Things to Do - The Middle

The other day P gave me a drawing with a perfect heart on it (pictured above). I had no idea that she had acquired this skill. F spent a long time trying to master the heart, I even bought and made her stencils to help her learn. But somehow, while I was busy toilet training T and helping F with homework, P had succeeded in heart drawing without me even noticing.

It must be hard to be the middle, try as hard as I can, I never manage to document P's accomplishments like i do for the other two. She's also in many ways my "easiest" child. And I know I miss a lot.

I met with P's preschool teacher for a conference last week (we had to reschedule because I completely forgot the first meeting). She told me three stories that say so much about P and our family.

(1) Whenever someone in the class says "girls can't marry girls", P says "yes, they can, I saw it. i went to julia and tracie's wedding and saw it. people can marry whoever they want, I know that's true." I guess some of the other kids kept pressing the issue, but P wouldn't back down. My girl knows what she knows.

(2) The teacher said that whenever McDonald's comes up P says "my mom doesn't let us go there unless there's nowhere else to go [i.e. vacation road trips] because they're mean to the chickens. and we hate when people are mean to chickens."

(3) Finally, P tells her friends "there's no such thing as boy colors and girl colors. Anyone can like any color they want." When kids started laughing, she told them "my brother loves his pink blanket and he's still a boy. it would be silly if a certain color made you a boy or a girl."

So even when I'm not paying attention, she's listening to what we say. My smart, beautiful girl.