House of Estrogen

Letter to Nina, 5.5 years

Dear Nina,

In the span of just a couple short months, you have changed and grown up at a pace that I haven't seen since you were a newborn. Besides starting kindergarten, you have learned to swim, learned to dive, learned to tie your shoes, and you carry yourself with a new found confidence.

Your face lights up when you talk about kindergarten. Every day, when you come home from school, and I ask you how your day was, you exclaim, "Great!" I can tell you really mean it too. You are soaking it all up and loving it. Every new experience lights another fire in you - riding the bus, eating in the cafeteria, buying your lunch, going to music, art, PE, and the library, playing on the playground, sitting criss-cross-applesauce, and walking down the hall "hip and lip". I feel like I'm getting to experience the wonder of kindergarten all over again through you.

 

Of course, you have a new crush already. You came home the first week and told us with a twinkle in your eye, "C looks like A." We knew then that C was the new man in your life. Today, you bragged to Elise that C blew you a kiss in the cafeteria!

Robert Fulghum wrote the book, "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten", and I'm beginning to think it is true. You are learning so much so fast that it just blows my mind. (As a somewhat interesting but mostly unrelated side note, the marriage vows your father and I took at our wedding were also written by Robert Fulghum).

Just this week, you learned to tie your shoelaces, and you have completely converted from being a flip flop girl to a sneaker girl in your excitement about tying your own laces. You're just beaming every time you do it.

Learning to swim has been your big accomplishment for the summer. Last summer, we had to twist your arm to get you to jump off the side. Now, you're diving in and swimming down to touch the bottom. I feel like you're a completely different child at the pool now that you know how to swim. I think you are proud of your new skills, and it shows through in your self-confidence.

 

As Addison gets older, she becomes more and more your little buddy. You really thrive in the role of big sister. Sometimes enthusiasm gets the best of you, and you love on her a little too hard. Mostly, though, you are very sweet, loving, and protective of her.

 

 

You continue to make me smile and laugh daily. This evening, we were talking about snakes... about someone in the pediatrician's office who had been bitten by a snake, about a snake your dad had seen on a bike ride, about how snakes shed their skin, and so on. I suppose you were wanting to join the conversation with your own snake knowledge, so you jumped in with, "Dad, snakes are not at all like koala bears." as if this fact had somehow escaped him. I love it!

 

I can't wait to see how the rest of kindergarten goes for you. You have more new experiences lined up for the next couple of months - your first track-out camp and your first real soccer team. I hope it all continues to be as fun and exciting as the last couple months have been. I just know this is going to be a great year for you!

I love you. Thanks for reminding me how wonderful life can be! Watching life through your eyes adds a whole new dimension to mine!

Love,

Mamma

Letter to Nina, 5 Years

Dear Nina,

 

Five years – what a great age! After weeks of asking the all-important questions, “How many days ‘til my birthday?”, “How many days ‘til my party?”, and “How many days ‘til we can get the High School Musical 3 DVD?”, you looked a bit shocked and incredulous when I told you happy birthday this morning. You quickly got over the surprise though and moved on to full bore excitement. You went running to the bus stop yelling, “I’m five today! I’m five today!” with a smile on your face and a spring in your step. This afternoon, we had your classroom party for which you did all the planning… a craft accompanied by Oreos – double chocolate Oreos and mint Oreos. You also dictated your birthday dinner menu, “macaroni and cheese, meatballs, and pizza.” I did a slight variation on that with a little broccoli thrown in for good measure, but that seemed to suffice. You always have strong opinions and aren't shy in expressing them.

 

 

You are the child who takes me to extremes. You make me smile and laugh like nobody else in one minute, and in the next, you are painting your doll with fingernail polish or dragging your baby sister around the house by her feet.

 

Your sense of humor is priceless… it isn’t always what you say, but more often your tone, voice, or delivery. You definitely make us laugh every day. This past weekend, while we were out for breakfast, you got up to retrieve a straw, and upon returning to the table announced with a grin, “I jollied right back here just like a little elf!” I don’t know where you come up with this stuff, but it makes me smile.

 

 

Your mischievous side will be the death of me though. Last week, you were coaxing Addie to climb the stairs saying, “Come on Addie… up here! Come on up the stairs!” When I rescued Addie and said, “Don’t encourage her to go up the stairs. She isn’t good at stairs yet, and she could fall and get hurt.” You replied, “I didn’t do that.” “Uhh yeah… you did. I heard you say, ‘Come up here.’” Then you sheepishly responded, “I didn’t think you heard that.”  Nice.

 

 

The doll painting episode will probably forever be seared in your brain as “the time that mom got really, really insanely mad.” I figure that’s not entirely a bad thing though. I very clearly remember the time when I tried the bold faced move of telling my parents that I would swallow some foul tasting medicine if they left the room and didn’t watch. The bright pink syrup left as evidence in the white porcelain sink exposed my brilliance, and that was the day my dad got really, really insanely mad. I still remember that day. Maybe you’ll look back on this day and just realize that your mom was human. We all blow a gasket occasionally, and that’s OK as long as we pick up the pieces.

 

This year will bring a lot of change in your life - starting kindergarten, riding the bus, and going to track-out camp. You are both excited and nervous, but I know you'll do great. Transitions have always made you anxious, and perhaps always will, but I know you're ready for kindergarten and will love it!

