Connecting with Cupcakes

Kids are funny. No matter how many you have of them they are all opposites.  You see this connective tissue throughout them all, yet they are all so different.

I have always understood #1 as a geeky replica of his father.  I really like his dad, so it is pretty easy for me to understand him too.

#3 is the most like me, and so I have a pretty easy time understanding what makes her tick.

#4… well… He is just HIM.  Full of life and energy, all boy, and frankly he is just fun to watch.

Then, there is our oldest daughter.  Sweet #2.  I can honestly say that I did not even appreciate her and her gentle spirit until I had her my first grade class.

I didn’t realize how like-able she was!  Everyone liked her, and she was nice to everyone.  She was everyone’s friend, and always wanted to include everyone.  She is also a good student, which makes being her teacher even easier.  I got to watch her be the kind of student any teacher or mom would dream of.

BUT, still I don’t quite get her!  In some ways, I have felt like I have had a hard time connecting with her.

She is a free spirit – even more so than I was.  My parents often told me that I always marched to my own drum.  This little girl isn’t even marching to a drum at all!  I have said for years, that she will be our child that quits shaving her armpits and backpacks across Europe.

She can talk all the way to Chicago and back, and then announce that her “Brain is empty now.”

She can happily twirl and dance in any open space and not care who is looking.

She can repeat the same thing ten times in thirty minutes, and not remember.

She is so NOT physical!  She can’t even push a mower! (We tried a self propelled one and that one took off without her).

She cried when I took her to basketball camp!

She is our little mother hen.

She is artistic and flighty.

She is sweet and kind.

She is cunning and sneaky.

I sometimes just look at her and shake my head.  WHERE DID SHE COME FROM?

Lately, she had taken up baking. ( I am blaming Stefany U. for this!)  She has always liked helping in the kitchen, but since her HomeEc class with Stef, she practically lives in the kitchen.

I can ask her to make this or that, give her a recipe, (haul out the Kitchenaid because she can’t lift it), and she can do it all on her own.

We get to spend a lot of time together in the kitchen. I have been able to share that love of making food with her.  We get to work along in the kitchen and I get to hear her ramblings about this or that. I get to enjoy he constant toothy grin and continual questions.  We have found a way to connect.

Isn’t that what she needs?  Time with mom?

Even at this very minute she is pestering me to do another thing that we can do together.  WRAP PRESENTS!  She loves anything remotely creative!

So for now, even if I don’t understand the little girl who is doing curtsies and playing with her hair in the reflection of her dad’s giant broken TV I can spend time figuring out what makes her HER.