Happy Birthday, Sophie-Bug!!

I know I say it every year for every one of you kids, but I mean it sincerely every time:  how can you be this old already??  SEVEN??  Impossible.  

You are still irrepresible.  Hard-headed, lovely, sweet, hot-headed, loving, and brilliant.  And I don't say a single one of those adjectives lightly.  You are intense in everything you do, and you hold everyone - yourself included - to very high standards.  More than once this year you cried because you didn't get 100% on a grade.  But you didn't do it very often for your grades are phenomenal.  You need to have 11 AR (reading) points by the end of the year.  You currently have 96.  You'll be reading this post on your own this year!  I am amazed by your drive and diligence.  Nothing is ever going to stop you, and if it tries, you will scream your head off about it until it gives up.

You also amaze us with your empathy and ability to read people.  You are so boisterous that most people miss the gentle nature you hide inside.  But you can not bear to see other people hurt...unless you're the one who has irritated them to the point of tears.

You are my child who asks the uncomfortable questions.  You ponder life and death, often to a point that worries me.  You can be a happy go-lucky-kid, and you often are, but you can also get a thought into your head that keeps you from enjoying your day.  You are a deep child, a thinker and a worrier.  A screamer and a crier.

A child that I love so very much.  A child that tests me to the extreme limits of my patience every single day.  EVERY SINGLE DAY.  But you are worth all of the angst you cause me, and much more.  You are a truly incredible kid.

I live for the love letters you give me.  You are showing glimmers of having the writer's gift, although you really want to be a singer instead.  I understand. I don't think either of us is destined for vocal fame, but I'm not fully convinced yet, and I hope you never are either.

Like most mothers, I just want you to be happy.  My silly, sweet, happy little girl.

My big girl.  My SEVEN year old.  When I think about how fast those seven years have flown by, I just want to grab you and squeeze you and never let you go.  And I never will, of course.  But you will.

And when you fly away, it will be AWESOME.  You amaze me every day with your mind, your lovely face, those green eyes that reflect your intense soul so clearly.

I hope you have a wonderful, happy birthday.  Even though you are, of course, planning for it to be the worst one ever.  Except for when you're planning for it be the best one ever.  But no matter what, I just hope you can feel how much I have loved being your mommy for the last seven years.  You are my sweetheart, and I love you, my sweet, sweet Sophie.  Happy Birthday!!!

Overheard

Scene:  The kids are playing outside, having a walking-on-gravel-barefoot contest.

Isaac:  "I'm pretending I'm walking on dragonflies."

Sophie:  "I'm pretending I'm walking on dead grass that needs to be thrown away."

Suzi:  "I'm a carrot!"

Good dogs.

Clearly, I have two very good dogs, for if you'll look closely, you'll see...

That Deltie has been awarded a Curious George medal....

And Gammie has been given a ball to play with!

Not naming any names, but I'm pretty sure the presenter was a super cute preschooler, one who loves her doggies!!

Outsmarted by a three-year old.

First a little history for you - for the last month or two...well, off and on for her whole life, really...we've been fighting a battle to keep Suzi in her own bed.  Make that "I've" been fighting a battle because since Suzi curls up with me, Chris doesn't much care if she crawls into our bed every night or not. 

Okay, so back to a few minutes ago, I run up to Suzi and played the drums on her noggin.  "Sorry," I yelled as I ran away, "Sometimes a mama just has to beat a baby." 

She hollered back with a huge smile on her face, "And sometimes a baby just has to get in bed with her mama."  Then she burst out laughing. 

This one keeps me on my toes.

Check out what my dad made me!

The little heart has a piece of mirror off an antique dresser of my mom's that she gave me years ago. I was so sad when I broke the mirror, so Chris gave a broken piece of it to dad, and this is what he made:

The wood is from slats that used to be on my nephew's bed. The bottom of the box is wood from an antique cabinet that was my brother-in-law's grandmother's.

 The jewelry box is lined in red velvet from an old dress that my niece Maddie wore when she was little:

I think it's such a cool piece of family memorabilia.  I love it!!

St. Patty's day festivities!

GROSS!!  This disgusting sight is what greeted my poor kids when they got up.  A leprechaun peed in their toilet...and left his droppings and a muddy footprint behind.

Then they followed the muddy footprints through the house....

And discovered that their trap was sprung!

But the lephrechaun was on to them, so rather than finding him and his pot of gold, they found a bunch of Hundred Grands.  The edible ones,unfortunately.

But all was not lost, for after they got decked out in green....

Their cousin Maddie (and her mom!) showed up in their finest greenery too!

We all went to a lovely Irish lunch at a local Irish pub where we were serenaded by live bagpipe music and posed with leprechauns. 

It was a very lucky St. Patrick's day indeed!

Shameless bragging!

 

This is an ice cream graph of how many points the kids in Sophie's class have earned by reading their AR books.  Guess who's is the tallest by a huge margin??  That's right, my sweet little lunatic!  No, seriously, I mean that - sweet AND lunatic.  Case in point is this picture I took a few minutes ago of the leprechaun trap we made tonight:

CRAZY.  But that's okay, because that crazy chic can READ!!

That's the way, uh huh, uh huh, I like it, uh huh, uh huh.

Hardy. Har. Har.

One of the highlights of mine and Suzi's day is when we sit down together to play The Sims.  Every time we have to have the characters be me and her.  Of course.  So today we were decorating our fabulous new mansion, when suddenly the mommy Sim began to show, prompting Suzi to say, "When mommies and daddies grow up they get babies in their bellies, right, mom?"

"Sometimes," I say, "But only mommies get babies in their bellies."

She thinks about this, then says, "Well, I'm never going to grow up."

That thought is horrifying, of course, so I tell her, "No, you have to promise me you'll grow up, okay?"

She smiles and says, "Cause when I'm a grown-up, I can yell at little children?" 

Natural born comedian, that one.

Yep, that just made it all worthwhile.

At dinner this evening, we were talking about the ages of the kids at Suzi's preschool, and Isaac told Suzi that MaMa kept him when he was the age of the kids in the playgroup class at her school (two-year olds). 

"No," I told him, "MaMa kept you until you were about 18 months old, when I got laid off, then I got to keep you myself." 

He then asked me to explain what laid-off meant, which I did, then he asked, "Did you want your job?" 

"Yes," I said.  "I did.  But they did away with my position."

He thought about it for a second, then quietly said, "I'm glad you didn't get to go back."

Me too, little buddy.  Me too.