Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice

My daughter Brooke amazes me. She is sooooo driven. This kid has been that way since birth. She was a lonnnngggg time in coming - 11 cycles of fertility drugs and 2 IVFs, before she made her entrance into my uterus. Then she wouldn't leave! FOUR days labor - IN the hospital. She came home to her 2 year old brother and her brand new 10 month old adopted brother (who came to us exactly 2 months before) and the little bitty thing almost never cried. She just laid around in that vibrating chair and watched the world go by. (And let me tell YOU - it was a chaotic world with three kids under 2 and half years old.)

She continues to be that independent child. She excels in school, always completing 4 nights of homework assignments in one night. She skates singlemindedly and her coach says she has never coached a child so focused. She plays the piano and her version of practice is to bang out a tune almost EVERY time she walks by the piano. Just stands there, blows through a song and continues walking, like she never even stopped to play. It's fascinating. And she goes to bed EVERY night on her own. Just gets up from what she is doing around 8 every evening and announces she is going to bed. She climbs the stairs, gets in her pjs, brushes AND flosses her teeth (ummm does/did YOUR child floss????? At 8 years of age????? I can't barely get her brothers to brush their teeth once a week!!), combs her hair and yells, "Mom, I'm ready" and climbs into bed waiting for her goodnight kisses. LOVE THIS CHILD!

I am writing this post today because I am amazed at her creativity. She LOVES art. She paints, beads, draws, colors and ALWAYS has a craft project going. Yesterday she came up to me holding THIS in her little hands. In case you need an explanation, she was trying to make a Christmas wreath. She had taken a pine branch, made a ring with it and was literally tying tiny pine sprigs to it. She was knotting the flexible branch of the sprig to the ring. I just thought her innovation was so cute. She was trying sooooo hard. "Mom, I really want to make a wreath but it's not working right." Well, I had such a spark of joy. She was so sincere. I just had to pull her into my arms and hug her.

Now, if you know me, you know I am the LEAST crafty person on earth. I mean, clueless. But, I had some idea of how to make a wreath from hanging around my mother for 50 years.

So this is the amazing part. I brought her out to the pile of pine boughs that were sawed from the bottom of the Christmas tree (you know, that pile you make every year because god forbid the Christmas tree fit in the house without getting the saw out...)

I explained - just once - how you need to make little bouquets with the sprigs of pine and then overlap them, wiring them individually to a wreath ring, which I proceeded to find for her. That is ALL I told her. It was literally the 60 second explanation with one demo of the overlap step. And this is what she came up with. GASPPPPPPPPPPPPPP! !!!

I shake my head at the wonder of her. But despite her precociousness (is that a word???) she is still my little baby.

That too, gives me you know what...