Happy Birthday, Mariah!

I have a 5-year-old! Mariah turned 5 a couple of weeks ago. We were in Utah for the holidays (posts to come) and a wedding (post to come). Mariah requested her party be at Grandma Shaunna's house, and she wanted cupcakes with purple frosting and sprinkles. She got it. (She and Elaine frosted and sprinkled the cupcakes and did a remarkably good job!)

I love this picture. It shows perfectly her anticipation, excitement, and nervousness.

Grandma Shirlene, Gramps, and Elaine singing to the birthday girl.

The Party: Gramps, Grandma Shirlene, Dad, Sally, Elaine, Grandpa Jim, Cami, Alli, Grandma Shaunna, Brian, Grandma Orva, David.

Grandma and Gramps gave her this cute card. She was darling as she read it: "Could a granddaughter be any sweeter, cuter, or nicer?" and then the inside: "Not a chance!" and she laughed.

Crayons from Grandma and Gramps!

We gave her a leotard, tights, ballet shoes, and a ballet skirt (no picture). I wrapped up Elaine and Sally's dance clothes too, and they each had a present to open.

Mariah did incredibly well with all of the excitement and stimulation! I was truly amazed. I thought back to her last birthday, when we only had our little family at the party to avoid anxiety and overstimulation. She really has come a long, long way! She only zoned for a few seconds at one point when her excitement overwhelmed her. But there were no meltdowns, no baby talk, no anger. She was delightful!

Now. A few things about my Mariah. Where to start . . . . She is one complex little lady. I have learned so much from my experiences with her--so much about myself, about life, about love. We still have a long way to go, she and I, but our day-to-day lives are much more predictable and, for the most part, peaceful than they used to be.

Favorites:

• Mariah LOVES to read! We finished reading lessons in April or May, and she just took off! She reads anything and everything. Her pronunciation, emphasis, and intonation are probably somewhere between a 4th- and 6th-grade level. Some of her favorite books right now are anything Fancy Nancy and anything Dr. Seuss, but she really just loves anything with words.
• Mariah loves all things princess. She has not seen any of the Disney princess movies (They're too scary for her because she has a hard time discerning reality (all things are real to her), and she has a heightened sensitivity to trauma, real or make-believe, and screen time makes her extremely agitated, hyper, and somewhat bi-polar.), but she somehow knows all about them.
• She loves barbies (much to her mother's dismay). Her Aunt Cami gave her one for her birthday; it was for sure her favorite gift. (I found 2 more at a consignment store to give to Elaine and Sally for Christmas to prevent WWIII.)
• Mariah loves primary. She has been going by herself for about 2 months now, and does really well. She has an amazing teacher who, I feel, made the transition possible. My prayers have been answered, and he has been moved up with her class this year! I debated for over a month whether I should request (beg) the primary president to move him with the class. I felt I should just let it go, and the Lord would take care of us as He always has.
• Drawing and coloring are right up there with reading. I can't leave any kind of paper around, because if Mariah sees it, she will draw on it. Her drawing and coloring have both improved immensely very quickly. One year ago, and off-and-on six months ago, she was still scribbling. I take the progress as a sign of mental and emotional healing.
• Mariah loves homeschool. I'm not as consistent as she would like me to be.

Mariah colored all of these pictures for her Great Grandma Carol when Great Grandpa Joe died.

Back in November and December, Mariah made a princess book. She filled an entire notebook with drawings of princesses. When it was done, she asked me if she could put it on the book shelf because "Now it's a real book!" I said sure, but first I scanned a bunch of the drawings to include here:

Belle with "Disney Magic."

This is for sure my very favorite! (I asked her if she has seen The Little Mermaid, and she said, "No, Daddy told me Eric is Ariel's prince.")

My second favorite.

Our family.

Birthday cakes.

More "Disney Magic" and Tinkerbell, I think.

"Red Widow." Love her!

Hello Kitty and a rainbow. She loves anything Hello Kitty.

