Near our house is a pond. On the pond lives a blue heron; Carla has named him Jeff. We drive a specific way home from camp these days, just so we can drive past the pond. We look for Jeff. Any time we are in the car, Carla asks if we can drive past Jeff’s pond – even if we are approaching home from the opposite direction.
This feels so very Carla, and I don’t know why.
She loves birds. She has always loved animals in all forms, but this year a second-grade study of birds really brought her ornithological passion to the fore. She has a pair of binoculars and a bird book and loves to cart them around with her. She exclaims over every feathered friend we encounter, no matter how common: “Look! A robin!” “Mom, look, look! I think that’s a pigeon!” “Is that a mourning dove?” “A chickadee!!!!!” Her enthusiasm for birds is boundless. Her grandmother recently took her to the craft store and she bought a bunch of tiny birds – the kind you see on Easter wreaths – and she wore one in her ponytail for several days.
Every time we see a bird of prey, she speculates it is either a red-tailed hawk or a vulture. I was not aware that our suburban area features vultures, and remain convinced that they are hawks, even when Carla insists otherwise. But then again, I am not the bird lady in our family.
She is equally enamored of dinosaurs, and somehow deeply knowledgeable. She will spot a dinosaur in a book or on TV and will immediately notify me that it’s a Spinosaurus or a Plesiosaurus or a Triceratops. Except that she knows dozens and dozens of dinosaur classifications, while those three dino-types I just listed are among the maybe five or ten I know. Her dinosaur birthday party went over quite well, I thought. Just the right amount of dino-décor for her party, and I surprised her with a dinosaur balloon on the day of her actual birthday. It was such a nice way to memorialize this current fascination.
Carla, of course, remains especially enchanted by dogs. New over the past year, she has been granted permission to ride her bike or scooter around our cul-de-sac (ringing her bell as she passes, so I can listen for her; and if she goes over the ten-minute mark, which is how long it takes her to make the circle, I go out and look for her; she is always petting a dog), looking for dogs to pet. (Only the dogs of neighbors, not stranger dogs.)
She continues to love crafting, and it is fascinating how her brain works: she can see a collection of raw materials and envision their endpoint and then actually make it happen. (She brought home a stack of foam sheets and a zipper and told me she was going to make a backpack for her Barbie… I could NOT see how that would work, but she DID IT. A wearable, fillable, zippable, recognizable backpack!) She is a Maker, through and through. We watch Making Ittogether, and I hope it inspires her, shows her a few of the many ways she can transform everyday materials into something new, gives her ideas for potential careers doing something she loves.
She is obsessed by candy and TV, two things I try (and often fail) to moderate. She loves all things sweet, like her father, and is always asking for ice cream and s’mores and cupcakes. We have had all three, plus cheesecake, in the days since she turned eight.
The cheesecake, by the way, was okay. Not great, but not bad. I had A Crust Incident when I was making it, but it was easy enough to scrap the crust and start over. (Less easy was wiping all the leaked butter out of the bottom of my oven. You live and you learn.)
Carla’s tastes are growing and changing. Instead of dresses every day, she gravitates toward jeans and t-shirts. She is newly scornful of her unicorn-and-rainbows backpack, and wants one that is ALL BLACK for third grade. (We did put a selection of backpacks in front of her the other day, in the form of a Lands End catalog, and she liked ones with stars and galaxies moreso than the all-black option, so we’ll see what we end up with.) She loves experimenting with makeup and tattoo pens and stick-on jewels. She loves asking me to do new things with her hair – small ponytails, high ponytails, braids. (I didn’t say my hairstyling repertoire was vast.)
She can read very well now, and is able to read almost anything, but it’s still not an activity she likes or chooses to undertake very often. Over the past year, she’s grown very fond of audiobooks and will listen to the same ones over and over until I request that she try something new, or at least something we haven’t heard in a while. She went through the entire Judy Blume catalog (well, the lower grade books) and most of Beverly Cleary’s books and a lot of the Lemony Snicket “Series of Unfortunate Events” books and whatever else I can persuade her to listen to. She has heard Socks probably a hundred times, I am not even kidding. Ribsy is not far behind. I kind of miss the days of podcasts (Wow in the World and Story Pirates were her favorites) but I love that she is enjoying books in any form.
She has fallen in love with poetry, though. She found a battered copy of A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein and read it over and over and over, memorizing several of the poems. She often chose that book for us to read when we put her to bed, each of us picking a random page and reading, then handing the book to the next person. Some nights, she would help me memorize one favorite poem. Other nights, after we kissed her goodnight, she would continue reading long past bedtime. We got her Where the Sidewalk Ends and the Random House Book of Poetry for Children for her birthday. If Carla is in a phase of loving poetry, well, I want to stoke that fire.
This year, she continued to excel at skiing. She needs lessons to help build skill, but she is an eager skier and has no trouble keeping up with her friends. She tried out ice skating, for the second time in her life, and I was very proud of her for keeping at it even though it did not come easily to her. She had a few days of feeling very insecure, but she really worked hard and I think she has a good foundation of balance.
Second grade was Carla’s best academic year yet. Her class was small (only ten children) and her teacher was phenomenal, but I am so very proud of how hard Carla worked. Not only at math and reading, but at paying attention and staying focused on her work which do not come easily to her. I am also so incredibly proud of how well she did during Covid in general, and during remote schooling specifically. It was so hard. And she really powered through it all.
She has a bunch of friends from school and loves them all. It was so fun to see her at her party, with all these other little girls who are all so different and who all, somehow, get along so well. One of her friends moved away and they bridge the distance by playing Animal Crossing together, over Facetime. At another friend’s birthday party, Carla led the entire group in a toast to the birthday girl. Her voice and her enthusiasm carry. She wore a rainbow dress with rainbow sandals to that same friend’s birthday party and one of the other mothers commented that it was so appropriate an outfit because that’s exactly what Carla is: a dazzling rainbow of a kid, who attracts people to her and makes them smile. What a compliment, right?!
Carla is increasingly sassy and I have to remind her on occasion to be respectful and to rephrase things. She hates having her hair brushed. She dislikes cleaning her room (her coping method is to “plean” which is her word for playing and cleaning; I am not a fan because “pleaning” is at least 95% playing and often whatever small amount of cleaning that occurs is soon erased by the playing). But in the main, she is cheerful and friendly and kind. She is enthusiastic about nearly everything (except sleep) (except when we are about to be late for camp) and my husband and I comment frequently about what a happy kid she is. She still, sometimes, wakes up singing. We both hope she never loses that innate zest for life that lights up everything she sees, that draws people to her, that makes her glow from the inside out. Seven has been a surprisingly spectacular year and I can’t wait to see what Carla-as-an-eight-year-old is like.
This year, I didn’t fall as deep into my annual “my baby is growing up too fast” pit of nostalgia and despair. Probably because the shiny rainbow lining of this awful pandemic year was that I got to spend more time with Carla than ever before. What a blessing. I feel less like my time with her is slipping through my fingers, more like we can find pleasurable time in one another’s company, more grateful than ever before for the things outside of me that help her thrive (school, camp, sports, playdates). I am so happy she is growing and I love being able to witness as she has changed from a squishy, spit-puppy baby to a toddler dynamo to a thoughtful, eager-to-learn, happy-about-life child. What a privilege it is, to be her mom.
Eight. Eight is going to be great, I just know it.
