Maddie is five tomorrow. Maddie, of all peopel! Five!
This is no longer the good old days, when I had the time to find and post the best pictures from every month of a child’s existence and post them here in a loving retrospective. Not after the week we’ve had, which will be documented in a future post (and has been pretty well documented on the FB Family Group already). But here is the last best picture of Maddie as a four year old:
She’s actually lying there on the marble floor of Charlottehave alongside her cousin Matteo during Mormor’s 70th birthday party. It’s a thoughtful and reflective look — usually the kind of expression that crosses her face just before she asks whether you knew that Princess Sofia the First has a horse that can fly, or whether you like Snow White better than Rapunzel, or whether you agree that it’s fun to be people.
Trine and I had our meeting with her børnehaven pedagoger recently. We were delighted and, I am sorry to say, a little surprised to hear just how well she’s thriving there, how independent she is, how balanced, how centered she remains in small groups and large ones, how unrepentantly herself she is at all times, how fond she is of singing to the other kids, how helpful and friendly in general, how capable of dressing and undressing herself. How responsive to requests from the grown-ups, how imaginative in her inner life. It isn’t because we don’t know what a wonderful girl she is, but rather that, like her big sister before her, she spared us the terrible twos to whack us with the formidable fours. Apparently that’s something she reserves for us: at børnehaven she’s some kind of dream child.
(I kid, future Maddie, I kid. Mostly.)
Of course, future Maddie, you are a profoundly imaginative, inventive, mischievous, hilarious, inquisitive, and playful person. You are also stubborn, willful, and can actually be surprisingly persuasive for someone of your limited rhetorical experience. And you are only four for another few hours.
Since Aunt Deb Facebooked it in realtime, I suppose it’s already entered family lore that Maddie’s response to Aunt Deb’s asking on Skype tonight how old she would be tomorrow was to hold up a hand with five fingers extended and proudly proclaim, “A whole handful!“
But future Maddie: you did not have to wait to be five to be a handful. You have been all along, and I have no doubt you always will be, and it is just one of the many things we all love about you.
Happy birthday, Maddie!
Happy Birthday Maddie. I think your daddy captured your essence.
Love
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