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Wednesday, January 16, 2013

This nice span of years

I spend a lot of my time bitching.  It's just my thing.

But I have to say that the span of time since N was in 1st grade until now (3rd grade), and hopefully for a long time to come, has been relatively smooth-sailing.

And that is a most welcome thing after years and years of doing everything for young children and enduring endless tantrums over the dumbest of dumb things (per the mind of an adult).

N is that perfect blend of able to do much for herself, able to understand logical decisions, able to understand that she can think whatever she wants but she doesn't have to and probably shouldn't speak it, and yet still willing to play dress up with her brothers and Mamaw or dress up her Barbies on an almost constant basis.

She is well beyond picture books, which I thought would break my heart since we so loved reading them together.  But reading Little House on the Prairie with her has been a special delight for me.  Talking with her about how Laura Ingalls family lived.  Knowing that she really appreciates and enjoys the book when she says, "Do we have to stop?" even though she sometimes acts like she'd rather read anything else.

I like it that at bedtime she asks me to snuggle with her and "do a garden" on her back (a series of special rubs that depict tilling the soil, smoothing the soil, planting the seeds, etc).

And while there are some unpleasantries, like long division when she is tired from having had P.E. at school and the stink that only elementary school kids can produce, it is mostly a nice, quiet peacefulness before the storm of the teenage years begins.  

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