My baby girl is starting kindergarten in just over a month. How can she be so old already? Now that we're officially into August, she is in birthday countdown mode. Every morning, she tells me her birthday is the 24th. Is is the 24th yet? Is it close to the 24th? She says that being five is big. Being five to Ava means: making your own sandwiches, buckling your own carseat, and being "in charge" of her brothers when I am out of the room.
And no, for the record, turning five does not mean Ava gets to move into, in her words, "one of those seats where you can move all around.", or in my words, a booster seat. She'll remain in her harnessed seat for at least another year, even though she is over the minumum age and weight to ride in a booster. We don't do minimums here, we're all about best practice. There's a possibility we may start booster training her at some point this year. She is, however, able to buckle the 5 point harness on her carseat almost completely. When I ask her why she doesn't just buckle that last piece instead of asking me for help, she says "Actually, that's something I'll start doing when I'm five."
There you go, Ava hang onto that last bit of dependency on me for a few more weeks.
Ava was spending sometime with my mom the other day, and she sat down with her and said very seriously "You know, I'm going to have a very big job when this new baby comes." She takes her job as the biggest sibling very seriously, and while she and Jace fight like wildcats, they are also attached at the hip. I keep telling them "So and So couldn't bite/kick/hit you if you weren't sitting right next to them!" They both just stare at me like I'm crazy and they can't understand why they wouldn't be all up in each other's space.
Another thing Ava takes really seriously...Wow, I'm really making her out to be a serious girl, aren't I? To be honest, she is pretty intense. Not that she doesn't have a sense of humor, because she does, but she is serious about everything she does. Today, she came into my room, throwing a huge fit. "He ate it! I can't believe he ate them all! He ate ALL THE GRAPES! This is SERIOUS! There are NO MORE grapes! They. Are. Gone!!!" But I digress. Point is, she's serious.
And her faith is one of the things she's serious about. Give her two seconds with a stranger and she will have told him all about her brother Eli, how he is in heaven and she will be there with him one day and by the way have you asked Jesus to come live in your heart because if not, did you know you just can't go? Did you know that? Does Jesus live in your heart? All you have to do is ask him and he'll come and help you learn about Him and does that sound like something you're interested in, Huh? Her very favorite story in the bible is Jesus dying on the Cross, and she likes to tell it to everyone and draw pictures about it all the time. Today at church, she got up on stage at children's church to share her favorite part of the bible, and she talked about...yep, you guessed it. She says it's the most important part there is.
Yeah, like I said, she's a little intense, a little old for her age, a little concerned with the state of everyone's souls. I have a sneaking suspicion that she may grow up to be a televangelist. I'm just hoping she's a well spoken, sincere version instead of the kind that is hitting people over the heads with bibles and proclaiming them healed.
It all remains to be seen, though, and for now, she's my beautiful, funny, sweet, serious, intense, clumsy, insanely tall, crazy dancing almost five year old who has her whole life and the whole world in front of her.
