Happy Birthday to Our Baby

Of all my babies, it seems that Clara was little the shortest amount of time. It has always felt like she is racing to grow up, rushing through babyhood. She held her head up nearly from day one, rolled over early, sat up early, crawled early, walked early, climbed early, spoke early, dressed herself early, and developed very strong preferences and opinions early. (Sadly she is not even remotely interested in potty training, so in this she is well behind her siblings, grrr). The picture below was taken, in the early pre-sun hours of the morning. That is usually when Clara gets up. But she doesn't wake us up. She just takes care of business. Lately that involves trying to change her own diaper. Usually she gets dressed in some kind of get-up, plays, and turns on all the lights upstairs. She speaks like she is twenty (although often the content of her babbling is completely stream of consciousness. "It's very cold outside, so I'm going to be bored when I get borned so I can play with my Barbies"). She goes to a library story time where there is a mat on the floor and she always, always, always, sits on the purple M. She always pushes up her sleeves. She has a definite idea of beautiful, and it may not mesh with mine, but it isn't worth fighting her on aesthetics. She can entertain herself like no other three year old I know. She goes in her room and plays and plays and plays with her toys. I've never known a kid of mine to do that.

For awhile I wondered if I even wanted a number four. Three seemed good. But as time went by it became apparent that someone was missing. There was a strong, strong, someone missing. And so we had Clara. Our strong strong someone came. And now we just can't begin to imagine life without this crazy wonderful little girl. Tomorrow our baby turns three. Every single one of us adores her and derive massive amounts of pleasure and endless entertainment from her crazy strong personality. We love our three year old! Happy birthday to my little baby who was born sassy.

On the menu (and all over the floor) for this particular breakfast: All-Bran (gross) and Grape Nuts with an extremely generous amount of sugar and milk. She was beyond proud and we were beyond annoyed.

One other quick story: Life with four children means that my brain is on overload. We are going so many places, and in so many directions I can barely keep track. I signed Clara up for a dance class, which thrilled her to no end. I thought it began on Thursday at 5:00. It turns out I actually signed her up for the Wednesday class and when we showed up on Thursday Clara was really disappointed. She stuck out her quivering lip when I explained that we missed her class and I was very sorry. "Mom, I am very very sad. Very very very sad." It was so cute and heart breaking.