Along with our eighth anniversary, yesterday was Miss Chief's seventh birthday. This has been quite a big year for her, too, and she's handled it with a grace and strength many adults seem to be lacking.
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| Christmas 2019 |
Currently, Chief is in first grade, participating online from home due to the pandemic. When schools shut down around spring break, we explained to her, in as simple terms as possible, what was going on. She's watched the Magic School Bus episode about the immune system enough times that she understood our explanation. Online Kindergarten was pretty unstructured, since it had never been done before, but she took it in stride, and looked forward to seeing her teacher on Zoom every few days. We had a lot of time for independent study, which we filled with reading books and playing math games online and playing board games in the afternoons. She's able to do double-digit addition and subtraction in her head now, and started working on techniques for mental arithmetic with triple-digit numbers by the time the school year was over. She learned all sorts of things that weren't on the curriculum for Kindergarten...and so the first couple of months of first grade have been sort of boring for her. Now the online learning is structured, a live stream of the classroom instruction, where there's not much leeway to move on once she's mastered something. One of the many positives of having her do this from home, though, is that her boredom does not become disruptive to the class- her microphone is on mute, so if she's a little wiggly or a little goofy or even if she wants to stand up and walk across the room to give Daddy a kiss, nobody is going to notice.
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| Dressed as Lucy Pevensie, complete with magic healing potion, for Book Character Day |
She's learned a lot about people, too, this year, and for better or worse, I think she's internalized those lessons by now. She has such a big heart, with lots of room in it to love and care for everyone she meets, and for the first time in her life she's had to grapple with the idea that not everyone shares her sense of compassion. I've seen more selflessness out of this child this year- at an age when it's still sort of expected that she's going to have a hard time sharing her toys, and want to push back on rules, and whine about how unfair everything is- than from most of the adults I've encountered. I just hope she hasn't become too cynical about humanity at such a young age.
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| Last day of Kindergarten, enjoying breaking almost every single dress code rule |
On the morning of her birthday, I kissed her and asked, "So, do you feel 7?" She thought about it, then said, "No, not really." "Well, you definitely look 7! I mean, you're way taller now than when you were 6! You're like a whole different person!" It was meant as a joke, the silly teasing grown ups always deal out on your birthday, but apparently she thought about it all day. Right before bedtime, she called me into her room and shut the door, then turned to me, with tears in her eyes, and said, "Mom, I really don't feel 7 at all! I feel like I'm still 6! And I didn't get any taller or anything!" I hugged her tight and told her I was joking, explained that nobody feels any older on their birthday- that humans grow fast when we're babies, but slower the older we get, so of course she's not any taller than she was the day before. I told her she's definitely 7, she's definitely getting bigger, but she won't really notice the changes as they happen- just after they've passed. And then we looked at some of her baby pictures and talked about what's changed between then and now- and what hasn't.
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| Wearing her homemade Tinker Bell costume on Halloween |
So, that's pretty much been her year. If we've ever been worried about how she'd turn out as an adult, this year has entirely dispelled that. She is brave, smart, kind, loving, and strong, and I have no doubt she'll continue to be for the rest of her life.
Do you feel any older after living through this year?
Much love,
The Geeks
