Our girl is 9! Entering her last year of single digits (as she is excited to point out), Pearl is growing like a weed and becoming more her own person every day. She is sweet, quirky, and hilarious. She loves animals (and especially Winnie) and hiking and camping. She’s soft but tough and is a thoughtful friend and sister.
This past year we’ve really seen Pearl’s reading take off and she is devouring chapter books. Every night when I go in to tell her it’s time for Lights Out, she nods and says, “Can I finish this chapter?” She can sometimes even be prevailed upon to read to her little sister! She likes stories with adventure and animals.
As an 8-year-old she tackled a challenging hike with her dad. (Read all about it). They are busily planning this year’s hike now. Pearl is learning more in piano and she tried soccer for the first time this year.
For her birthday this year, Pearl had a small group of friends over for a fancy dinner party. Of course, there was a theme and this year it was Dogs (in honour of Winnie). We started with appetizers and cocktails (Shirley Temples) then a few games (dog-themed) before a dinner of sushi followed by more (dog-themed) games and then pumpkin pie for dessert. Just exactly as Pearl requested.
I could not love this girl more or be more delighted to get to be her mom. It is a privilege to know her and watch her grow up.
Karissa Reads Books 
Happy (belated) birthday to Pearl! Sounds like 8 will be a tough year to beat, but I bet she’s up for the challenge 🙂 The party looks lovely!
Thank you! 8 is a pretty awesome age. I kind of feel like if we let 8-year-old girls run the world, it would be a much better place!
Oh, 100% agreed!
I can’t believe I am so behind on my blog reading, but happy belated birthday to Pearl! I’d love to hear more about how her friends felt about the sushi dinner. Most adults I know would balk and such an interesting choice of food, but maybe that is just an American thing. My husband likes to point out to me that there is a difference between sushi and sashimi. Sushi technically does not have any raw fish in it, sashimi does, but in America, we call anything you roll up in rice “sushi.”
We’re the same here – anything in a roll is “sushi”. We did get a few raw ones though because Pearl does like those. I also ordered tempura and gyoza and we had lots of appetizers because I also wasn’t sure how her friends would react. Turns out they all love sushi! They were all excited, they used their chopsticks and asked for soy sauce. I think it’s a definite sign of a shift in the types of food we eat. This wasn’t new to any of them but I bet it would have been when you and I were kids.
I remember back when the weirdest thing a mom could serve her kids was a pita instead of bread. I’m glad to see that kids’ dietary options are expanding. I wonder why. It’s possible that we learned that children don’t like x, y, and z foods, so we’ve been sneaky about them unnecessarily. I remember being a little kid enjoying Cheerios, and my mom poured sugar on them because she assumed that all kids like sugary cereal.
Serving anything but white bread for sandwiches was seen as a super hippy dippy thing when I was a kid! I never ate an avocado until I was an adult. I don’t know if it was a class/economic thing or somethings weren’t as readily available then. I did love sugary cereal but we only had it at my Nana’s house! We were a microwave oatmeal kinda household!