Now that she's six...

...and clever as clever

I hope she'll stay six

Forever and ever.

(With apologies to A.A. Milne)

Until recently, I felt those older people who told us, nodding their heads knowingly, that "it goes fast" and that we needed to enjoy every minute with our babies were suffering serious amnesia. I didn't, and still don't, think the early years went fast. The incredible newness and wonder of the first year made it telescope, every moment counting for ten of ordinary life. Then the toddler years hit, and the intense physical and emotional exertion needed to parent a willful, energetic little person who required routine, discipline, explanation, and physical assistance with every basic task made those years plenty long in a different way.

It's just recently that Edith's childhood has started to speed up. Today she turned six...while I mentally have her lodged somewhere around four. I certainly wasn't used to her being five years old yet. And now five is behind us.

For her part Edith says she's ready to be a first grader. She's tall and (well), lanky, and as she'll tell you, she runs fast--especially when chasing boys on the playground. She stables a full complement of imaginary horses on the playground, too. She's still our story-lover, but she's quieter and dreamier than she once was, relishing some of those stories in her head rather than always demanding that they be told to her by an external party. She is usually master of her emotions when tired or disappointed...not perfectly in control, of course, but cognizant of how acting out her frustrations can impact those around her and able to rein it in. She can get things out of the freezer by herself by standing on tiptoe. She can open and shut the sliding car door and buckle her own seatbelt, meaning we have nothing to do with getting her in and out of the car (other than launching the family out the house door in the first place). She can converse pleasantly and thoughtfully with family and strangers alike and often sees the same humor in a situation that an adult would see. She likes to work through the steps in a new project. She throws all her pajamas out of the drawer when looking for her favorite nightgown--but she usually puts them back without being asked. She still eats only three different dinners, but she tried sprouts on her ice cream sundae tonight. 

I suspect that the things that make Edith such a good companion now, an interesting person to talk to, to laugh with, and to love, are the same things that make the years go faster. She doesn't demand our every attention to her diapers, her toddling, her feeding, or her tears. She can make herself understood to the world without our translation. She's starting to understand, as younger children do not, that she's one among many people with perspectives and claims on the universe...and she's comfortable with that. She can articulate how she's feeling. She has relationships of her own of which we aren't a part. In short, all the things that make a child more mature also make her less intensively the every-minute charge of her parents. In those moments when we are no longer required to provide the mommy milk, sing the bedtime songs, wrestle the clothes on, or negotiate the tantrums, we're living easier. In the moments that we're laughing, reading, gardening, or hiking with Edith, we're having ever more fun and admiring ever more the person she is now and is still becoming. But the very things that make the relationship more lovely are the ones that make it not as constantly the insistent focus of our every hour and every creative energy. And so the interstitial minutes--the ones in which she's becoming her own person, doing things for herself, relating to others--slip away uncounted. And we look up and wonder where our five year old went.

Happy birthday, Edith. We love you.

Addendum, 6 May: She's a perfect square! Annual physical says...46 pounds, 46 inches.