One day sitting at the table, she announced, "Look Mom, I learned to draw birds!"

Homeschool. Practicing numbers.

As I said before, she will write and/or draw on any paper left laying around.

A few more things about Mariah:

She still has the most incredible memory I've ever encountered. A few months ago at dinner, she decided to recount what each person (she, Elaine, and Sally) had gotten for each of their birthdays. She started with her 2nd birthday, and then moved on through all the birthdays, who was there, what they got, what kind of cake/cupcake we had, etc. ("And Elaine, for your 1st birthday, you got a purple doll, and . . . .") I sat there silently with my jaw dropping to the floor.

She takes everything literally. Everything. She is learning, however, to recognize when someone is kidding. She gets a very serious and thoughtful look on her face, and you can tell she's thinking things over. Then she'll say, "You were kidding."

All new information and experience still has to fit into her overly complex brain filing system. She cannot "feel out" a situation to determine a proper response. She has to sort all information and stimulus available and then fit the puzzle piece into some other experience she's already had or learned about. "Oh, this is like when . . . ." Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. Craziness. She has a hard time if something doesn't fit into her logic.

Speaking of logic, she's incredibly good at applying a=b, b=c, therefore a=c. Back in July, we had this conversation:

Me (to Mike): We've entered a new phase.

Mariah: What does 'phase' mean?

Mike: A period of time.

Mariah: A new period of time. 'Period' means 'stop' (when reading). A new stop of time!

She says stuff like that all the time. I wish I were better at writing stuff down. There was one time in Utah when she jumped to some amazing conclusion in a conversation with my mom. Her logic was incredible, but I cannot remember the details . . . .

Anyway, I've never encountered a brain like hers. She's for sure smarter than I am, but because her brain developed differently because of her hypersensitivity to trauma and stress, she has very little (if any) "common sense." Every situation has to be taught and learned. It's like she lives a script. I think/hope/pray she will, as she continues to heal, be able to "feel out" new situations and respond automatically and naturally. Her current calculating ways are sometimes amusing and sometimes frustrating (probably to her as well).

Mariah loves singing and has a great voice and great pitch. She also loves to dance.

One of my favorite recent developments is that Mariah says, "Good night, Mama, I love you," every night. (I also like that she calls me "Mama.")

Riah's getting better and better at sharing her feelings. We talk about feelings A LOT around here. She tells me when she's scared, angry, excited, frustrated, etc. I have talked to her about why she feels the way she feels and why she does some of the things she does. I've told her because of hard things that happened to her when she was a baby, she was scared and thought we weren't going to take care of her. She gets stressed out, scared, and overwhelmed more easily than other kids. She knows that's ok.

Mariah really wants to go to school. I'm homeschooling her for pre-k because she's just not ready to be away from me for so long every day. I'm hoping by this fall, she'll be ready for half-day kindergarten. (And I hope the district and school are ok with my pulling her out early every day. They just went to full-day kindergarten this year. Criminal.) She would LOVE the learning and other activities, but she gets so worried and stressed out when other kids are hyper or disobedient, or when there's a lot going on around her. There's just no way. I'm afraid if I sent her to pre-k now, she would get overstimulated so quickly and just shut down, zone out, or worse. I would for sure face the "worse" at home even if it didn't show up at school. I'm hoping and praying for more progress and a very understanding teacher come fall.

I'll stop there because it's late, and my brain is shutting down. I'll add more later as I think of things.

Sally

Not sure where to begin with my Sally. I feel like I haven't been very good at documenting milestones with her, so maybe I'll start there, and then use my zillions of pictures (sorry) to try to describe this little fireball.

• rolling front to back: 1 day old
• rolling back to front: 4 months?
• first tooth: 10-ish months?
• crawling: 7 months (ish?)
• cruising around furniture: 8 months
• standing: 11 months
• walking: 14 months
• first word: No idea. She still doesn't talk. Maybe "ball" ("ba") at 11-12 months? "Mama" somewhere around then. "Ni-ni" (ni-night) at about the same time.

