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Elise is going to be 5 on Tuesday.
ELISE, my baby, my beastie, my youngest...is going to be 5 years old...on Tuesday.
This makes it seem very real and tangible that time is some crazy shit, and truly - like in REAL LIFE - all of my kids are going to grow up and move out. Life is wild.
And I am so in love with Elise right now ♥
She proactively gets out her own clothes for the following day, each night, after dinner (she has to wear preschool shirts to preschool and we used to have morning hassles and last minute washings and things - you know, when I was handling it, before she took over). She changes into pajamas on her own before brushing her teeth. Understand that my boys "get changed for bed" by taking off their shirts, and then I have to force them to put on a new outfit the next day. Annie's pajamas are gym shorts and camisoles - Elise puts on buttoning long sleeved shirts and pants pjs every night and lays out her clothes just on her own as a thing she likes to do.
She wakes up in the morning and gets herself dressed in the clothes she picked - which includes having all of her own socks in a little sock basket she keeps in her closet because our family wide sock basket in the laundry room is too crazy, so she picks through and finds hers - and brushes her hair, and puts on her shoes. I get her breakfast and we talk, sometimes she plays on pbskids.org.
Then she wants to run the whole way to preschool. It's her favorite thing to do now; to just run as fast as she can while I ride my bike behind her. She can do this for half an hour some days without stopping! And she's running fast. I don't stop pedaling. On days when we have and take the van she's very dissapointed, and I give her running time later on in the afternoon.
I was telling Ms Denise some of this the other day when I dropped her off, and Elise crossed her arms over her chest and told her, "I'm just like a little woman."
Two days ago after I picked her up, and watched her trade goodbyes with a little boy named Cole, I asked "You like Cole?" It was a casual thing like how I would say, "Oh are you and Chloe friends?" but she looked down and blushed and then threw her arms up and went "MO-OOM!!!" all exasperated...and then launched into a grin-rambling thing about how she can't have a boyfriend yet. 0_o
Denise tells me she's recognizing consonants vs vowels with ease and saying all the days of the week correctly and acting all impressed with her in general. I was thinking about how, with Elise, I had such a different sense of other people being involved from the beginning.
A doctor saved her life.
The NICU was necessary to keep her from seizing and dying.
When I would come and see her in the NICU every day, there was always someone bathing her or playing with her or dressing her in hand crocheted mittens and hat (that someone else made).
There were always strangers, on the internet, praying for her and sending her things.
My brother carried her for months when I couldn't, and my sister nursed her for weeks when I couldn't.
It was all welcome, truly helpful, often necessary help - it wasn't like doctors forcing me or causing problems, with Isaac and Jake, or pediatricians totally getting EVERY.THING. wrong (behavioral observation and advice wise) with Ananda and Aaron.
Putting Elise in preschool has seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and that the teacher is our neighbor and truly loves her and buys girl scout cookies from her in the neighborhood all makes perfect sense. Denise yells excitedly and interrupts everything and gives her big hugs, if she's been out and then comes back. She tears up about her history. She stops to talk with her when she walks past her yard and sees her playing. I have this sense of the world being Elise's oyster, of there just being love for her everywhere.
:)
Anyway, she also begs to do schoolwork constantly and just this week has burned through most of a capital letters Kumon book and probably a quarter of a Kumon cutting book. It is actually irritating to me how constantly eager for schoolwork she is since at her age it requires a lot of hands on attention and I'm frequently busy with something else, but, hey, if that's my complaint I'm doing ok, right? She even brought home some "sh" and "ch" beginning readers (<---very beginning, it's mostly picture clues and repetition) she's "reading".
Yesterday she had an especially awesome time at PATH because Ananda and Aaron's friends were including her and doing things with her.
Then my sister came, with her kids, and dude. DUDE!
We were sitting there with Ananda, Elise, Elizabeth and the new baby (Isabelle) and realized that somehow, all of a sudden, the two of us have FOUR DAUGHTERS. Four daughters between the two of us. I mean...I just...
Because I had three boys in a row and then she had Brian, this has really somehow blindsided me.
Coloring page Elise asked for the other day and then colored:
She just colors like this, now. I swear she was scribbling all over things indiscriminately like 3 months ago.
What she brought for Show and Tell last Friday - what? So maybe I have a mild influence, sometimes. Today, she took a stuffed panda bear she's been carrying around all week.
For her birthday she wants to go to a "fancy restaurant" with just Grant and I, somewhere where "we all have to dress up really fancy". She has a surprise dress hidden in my closet for this occasion. She also wants an Ariel cake that I have an edible image still in it's fedex packaging for, in the fridge. I got her new running shoes she's gonna have a heart attack over, too:
I mean, the rhinestones light up. LIGHT UP RHINESTONES IS WHAT I'M SAYING HERE. This is a far girlier girl than Ananda.
I keep meaning to finish this but getting distracted, so I'm just going to post it and post again sometime soon with other things...
