30. Aren't you surprised?

Every morning I get 30 or 45 minutes alone with Willa after all the other kids have gone to school.  She came downstairs yesterday morning with a cute little grin, and as she posed with her yogurt asked me, "Aren't you surprised I turned out to be so fashionable?"  It was one of the best moments of my day.

Kirsta recently asked me if Willa is in the ignoring years.  If you looked at my blog recently, or maybe if you also were in middle school with two older sisters heavily involved in the glory years of high school, you might conclude she is.  However, she is Willa.  She would never allow that to happen.  Here is what Willa is up to these days.

-She just finished another season of soccer, which she loves.  She decided she wasn't as good at it as she wanted to be, so she asked for private coaching.  She had 6 sessions at Franklin Park right by our house with Michaela, who helped her footwork and taught her some great skills.  Unfortunately, at their last game today, their team's strongest players were all gone, so we didn't really have a good offense and we lost.  However, Willa did great debuting as goalie during the first half and using some of the skills Michaela taught her as wing in the second half.

-She is becoming more social as new vistas of friends are opening up in middle school.  It's fun to see her being included more often even by the friends she already knew from elementary school.

-She is still singing.  Her voice teacher comes over here and trades a lesson for us watching her adorable baby while she teaches Willa and then leaves and teaches one other student.  At her last lesson she was preparing an audition number for the school musical.  Try-outs are next week!  She and her sisters also sang a beautiful 3 part acapella "How Great Thou Art" at YW in Excellence last week.  It was such a pleasure to sit back and listen to my three daughters singing so beautifully together.

-She still rocks her academic world.  She could not have brought home a better report card, so I yielded to her request that I skip her (unscheduled) parent-teacher conferences.  There is one girl at school who irritates Willa to death by bragging about how brilliant and talented she (the girl) is.  That kind of thing just really grates on people who really ARE brilliant and talented.

-And although, no, we aren't surprised at how fashionable she is (did Mariah and Eliza's little sister really have a choice?), we do keep catching our breath at what a cute figure she is getting and how grown up she looks.  Most people place her at least a few years ahead of her actual age.