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Monday, May 20, 2019

Lucy Turns 8!

Does it seem weird to anyone else that I have an 8 year old?  I remember a few years back when Lucy was still 4 (what I consider a toddler) and my friend had a daughter turning 8 and I thought "Wow! That sounds SO old! I can't even imagine having an older child."  And now here we are!  I think about her life in 2 different ways.  Sometimes I think about it and when I go back to her early days when we were living in Boise I think "HOLY COW that seems like eons ago!" and then sometimes I think about it and I'm like "wow, it all went fast enough that the years are blurring together."  The phrase "the days are long but the years are short" certainly applies here. 
Lucy is a very up and down child.  What I mean by this is she is constantly challenging me daily with her sass and fits and "tweenage attitude," but she also really, truly has a huge heart.  She cares about others' well-beings more than a lot of other 8 year olds.  When someone is sick, she wants to make them a get-well card (or in my Mom's case, a get-well banner, haha), she always wants to make sure to write "Thank you" cards after receiving a gift, and she loves to try to comfort her little brother when he is sad by asking if she can rock him to calm him down. A perfect example of how big her heart is, is this: Saturday (her birthday) was also Piper's dance recital.  We let Lucy open her gifts before the recital so that if she got something she wanted to bring with her to hold during the recital she could.  Well, one of her gifts was a card from her Aunt with a $5 bill in it.  When we left for the recital I said "is there anything you want to take with you?"  She said "I want to bring my birthday money so that I can buy Piper a gift." See, outside of the recital,  in the lobby, there are always gifts you can buy for the performers- flowers and other trinkets.  So when we got there she looked all around at everything she could buy.  First she chose a big stuffed animal that she wanted to buy for her so badly, but it was $20 and she didn't have enough money.  She was disappointed but she was set on making sure she continued her search.   The lady behind the counter showed her where all the $5 gifts were and she studied them all very closely.  At last she found a little ceramic pig with a tutu on it that she said "THIS.  This is something Piper would LOVE.  She will just love it!"  I said "baby, are you sure you want to used your new birthday money for this? You don't want to save it for something to buy for yourself?"  She said "no, I want Piper to feel proud of herself for dancing today, so I want to buy this special present for her."  I literally started crying at the sweetness of it.  Her birthday, her money, and she wanted her SISTER to be the one who felt special.  
When she's alone with me, life is easy.  One-on-one time with her is my favorite.  When we are alone she treats me like I'm her best friend ever. She wants hugs and kisses and wants to hold my hand everywhere we go.  When she's about to have a melt-down when we are alone together I can usually calm her down and reason with her before the tears start.  For whatever reason, this doesn't work when she is around her siblings, but one-on-one time is pretty nice with her. She's at the age where we are able to start having some more grown-up conversations about things.  It doesn't all have to be sugar-coated the way talking to a toddler is.  She's simply starting to grow up.  She still has her innocence in terms of the tooth fairy (which visited her the night of her birthday!) and Santa Claus, but she won't let me do her hair anymore (something that has been extremely hard for me to let go of), she WORSHIPS Taylor Swift, she wants to constantly wear clothes I would never dream of picking out for her, and makeup and keychains and sharpie drawn on her nails consumes her.  She's over the stage of dolls and barbies, but still asked for mermaid swimming fins and walkie talkies as gifts, so there is some "child" left in her.  I just feel like she acts more like an 11 year old than an 8 year old with the things she is "into" right now! I know I was most certainly still playing dolls and barbies well into the 4th grade!  She's outgrown all of that and is only going into 3rd grade :( 
At least she still loves to draw me pictures and make me cards.  She thinks about me all the time and she is a total Mama's girl.  While her baby and toddler self treated her Daddy like a total celebrity, these days she's all about her Mama.  Of course her and Shawn are close, but I think between my 2 girls, she will be the Mama's girl while Piper is the Daddy's girl. She loves me and I adore her.  She was my first true love and there is something really, really special about that. A forever bond that could NEVER be broken- even on her hardest days!

This year she chose to have 2 of her "BFF's" spend the night instead of having a party.  But you know me, I still like to decorate a little for my babies so they have something fun to see when they wake up!  She asked if we could decorate with emoji's (and if I'd bake her an emoji cake) so that's what we did!  This poor girl has been waiting for a Saturday birthday since she was in Kindergarten, and she finally gets one and it also happened to be on the day of Piper's dance recital.  A recital that was at 2:30 in the middle of the day.  I am so sad that Lucy's birthday had to be shared with Piper but we made the most of it!  

She had breakfast in bed (the night before she specifically chose out the shapes that she wanted us to cut her french toast out in in the morning), we took her to a "salon" to get a hair cut because she wanted that done SOOOOOOO badly!  She's been begging for that for months! Great Clips is a salon in her eyes ;-) and then we let her open her presents before the recital (I will do a separate Recital post later).  We picked up a couple of pizzas later that night and her cute friends Camden and Lillian came over. The girls had a blast giving themselves manicures, making slime, coloring, telling scary stories, watching a movie with TONS of buttery popcorn, sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags,  smashing a piñata, and being cute little 8 year olds who decided to sleep all in the same bed because they were too scared after their ghost stories to sleep separately ;-)   Crushes haven't started yet, they all still believe in the magic of holidays, and even though Barbies are a thing of the past, I think this year is going to be a great one.  The age of innocence is still alive.  
She thought cutting 9 inches off was a good idea.  I struggled with it, but I didn't want to stand in her way! She wanted it cut and I let her choose the length because I promised myself I'd never be the Mom that forbade her daughters' to cut their hair.... however, I like longer hair so it was hard for me to watch! I definitely saved some for her baby book!
She asked me to bake her an emoji cake which was so incredibly easy! I am thankful for easy cakes:)
They all said prayer before bed, which I just love.  Everyone here is Christian and prayer is said before every meal and before bed every night, no matter where you are (at almost every birthday party we have been to it is said before the kids eat their cake and pizza!).  It's definitely something I wasn't used to witnessing in public before I moved here but now I see it as the norm. It's one of the things I love most about living here. 
Anyway, it was a really good day.  Everyone was happy despite the rainy day and the crazy packed schedule.  It was a sweet day for all! 
And all of a sudden I have an 8 year old.... It was September 2010, around 5:00am, when I found out her heart was beating next to mine. And I loved her from that exact moment until now, and every heartbeat in between <3
It's great to be 8 and I love my little 8 year old more than all the leaves on all the trees!

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