For reasons that I cannot quite fathom, my darling daughter turns 6 years old today. This seems inconceivable; because I’m pretty sure she just learned to walk last week. This is made more confusing by the fact that she’s in the 3rd percentile for height and weight, so she still looks like she ought to be just learning to walk.
But, no, she’s actually 6. No longer a toddler. Not even a little kid anymore (to hear her tell it). She’s a big kid - going to school, buying her own lunch and learning math. But still somewhere in there she’s my little girl. My big 6 year old girl.
So here is my tribute to Audra and 10 things that I absolutely adore about her.
1. She Loves School
My goodness, if ever a child was born ready for school, it was Audra. She loves everything about it. She loves reading. She loves lunch. She loves riding the bus. She’s frustrated that they haven’t done more math yet (that’s her mother’s genes in her). She loves being with all the other kids and loves pleasing the teacher. If you were to create Audra’s perfect play / entertainment / social arena that didn’t include a moon bounce, it would probably look a lot like school.
As a parent it is so wonderful to see your child happy and enjoying something that you know she’s going to have to do for the next 13 years. I’m sure there will come days when Audra tells me she doesn’t want to go, but for now, even if she was coughing up blood I think she would just ask for some extra tissues, so she could go catch the bus.
2. She is a Total Ham
And I mean TOTAL. She’s so much of a ham, they won’t even let her in a synagogue (cue rim shot). My little girl loves to perform and she loves an audience. She will gladly sing or dance or act in front of anyone. When the opening credits to Kim Possible come on, she does this frenetic dance routine that would put Janet Jackson to shame (well, to more shame).
She recently has fallen in love with the musical Annie and will run around the house singing “It’s a hard knocked up life!” at the top of her lungs while sliding down the stairs (Asher likes to sing “Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Give your bottom a spanking! – what’s wrong with my kids?)
Her singing isn’t always quite in key, but the enthusiasm is hard to beat. She makes full use of her costume box and there is hardly a princess left standing that hasn’t had their life fully acted out in our living room. I’m not saying she’s the next Tatum O’Neal (let’s hope not). But she’s a born performer and it’s completely charming. And don’t tell her, but there’s a little red dress and curly red wig wrapped up in her stack of presents.
3. She Loves her Mom
Yeah, yeah, she loves me too, but her heart is really with her mom. I don’t know if most daughters are Daddy’s girls because Daddy is usually at work all day, but Audra seems to get plenty of me. It’s her mom that she truly loves and Sarah has always been so great with her.
Sarah is and has always been a tom boy who somehow gave birth to this princess loving, high heel adoring, bundle of glitter and perfume. And they are perfect together. Audra asks me 10 times a day “when is Mommy getting home” and will gladly body slam one of her siblings to get to mommy first when she gets home at night. They have a whole series of traditions and rituals that they go through at bedtime that I’m sure I could never recreate. One of my greatest fears in life is that something would happen to Sarah and that I would have to tell Audra. I simply can’t imagine.
It is awe inspiring to see love played out so actively and beautifully in front of you.
4. She’s Smart as a Whip
Yeah, I’m sure your kid is smart too, but boy Audra has a brain on her and she loves using it. She’s always asking us existential questions about the nature of God or the really hard ones, like how they get all that fig inside the Newton. She’s also good at figuring things out and boy, if elephants never forget, Audra comes in a close second. She remembers people and events and random facts to the point that it is frequently a deficit. I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer tell her what we’re going to do, because if there is the slightest diversion from that plan, she’ll let me hear about it. Asher, on the other hand, has long since forgotten why we got in the car in the first place.
When she was three, we were in church reciting the Lord’s Prayer and I realized that Audra was reciting it with us. I don’t think I learned that until I was in 4th grade. Now I don’t know if she’s going to end up with a doctorate in Physics or 17th century literature (I hope not, the 17th century blows) but it is a joy to see that mighty mind of hers stretch and grow and blossom every day.
5. She’s No Longer a Sassy 5 year old.
Boy, there was a year or so there when I thought we were going to have to trade her in for an old Buick or something. The last half of four and the first half of five were rough. Our beautiful sweet girl somehow turned into this obnoxious, sassy, sit com character who put her hand on her hip and said sassy things except they weren’t funny (humor thus far is not her forte). It’s a miracle that I didn’t grind my teeth to shreds or pass out from all the deep breaths I was taking.