 

Thanks for all the laughs, Nina! Happy 5th Birthday!

 

Love, Mamma

Happy 4th of July! (Yeah, I know... I'm late)

OK... so I'm a little late with the 4th of July well-wishes, but in the weeks leading up to the 4th, I turned this house upside-down looking for this dress for Addie. I knew I hadn't sold it or given it away, but Independence Day came and went without my locating the dress. Wanna guess when I found it? Uh yeah... July 6. So, even though I'm running about a month late with the photo, better late than never, right?

Here is Addie in all her stars and stripes glory!

  

And here are Elise and Nina sporting the same dress in 2002 and 2004

 

Letter to Nina, 4.5 years

Dear Nina,

Lately, it seems like you grow up a little more every day. You're coming out of your shell and finding your place in the world, and I love watching it all unfold. You have such a fun personality, and we never know quite what to expect next. You definitely keep us on our toes.

 

You go back and forth between being the shy little kid who is too nervous to participate in anything to being a funny, daring, gregarious spirit ready to try something new with gusto. A year ago, you did soccer. Each week, the first half the practice was consumed with your watching from the sidelines or glued to the coach. This year, I took you to your first gymnastics class, and you jumped right in, trying out every apparatus and having a ball! From day one, you were up on the full height balance beam, walking across with toes pointed, stepping over cones! The smile across your face was priceless.

Being a big sister really suits you. You adore Addison and are so proud to be her big sister. You love to talk to her, sing to her, feed her, hug her, and make her laugh. As much as you like to torment your big sister, you are really quite sweet to your younger sister!

  

You are such a morning person. I, very definitely, am not, and If I hadn't actually pushed your body out of mine, I might not believe you were my child. We're never sure how the day will start when you come in our room in the morning. Often, you come in dressed from head to toe in princess or ballerina attire wanting the bows tied on your ballet slippers. Other days, you come in completely dressed for school wanting help with a button or hairbow. A couple days ago, you came in stating, "Somebody wrote on something… before we moved here… before we lived in this house, they wrote on something, so I've been cleaning it with a sponge and soap and water, but I can't get it clean."  I've really got to find a way to harness all your morning energy to put it into something useful. As soon as you're old enough to do laundry, you can bet that's how you'll be spending your mornings! As it turns out, you were attempting to clean the top of a box of blocks that you had previously written all over (as opposed to the "somebody who lived in our house before us"). You had made a huge mess, but you sure thought you were being helpful. By the time we get downstairs in the mornings, you have typically fixed yourself breakfast, turned on the CD player, sung several High School Musical songs into your microphone and had at least 2-3 wardrobe changes.

On the topic of wardrobe… your sense of style may be the death of me. I'm starting to believe that you are purposefully trying to torture your mother as payback for all the years of matchy-matchy outfits and hairbows and too many matching sister sets. I promise I'm trying to scale back on that, but you seriously may give me a full-on panic attack one day with one of your combos!  You pick out the "prettiest" shirt and the "favorite" skirt with no regard for whether or not the two share any colors in common. I try to hold back my aghast and let you express yourself, but do you have to make it so difficult? Seriously, you put together some real doozies!  You definitely got your sense of style from your father, or at least my plan is to blame it on him.

  

(Excuse the greasy looking face in that first photo. That's how the independent you applies sunscreen. Not a single ray of sunshine can reach your face after you've applied sunscreen in the morning!)

Disciplining you remains one of our biggest challenges. You are smart, savvy, and know how to work the system. If we put you in time-out, you just sit there with a look on your face like, "I love sitting on the stairs. This is exactly how I planned to spend my afternoon."  If we threaten to throw away toys that haven't been put away, you respond with "Yeah, yeah... do that. Throw away the play-doh.", and then you truly don't seem to mind when I do. I have to be careful with my threats so I don't find myself throwing out a really pricey toy. Typically, threatening loss of TV priveleges works better than anything else with you. That seems to be the one threat that works at least most of the time. Even that isn't foolproof though. A few nights ago, after having told you to get back in bed at least 4 times, I threatened that you would lose your TV priveleges the next day if you got out of bed once more. You walked down the hall a few minutes later, came to me and said, "Mom, I want to cancel TV tomorrow because I have to tell you something." You definitely like to be the one in control. I was guessing that by the next morning, you would have forgotten completely about our conversation and then been crushed when I told you no TV, but the next morning, you got up saying, "Mom, remember... I lost my 'priveges'?" You're very calculating at times. If a warning has been issued, I can almost see the wheels turning in your head weighing your options, "If I hit Elise, I won't get to go to the pool. I really want to hit Elise, but I love to swim. You know what?... I can always go to the pool tomorrow instead." WHACK! We're forever trying out new methods for discipline, but you always seem to outsmart us and win in the end. If you're doing this at 4, I don't even want to contemplate the teenage years!

Bedtime is a source of contention between you and us. You get out of bed several times before finally going to sleep, and the frustrating part is that you are smart enough to think up really good excuses every time you get up. It is hard to be mad at you when your knee is bleeding and you're clearly in need of a bandaid, even if we do suspect that you cleverly picked the scab off for that very purpose. Tonight, you were a bit wired, so your dad was worried we would have to deal with even more than the usual number of excursions from bed. He came up with this brilliant way to tire you out.

 

 

You put a smile on my face every day, Nina. Happy 4 and a half birthday! I love you!

Love,

Mamma