually, I can believe she'll be making good choices and doing great things at 17. If she is who she is at age 7, Ingrid be just fine.