Dear Charlotte,
Today you turn the big 5, and what a milestone indeed! The last 5 years have crawled by and flown by in equal measure, and I have found myself watching you so many times in the last few months and thinking “wow, she just looks so BIG.”
This year has been like no other thanks to a worldwide pandemic, and I find myself wondering what lasting impressions you will have of “the cowonaviwus.” You have spent a lot of time on the iPad. But we have also spent a lot of time together as a family, baking and bike riding and playing Uno and watching Floor is Lava. For better or worse, we have all made it work and despite the uncertainty and frustrations, there have been a lot of good things this year too.
I have described you as “feisty” for several years now, and it continues to be so very appropriate. You are touchy and aggressive, but also lively and determined. You do not like to be told no. You are extremely sensitive to being reprimanded. When you are upset, the only reliable way to calm down is to push through — through the tears and the anger and the “you don’t like me!” until we get to “I just really want a hug” and putting words to our feelings and “I’m sorry Mommy.”
But when you’re happy, you are HAPPY, and your joy is contagious. And you are so funny! Listening to you tell a story is just about the most entertaining thing I can do these days. Your eyes are wide, your face so expressive. “EVERYONE!” you will yell, “DID YOU KNOW!…” And then, in the next moment you are whispering, with your hand cupped to your mouth and your eyes to the side, “…that Pluto…is a DWARF planet??”
In the last few months you are looking longer and leaner, less like a baby and more like a kid. Your balance and athleticism are starting to improve, and you benefitted greatly from the fact that we were spent an unusually high amount of time outside this spring and summer. You zoom along on your bike now, riding over a mile with relative ease. Your swimming skills also improved with our 2-3 times per week pool reservations in July and August, despite the fact that your swimming lessons stopped back in March.
I’m also starting to realize that you have an outdoorsy streak! Before the weather got so hot, we went on quite a few “nature walks” around the block. You would eagerly grab a bucket, and fill it with leaves, twigs, flowers, and other assorted bits. You have legitimately come up to me and asked “Mom, can we go outside and pull some weeds?” You’re interested in bugs and lizards, and were so excited to find this cicada skin in the park a few weeks ago. Oh, and you like to pick up dead, dried-out worms and break them apart which honestly I could do without (ew) but c’est la vie.
One of the last things we did before things shut down in March was our annual trip to the rodeo. For the first time with you and Emma, we got tickets to the actual RODEO part of the rodeo, and sat high up in the stadium. We came out of the arena as the sun was setting, way up at the top of the long ramp down to ground level, and as you saw the carnival lights turning on below you gasped and ran to the railing. “It’s happening!” you cried. “It’s happening!”
Life is happening, Charlotte, and together we are all in.
Love,
Mama