ELISE, my baby, my beastie, my youngest...is going to be 5 years old...on Tuesday.
This makes it seem very real and tangible that time is some crazy shit, and truly - like in REAL LIFE - all of my kids are going to grow up and move out. Life is wild.
And I am so in love with Elise right now ♥
She proactively gets out her own clothes for the following day, each night, after dinner (she has to wear preschool shirts to preschool and we used to have morning hassles and last minute washings and things - you know, when I was handling it, before she took over). She changes into pajamas on her own before brushing her teeth. Understand that my boys "get changed for bed" by taking off their shirts, and then I have to force them to put on a new outfit the next day. Annie's pajamas are gym shorts and camisoles - Elise puts on buttoning long sleeved shirts and pants pjs every night and lays out her clothes just on her own as a thing she likes to do.
She wakes up in the morning and gets herself dressed in the clothes she picked - which includes having all of her own socks in a little sock basket she keeps in her closet because our family wide sock basket in the laundry room is too crazy, so she picks through and finds hers - and brushes her hair, and puts on her shoes. I get her breakfast and we talk, sometimes she plays on pbskids.org.
Then she wants to run the whole way to preschool. It's her favorite thing to do now; to just run as fast as she can while I ride my bike behind her. She can do this for half an hour some days without stopping! And she's running fast. I don't stop pedaling. On days when we have and take the van she's very dissapointed, and I give her running time later on in the afternoon.
I was telling Ms Denise some of this the other day when I dropped her off, and Elise crossed her arms over her chest and told her, "I'm just like a little woman."
Two days ago after I picked her up, and watched her trade goodbyes with a little boy named Cole, I asked "You like Cole?" It was a casual thing like how I would say, "Oh are you and Chloe friends?" but she looked down and blushed and then threw her arms up and went "MO-OOM!!!" all exasperated...and then launched into a grin-rambling thing about how she can't have a boyfriend yet. 0_o
Denise tells me she's recognizing consonants vs vowels with ease and saying all the days of the week correctly and acting all impressed with her in general. I was thinking about how, with Elise, I had such a different sense of other people being involved from the beginning.
A doctor saved her life.
The NICU was necessary to keep her from seizing and dying.
When I would come and see her in the NICU every day, there was always someone bathing her or playing with her or dressing her in hand crocheted mittens and hat (that someone else made).
There were always strangers, on the internet, praying for her and sending her things.
My brother carried her for months when I couldn't, and my sister nursed her for weeks when I couldn't.
It was all welcome, truly helpful, often necessary help - it wasn't like doctors forcing me or causing problems, with Isaac and Jake, or pediatricians totally getting EVERY.THING. wrong (behavioral observation and advice wise) with Ananda and Aaron.
Putting Elise in preschool has seemed like the most natural thing in the world, and that the teacher is our neighbor and truly loves her and buys girl scout cookies from her in the neighborhood all makes perfect sense. Denise yells excitedly and interrupts everything and gives her big hugs, if she's been out and then comes back. She tears up about her history. She stops to talk with her when she walks past her yard and sees her playing. I have this sense of the world being Elise's oyster, of there just being love for her everywhere.
:)
Anyway, she also begs to do schoolwork constantly and just this week has burned through most of a capital letters Kumon book and probably a quarter of a Kumon cutting book. It is actually irritating to me how constantly eager for schoolwork she is since at her age it requires a lot of hands on attention and I'm frequently busy with something else, but, hey, if that's my complaint I'm doing ok, right? She even brought home some "sh" and "ch" beginning readers (<---very beginning, it's mostly picture clues and repetition) she's "reading".
Yesterday she had an especially awesome time at PATH because Ananda and Aaron's friends were including her and doing things with her.
Then my sister came, with her kids, and dude. DUDE!
We were sitting there with Ananda, Elise, Elizabeth and the new baby (Isabelle) and realized that somehow, all of a sudden, the two of us have FOUR DAUGHTERS. Four daughters between the two of us. I mean...I just...
Because I had three boys in a row and then she had Brian, this has really somehow blindsided me.
Coloring page Elise asked for the other day and then colored:
She just colors like this, now. I swear she was scribbling all over things indiscriminately like 3 months ago.
What she brought for Show and Tell last Friday - what? So maybe I have a mild influence, sometimes. Today, she took a stuffed panda bear she's been carrying around all week.
For her birthday she wants to go to a "fancy restaurant" with just Grant and I, somewhere where "we all have to dress up really fancy". She has a surprise dress hidden in my closet for this occasion. She also wants an Ariel cake that I have an edible image still in it's fedex packaging for, in the fridge. I got her new running shoes she's gonna have a heart attack over, too:
I mean, the rhinestones light up. LIGHT UP RHINESTONES IS WHAT I'M SAYING HERE. This is a far girlier girl than Ananda.
I keep meaning to finish this but getting distracted, so I'm just going to post it and post again sometime soon with other things...
