At 4.5

Why is it that time before Madeleine seemed to go at a snails pace and now it feels like it is on hyper speed? I despise it! I cannot believe she will turn 5 this year. Five seems so old to me. At 5 you are really no longer a baby, and then there’s that whole school thing – yikes!

I hope I can always remember how fun she is at 4.

We were at the grocery store the other day and this elderly lady came up and starting fussing all over Madeleine with how cute she was, patting her on the head, blah, blah, blah. She walks away and Madeleine says, “Uh, Mom, that grandma touched me.” . It totally had me in stitches.

Because Madeleine is so tiny she gets lots of looks anyways. She absolutely hates it when kids, obviously smaller than her will say, “what a cute baby” to her. She’ll look at me and say, “Why did they call me a baby?”. We were at the park on Saturday and I was letting her ride her balance bike (basically a regular bike, but it has no pedals or training wheels so it teaches you to balance, she just pushes off and picks her feet up to ride it) as I was run/walking the park. There’s one big hill on the backside and I let her ride down it. She was quite the head turner as she’s flying down the hill. Several people stopped me to ask how old she was or to comment how surprised they were to see a child so small balancing as she was.

Her favorite song right now is “Party Rock Anthem” because we have the Just Dance game for the Wii and she’s memorized just about the whole dance. She’ll put that song on repeat and go to town!

We talk very candidly about her adoption. She loves to hear how she was born. She knows she did not grow in my tummy because my tummy is broken. We were talking about it again one day and she said, “Mom, whose tummy did you grow in?”. Like, isn’t everyone grown in different tummies? She knows that she has a birth family that loves her so much, and I’m so happy she realizes that love is nonexclusive. My wish for her is she always remembers how special and loved she is by all.

We’ve been reading the Book of Mormon every night before bed, and she’s always the one to remind me to read. I love having her snuggled up to me in bed as she learns about the gospel.

I’m so very grateful that this special child is ours. I cannot imagine my life without her in it.