At about 12 months, she started babbling, but not a ton. She'd choose a consonant and use it exclusively for a few days, and then move on to another one. She still does the same thing, actually. Right now everyone is "Mama," and everything else she wants to say is "ba ba." She will repeat sounds when we tell her to, but only 1 consonant with no vowels. She does say, "Uh-oh," but more like "UH-uh"with the uh-oh intonation. Just yesterday, she tried to say some rendition of "trot-trot." Her first time using "t." She says "Dada" sometimes, when she's not calling him "Mama." She has also tried something like "Nai" for "Elaine." Mariah and Elaine get a kick out of asking her to say things, but pretty much everything sounds the same. Mostly "ba ba." With the exception of "zizzer-zazzer-zuzz," which she has been saying ("zzz-zzz-zzz") for several months.

Even without words, Sal has been my best communicator. She has always been able to express, through signs (some actual sign language, and many made up by her), facial expressions, uh-uhs, etc., exactly what she wants. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing 20-questions. I ask her a question, and she either says, "Uh," and shakes her head, or grins and says, "Uhhhhhh!" in a half laugh.

Her signs:

• all done (For a long time this one was hillarious. She would wildly wave her arms around with her hands spinning from her wrists. Hard to describe, but very funny.)
• bird
• again
• more
• nurse
• countless made up signs to communicate whatever it is she wants to say at any given time.

She has always been very in tune and aware of her own body. From the time she was really young, she could communicate with me things that were wrong. She'll tell me she has a headache, or a toothache, or an earache. Makes it nice when she's grumpy. I can ask her what hurts, and she tells me.

Along with that body awareness, she's very coordinated and aware of herself in space. She has amazing balance. She also LOVES to climb and has no fear! I have found her a few times on the kitchen table, and today I caught her half-way up her highchair. All day long, she follows me around carrying a stool, so she can climb up next to wherever I am.

She's a a dare devil and a little acrobat. One of her favorite games is trot-trot; when "the horsey goes to bed," she does a backward sommersault off of my lap. I was shocked the first time she did it; she just threw her legs over her head, and over she went. She loves to be tossed and "dropped." Mike will hold her lying on her back above his head and "drop" her to the floor. She lies there, horizontal, way up in the air, completely relaxed, with her arms hanging down, making no attempt to hold on, knowing that any second, she's going to basically freefall to the floor. Complete trust and no fear.

Sal has always loved beautiful things, and has been, for several months now, my fashion advisor. If I'm in my pj's for too long, she tells me I need to go get dressed. She checks my ears every day for earrings. (She pulls my face to one side, checks, then pushes it back the other way to check the other ear.) If I'm not wearing any, she demands I get some. (She has finally given up asking for earrings in her ears.) If she's in my closet with me when I get dressed, she tells me what she wants me to wear. I'm serious.

She is very opinionated about what she wears as well. If she thinks she looks particularly cute, she'll run into the playroom, where I have a kid-size full-length mirror hanging.

These pictures were taken in early October. She dug this hat out of the dress-ups and wore it for a few days. I thought it was pretty cute, so I did a little photo shoot.

Sal holds her own with her sisters. She was not pleased when they tried to join her for the photos.

Here's her smug look of victory:

Sally is a picky eater. I think she has some sensory/texture issues. She gags randomly on things that shouldn't be gaggy and chokes (daily) on things that shouldn't be chokey. She does, however, like her green drinks. (This was a particlurly messy day. She's usually fairly neat about it--part of her fashion sense, I think. She doesn't like to be dirty.)

Some other favorites:

• bananas
• frozen strawberries
• frozen blueberries
• spaghetti
• beans and rice
• chips and salsa

Sal LOVES panties! She raids Mariah and Elaine's drawers and puts panties on over her pants. For a few days, she insisted I put panties on over her diapers (under her pants), but most of the time, she's satisfied with the on-top-of-the-pants look. If she can't get them pulled up all the way, she'll carefully and patiently walk around the house hobbled by a pair of ankle panties.

