Alana at 7

This girl of mine has always been so sweet, and now that she is 7 I see it more from her everyday. She is kind and thoughtful, and she is nothing if not friendly. Everyone is her BFF and she is always going out of her way to say hi to people. I honestly don't know where she got that from.

She loves to play, even with Ava, and of course they fight but that is still how they choose to spend most afternoons. Laughing and fighting together, playing with Barbies, playing school, or watching iCarly way too many times till I want to hide the remote.

She isn't a big rule breaker either, this girl of mine. She might get a little wild at home every now and then, but at school there is no way she would even dream of disobeying. That would interfere with her endless love of learning. Books are her new favorite thing, not that she hasn't always loved being read to, now she loves reading to people. She reads books with chapters now, some of them don't even have pictures, that's hardcore. There is a stack of "in progress" books on the shelf right now, each with a different homemade book "holeder" in it, marking her place. She cries if we don't read a book before bed, so every day includes a story, Pinkalicious has to make an appearance or no one can rest.

As much as she loves reading, learning to write has also really changed everything about her. She writes notes, signs, letters, lists. She writes the name of Disney characters on a piece of paper, then tapes it to her wall. Last week she made a bunch of signs about a Halloween party she and Ava were pretending to have, then taped them up everywhere. I usually leave them up too, they make me laugh. At some point she will grow out of writing "Sebastchun the crab" on scraps of paper, then I will be sad. So for now, those will decorate our walls.

Making masterpieces is also one of her main talents. SO MANY MASTERPIECES. I physically cannot even keep all of the masterpieces, if I did my house would look like an episode of hoarders. She draws me awesome pictures of ninja turtles or hearts or tigers. These are frame-worthy pieces of artwork I'm talking about here people. They could be in a museum. 

Alana is playing soccer this year, which has led to excessive amounts of kicking stuff (except during the game when she gets all scared). She kicks all of the balls in our house, all of the pillows, and even kicked Ava the other day when she aimed poorly and missed the toy she was going for. I'm ready for that to stop. She also loves going outside to ride her bike, which still has the training wheels on it. If history has taught me anything, she will leave the training wheels on till Ava takes hers off, then she won't want to look like an idiot and will take them off even though she still isn't a great bike rider. Not that I know anything about that from personal experience or anything. 

As of right now she has lost 4 baby teeth, but there is one that is literally hanging by a thread. I tried to get a picture, but she was suddenly shy and wouldn't pose for one. I'll get one out of her eventually, just not today. She literally looks like a crazy girl with the way her teeth are right now. She lost one of her top two front tooth last Monday, and as soon as it was gone its next door neighbor (the one that's hanging by a thread) decided to move into the empty space. So in the middle top of her mouth she has one tooth, just hanging out. It looks a little bit like those redneck teeth you can buy in a vending machine. I can't wait till it falls out, but we've tried bribing her and stuff and she won't pull it out. I give it a week, max.

My girl just has so much personality. Its hard to stay mad at her. She's so beautiful and loving, which helps to balance out the stubborn streak and incessant kicking of stuff.

Alana has always been so full of love. She loves every person, every animal, every cartoon and book, everything. She does everything with so much enthusiasm, its almost contagious. I said almost, let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

The hardest thing to me about her being 7 is remembering. I can't. I don't remember what it was like to have her as a baby. I can't quite recall what it felt like to have her sleeping on my chest. I can't reconcile this picture of her with not quite all of her teeth yet with the little jack o'lantern smiled first grader missing half of her teeth. I can't picture her learning to walk, I can't remember what she did before she talked my ear off. I miss baby Alana, but what I miss most is the time that has passed when I wasn't paying attention. I shouldn't sleep, I think that's when my kids grew up. I was sleeping or something. Probably something mundane like folding laundry. I looked away. And now this little baby can only be seen in pictures, she grew up a long time ago.

I've had seven years of being her mom, but it still feels like she just got here yesterday. And she is still a little baby who goes crazy when Little Einsteins comes on, not the girl who dances and sings to the whole soundtrack from The Little Mermaid (not that I can blame her for that one).

Soon she'll be bigger, she won't hug my waist so tight I can't breathe. She won't laugh hysterically at her own jokes. Well I still do that so maybe she won't outgrow that one. She won't think I'm cool, she won't want to read me her Judy Moody books or let me braid her hair. She won't eagerly wait for my approval, she won't let me pick out her clothes. She won't be as excited to be Ariel for Halloween, so excited she's counting the days. She won't hold my hand in public, she won't sit for hours at the table with Ava, playing with princess dolls.

She gets bigger, I get sadder, but it still happens. So for now I will just sit here, looking at her baby pictures and wondering WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED??? Because she cannot be seven already, she just turned one. Sounds reasonable to me, I'm going to go with this strategy. She's not seven, she's a baby. Don't correct me, I'm beyond reason at this point. Now look at my cute baby, she just turned one.