Five

Sometimes it is daunting to try to capture a moment in time in a blog post. It is easier when I am remembering an anecdote or talking about a specific topic. But I find it almost overwhelming to summarize an age or summarize what my kids are like “right now”. I do it, because I know it is something that my family and I will value in the future.

Heather is five. Five?!

I am not a mother who begrudges her children for growing. They were adorable as babies, but I don’t find babies to be easy and I don’t miss the “why are they crying” guessing game. I love having kids that I can have a conversation with and so far each age has been better than the last, so I am happy for them both to keep getting bigger.

My exclamation is more about excitement and amazement than sadness. I remember the day Heather was born so clearly, it is hard to believe that it was 5 years ago. And I am so thrilled to see her developing into a little person. All of the “older toddler” is gone. I remember that around this time last year a friend of mine with a daughter about the same age was considering the possibility of putting her daughter in Kindergarten a year early. At the time, the thought of Heather being emotionally mature enough to go to Kindergarten seemed SO far away. And now, even though there are still emotional outbursts and difficult moments, they are somehow less out of control than they were last year and imagining her going to Kindergarten this fall seems totally right.

Heather still seems to have a lot in common with the boys in her class – talking about them frequently and enjoying Star Wars, Super Heroes and Cars. But in the past 6 months there has also been a suddenly awakened interest in princesses, Barbies, ballet and wearing dresses. If your goal is to pinpoint girls as being tomboys or girly-girls, Heather will give you a run for your money. Which is fine by me. I grew up with Barbies and matchbox cars, too.

Heather started taking dance class and loves it. She has also found a passion in drawing and doing puzzles. Within the past few months, she is drawing a ton and can be easily occupied with a pad of paper and markers while I make dinner. The only “downside” to all of the drawing is trying to figure out how to manage all of the results of her artistic efforts. ;-)

More & more she can be depended on to do little things to help out around the house (although toy clean-up still remains an elusive issue we need to solve as a family). Heather is a happy, helpful and cheerful girl who enjoys her friends as well as her quiet playtime. On the playground, she is a good mixture of careful and carefree - not taking unreasonable risks while also not being afraid to try something new.

I went back and read what I wrote last year. Four

Quite a lot of it still applies. There are more movies on the list, including several Star Wars episodes (we started with Episode 4, of course) and The Lion King, as well as recent runs of Shaun the Sheep and Martha Speaks for our morning TV.

In general, I will say that four was an awesome age and I have high expectations for the year to come!