Monday Vivian turned six. The baby of the family is six. It is bittersweet watching them all grow up.
My brother Jake was down with his kids, and it is always a grand time when the cousins are in for a visit. Per Vivian's request, we celebrated her day by making rainbow fruit kabobs. Before you get the wrong idea, we had chocolate peanut butter cake later in the day.
Before we had kids, we had grand ideas about the things we would and would not do as parents. One of the things on the do not do list was to let the baby be a baby. Well, that worked out great for the first three kids. The baby never had enough time to become spoiled because another baby always came along. And then came Vivian.
Oh yes. She is cute. She is very sweet and loving most of the time. She is a wonderful helper. She also is a bit high maintence. I call her the princess.
I am not sure if she was born this way, or if it is a result of her being the baby, but she is by far the pickiest of all the kids. She is picky about food. Only certain socks meet her standards, and those must be worn inside out. Tags need to be removed from clothes. Jeans are not comfortable. Car seats need to be adjusted just so. When it is time to go somewhere, the rest of us spend a lot of time waiting for her to get everything just so.
She is the only one to ever suck a thumb, and she still has that habit. She enjoys being the baby, and the only one who has actually said she doesn't want to grow up.
She does have chores, and for the most part is willing to complete them. I realize though that her chores at 6 are far less than Kellen's were at the same age.
How did this happen?
Now, on the other side of six years of having the same baby, it is easy to see how these things happen. Life is busy. Sometimes it is easier to accommodate than to fight, especially when there are three older siblings to help accommodate. When something needs done, it is easier to have an older child to do it, than teach the youngest to do it.
And I almost forgot. . . . Yesterday out of the blue Viv tells me, "The next time we go on vacation I want to go to a spa." When I asked her what a spa was she said, "A place where you relax. Then they put make up on you and you relax some more." Poor overworked 6 year old needs a relaxing vacation. :)
ReplyDeleteShe kinda sounds like me when I was little…
ReplyDelete-Jes
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