Oh my darling, sweet sweet love.
You are now eight and I just want to know how that happened. I am so happy that you still have a sweet little voice, an irresistible laugh, a twinkle in your eyes, and an intense desire to cuddle. These things make up your sweet spirit and bring us such joy. As you grow older, we are rewarded with seeing your insatiable thirst for answers, your push for difficult conversations, advice (oh, how you have an opinion about everything!), and a general sense of fun. You are hilarious and love to pull pranks, tell jokes, and make everyone laugh. I love how much positive affect is squirreled away in your still tiny little body.
Over the last year, you have grown so much more independent! At home, you only want to play on your own; you want to cook entire meals by yourself; and you hate when we try to help you.
Unless you don't want to do something. Then, you remain very needy. You hate nothing more than being bored without company.
You love to read and just fly through books faster than we can get them for you. You adore school and think you have the best teacher in the entire world (we don't disagree!). Being forced to stay home broke your heart especially because you said it was unfair you had only half of a year with Mrs. Hladik. You quickly rallied and embraced our cobbled together "distance learning" plans and have mostly settled into a resilient resignation of the current situation. We are fortunate that you can handle being a homebody. You are also loving math and science, which makes my heart so happy. At school, you seem to work hard often, though it seems you like finishing things more than actually learning them. You are quite impatient and are still working on your perseverance as currently, you have a tendency to want to give up easily when something is more challenging. You sometimes lean toward perfectionism and it isn't uncommon to find you crumpling a piece of some artwork that I really liked, throwing a pencil on the floor in frustration, or crying because you can't get things exactly the way you want them. I can tell you are internalizing the messages you hear at school though and are working hard to combat that as I regularly hear you saying "there are no mistakes in art!" and "things don't have to be perfect." --Granted, this is usually in response to something I say or when you're watching an episode of Nailed It or some other creative competition but I hope this will eventually generalize. I love your creativity and how, when you give yourself the opportunity, you really look at things from a new and unique way.
When you were a baby (& before you were even born), my biggest hope for you was that you would be a kind and caring person. I truly believe that this is a strength for you. You truly care about everyone and are full of empathy. Although you also can be pretty judgy, you also are quick to point out situational factors others might be facing and remind others to do the same. We think that perhaps years of people rewarding your sass has created a bit of a monster as you quickly turn your wit on us regularly (poor daddy takes the brunt of this!), though you don't seem to intend to be hurtful. I think you just like practicing sarcasm, eyerolling, and poking fun. It's hard not to laugh.
You continue to have such a sensitive heart, both in terms of content you are willing to handle in books and on movies as well as interpersonally. Regularly, you would complain about feeling left out and often cried about being sad at school. My heart has never been so shattered as the day you told me you think you "might be the loneliest kid at school." It has taken a lot of talking with you, emailing with teachers, and thinking about what is going on here as this is a consistent pattern first noticed in pre-k at age 4. We had been working on learning ways to join friends and learning that sometimes when we want to play with others, we need to compromise on what the activity is. This ability to compromise remains rough for you. But in all our conversation with teachers and staff, it becomes clear that you are loved. Friends want to play with you and seek you out. You encourage others and people like that about you.
Another year has passed and the one thing that has remained constant--You are so very loved.
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