But that is all over, she has been a joy to be around and just a perfect daughter lately. It’s a nice reminder that most of the craziness that our kids go through is little more than a stage that needs to be worked out. Which is a good thing; because otherwise I think our adoption rolls would be more full than they already are.
6. She’s my Brown Eyed Girl
Right now, my daughter is beautiful. It’s hard to say whether she’s still going to be conventionally beautiful when she grows up or have more, ahem, character, like her father. A friend of mine recently told me that she and her husband were watching a tv show and one of the characters said something like, “you know, that girl’s totally hot…. in a nerdy way.” My friend told me he thought that’s what Audra would probably look like. I thought this was very funny, probably true, and a little creepy.
But regardless of the future, Audra has these gorgeous big brown eyes framed with dark lashes that you can get lost in if you stare too long. I have no idea who Van Morrison was talking about when he wrote that song, but I know that whenever it comes on in our house, everything has to stop so that I can dance with Audra. (we try to ignore the “making love in the green grass” part)
7. She Stands up for Herself
Early on, my little angel was truly the littlest angel. She’s always been about a head shorter than her peers and as a preschooler, height was about the closest thing to a hierarchy as anyone had. She was content and happy, but I frequently saw her offering up ideas that were generally ignored by everyone else. She always got cast as the child when kids were playing house and never got to be her top choice of princess.
Well, that has changed. She has learned how to take up for herself (a skill I never developed until college and still don’t have in spades). She can push back without being pushy and she knows to stand up for what is fair. Now, what is fair to one 5 year old, isn’t fair to another, but, regardless, I’m glad to see her get a little backbone. She’s a wisp of a child and a pretty sweet kid at that. It would have been easy for her to be the pushover, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Of course, you have to be careful that standing up for yourself doesn’t become pushing others down, but so far she’s walked that line well, and besides her arms are too scrawny to do much pushing anyway.
8. She Loves Music
I suppose it’s sort of wrong to love the things about your child that are most like yourself, but we all do it, so lay off.
Audra is a music lover just like me and I love that she seems to adore the full range of different styles out there. She can sing along to show tunes, swing around the room to Ella Fitzgerald and still have time to get all funky to Chuck Brown. The music is playing a lot in our house, sometimes for ambiance, sometimes to cover up the noise, but it’s on a lot. And it doesn’t take long before Audra’s begging for a dance break. I turn the volume up, search out the fast songs, and soon we’re hopping and bopping, twirling and spinning around the kitchen and singing at the tops of our lungs. It’s a little slice of heaven.
9. She’s a Great Big Sister
Audra is smaller than most of her friends and partly because of that ends up being the follower a lot of the time. Once she became a big sister, she was presented with the opportunity to be the big kid in charge. I was a little concerned that perhaps she might be apt to abuse this power as some older siblings do, but that has never been the case. Audra is a loving and perfect big sister. When her little brothers were infants, all she wanted to do was hold them in her lap and stroke their heads and sing to them. And now that they’re older, she and Asher are best buddies who are always running around the living room off on another adventure. I am usually just a bit character in their grand cinema. They will come up to me and ask, in a British accent, for a bus ticket to Kalamazoo, or will inform me that a monster is after them and that I should keep an eye out. And then they are off, to climb a mountain, run a restaurant, or defeat a dragon.
It has also been wonderful to see her interact with our 1 year old. She is always happy to keep an eye on him and let me know if he is doing something crazy like climbing on top of the train table. And she loves to help him get on his little plastic car and push him around the living room. She is the kind of big sister that any little boy would be thrilled and blessed to have.
10. She’s a Marrow Sucker
Audra loves life and she loves to live it – Big. Every morning one of the first things out of her mouth is “what are we going to do today?” And she doesn’t mean which room are we going to clean up, or what time do you think we’ll go out and play in the back yard? No, she means, what enormous, exciting, once in a lifetime event are we going to go out and accomplish before dinner? A day without museums, playdates, interesting foods or trips to brand new places is a day wasted.
Now, this can clearly become problematic. If the day I had mentally planned involved going to Target, doing some laundry, and maybe going for a walk, this is not a sufficient day. But it also means that she is always up for something new.
Thai food? Why not?
Renoir exhibit in Philly? I’ve got my bags packed!
Austrian folk dancing? I’ve got my dirndl all pressed!
She’s up for excitement and new experiences and sucking that last bit of marrow out. She’s turning into a beautiful, wonderful little girl and she’s going to live an exciting, adventurous life. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what this 6th year is going to bring.