She's attached to her blanket. I didn't realize the strength of her attachment until I threw it in the washer. Colossal tantrum! (She's a tantrum pro.)

She's my little helper. She helps me unload the dishwasher every day. (She knows where everything goes from her days of riding piggy-back in the backpack. Apparently, she was paying attention. (Actually, she still rides in the backpack fairly often. She's definitely my most clingy baby.))

These pictures are from a Sunday morning when we stayed home sick while Mike took M and E to church. Making beans for pico de gallo.

Speaking of the backpack . . . one day back in October, I decided to walk to the grocery store (3 miles round trip). I pushed M and E in the stroller, and had Sal in the backpack. She fell asleep on the way home and slept like this for 45 minutes, with chaos and noise all around. A first in our family.

I made donuts and took some pictures. She's a poser.

She, of course, needs to have her hair done. She climbs up onto the toilet and then onto the counter so she can see in the mirror as I do her hair. This particular day, she insisted she needed all of these clips:

Sal loves books! She still nurses but insists I read a book to her at the same time. (None of my children have allowed me to read while nursing, but she's the first to insist I read to her while she nurses.) Some of her favorite books right now:

• Quick as a Cricket
• Lulu's Busy Day
• Jesse Bear Tum-Tum Tickle
• Jesse Bear Yum-Yum Crumble
• Princess Castle
• Family Lullaby
• Good Dog, Carl

I took these pictures of her reading Good Dog, Carl yesterday. She was so focused and was studying each page so carefully. She loves dogs (at least from a distance) and barks ("wu-wu-wu-wu-wu-wu-wu!") whenever she hears or sees one.

 Whe she realized I was taking pictures, she hopped up to pose on our picture wall.

Then she climbed onto the love sace and insisted I take another picture.

Of coures, when Mariah heard all the fun, she had to join.

And Elaine was close behind.

Sal definitely thinks she's one of the big girls. I'm having to train myself to change the way I say things, because she assumes I'm talking to all three of them when I say, "Girls . . . ." That was my call-out for M and E, and Sally didn't respond, but now she does. If I'm not addressing all three, I have to specify.

I walked in on this little pow-wow this morning. Not sure what was going on, but it looked serious. (Notice the pink stool. That's the one she carries around with her. When she stands on it, she can barely see over the counter, but she insists on being right by my side "helping.")

One of my favorite things about Sal is her love for cleaning up. She really is a great little cleaner. She loves putting things away in their proper place.

Sally runs everywhere. Always.

She's not a great sleeper. When she's teething (which is always), she wakes up at 3 or 4 and wants to nurse. And she only takes an hour and a half nap.

Sal loves to play games. Her current favorite is to wave and say "baah" ("bye" with a southern drawl), run to the pantry and close herself in, and then come running out and say, "Buh!" ("Boo!"). She also plays this game around corners or by flattening herself against a wall or any other vertical surface to "hide." She also loves to dance. Her 2 dance moves right now are running in place very fast and a slow-motion-spin-and-fall-down move.

Sally is very tender hearted and likes to help others. She does throw a tizzy sometimes when the other girls take things from her, but just as often, if she learns Mariah or Elaine wants a toy she has, she'll hand it over just to be nice. If someone's crying, she tries to fix the problem and will run get a toy for them.

She is my first cuddler. She won't snuggle for long, but she'll lay her head on my shoulder and give me a good hug. If I ask, "Can you say, "I love you," she'll run to me and give me a hug. If I ask for a kiss, she smashes her forehead into my nose and holds it there.

Well, it's late, and that's all I can think of now. Thanks for enduring. I will most likely add more as I think of things. (Sal's actually coughing/crying in her bed right now, so I'm off to help.)