My dear sweet Hazel girl - I can't hardly believe that my little baby, my last baby is just about to turn FIVE! If I'm honest, I'm so excited for all the days ahead, but I'm also a little sad that I really truly don't have a baby, or a toddler around the house anymore. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not missing the sleepless nights nor mourning that we're through bottles and potty training and big girl bed transitions and all of those things! But, I DO miss baby smells, and baby toes and toddler voices (and sayings). But, this post is NOT about me and the things I miss...it's about you and all the things that make you great. Because, girl...you are great!!
Height/Weight: You are 41.5 inches tall (a tiny bit taller than your
sister when she turned 5!) and just about 39 pounds. We don’t see the doctor for your yearly weigh
in for a few more weeks, so I’m not sure where you are percentage wise, but
looking back on Abby’s numbers at this age, I’d say you are in the bottom 50%
range of kids your size.
Favorite Toy:
“My warthog”
Hum, this is a hard one this
year! I can remember what I wrote for
the last few years, but I feel like you aren’t gravitating toward any one thing
these days. Dolly, your one and only
(!), is still very much a thing, but she doesn’t have to come with for
everything and more often than not, she’s left behind. Rocks are still holding strong, but not
nearly like they used to! I’d say the
one thing that both you and your sister are obsessed with are Legos! During COVID quarantine the two of you got
into building whole cities and creating all sorts of creative things with
Legos. During those weeks of staying
home and doing very little you totally took over the back screened in porch and
turned it into Lego central. Between the
portion of the McGrath family Lego collection (that we got around Christmas
time) and the added Lego sets I picked up for you over the last few months,
this toy is still going strong and you LOVE looking at Amazon on my phone and
seeing all the Lego sets you could get.
Favorite Color: “Purple and also green”
Your favorite color is purple and
that is still going strong! Like last
year you fluctuate a little bit, saying “I like purple but I also like (insert
any color)”…. But these days your favorite is purple and you pick your purple
clothes out of the pile first every week!
Some firsts this year:
- Bedtime
songs – sometime earlier this year you decided that you wanted me to sign you a
lullaby each night before you go to bed.
For the first few weeks I’d randomly pick as lullaby and sing it to you,
but it quickly became clear that you wanted to hear Hush Little Baby each and
every single night. You used to call it
the “shopping song” because all you could remember was the part where I said
“Momma’s going to buy you a…”. For a
long long time I just made up things that rhymed or were funny but after
realizing that this was a request that was here to stay I took the time to
finally remember the real words.
Actually, funny enough, it was when Brenna was able to sing the entire
song through that I realized there were words I’d never known! Thanks B for giving me the push to look it up
and learn it correctly, because now it’ll forever be stuck in my memory.
- School –
in just a few short months you’ll be starting Kindergarten. I mean, how did we get here?? I have two school aged kids in the blink of
an eye. Technically I suppose you
started school last fall when you started attending Little Blessings Pre-school
4 half days a week, but 2020 will be the first time you ride the bus, the first
time you spend a full day at class, and the first time I’m no longer paying for
childcare during the day!! Well, with
COVID looming around, who even knows what school is going to look like this
year, but, for now, we’ll just believe that you’ll be headed to Kindergarten on
the bus just like your big sister in just a few short months.
Bears or Packers? “Packers….but also the Bears”
Like your sister you’ve moved to
the very politically correct answer of “I like both” when asked this
question. I can’t confidently say that
you care one way or another, so for now we’ll say both and I’ll continue to
stack your wardrobe with more Packers
than Bears and hold out hope for the long term.
Fears: “Wolves”
This summer I’ve seen you conquer
your fear of bugs – in fact, these days you LOVE to go outside with a bug net
and the bug/butterfly/frog jar looking to catch all sorts of little
things. One new fear you’ve been talking
about is that you’ve been having bad dreams.
Even just today, as I write this, you were in my room at 5am asking to
watch TV because you woke up from a bad dream.
Luckily (for both of us!) you fell back to sleep after I laid in bed
with you for 20 minutes or so. When I
ask you what your dreams were about you most often tell me “bad pigs”. I have no idea what that means, or where it
could come from, but you’ve said it more than a handful of times. I remember two vivid dreams that I used to
have when I was younger (one about a tiger pacing around my feet as I stood on
the ladder to our attic in our garage, and another where we’re driving up a
mountain and come to a bridge that opens for boats. We’d speed up the car as fast as we could to
try and JUMP over the open bridge…gah…I get anxiety even typing it out!). Anyways, I wonder if these “bad pigs” will be
one of those dreams that sticks with you forever. Guess we’ll see, baby girl!
Favorite TV show: “Paw Patrol”
Favorite Food: You, sweet Hazel, are my easier eater. You’ve always been more willing than your
sister, and that continues to hold true.
You still complain, don’t get me wrong, we still struggle through meals,
but you’ll try more things than Abby
ever did and for that, I am thankful.
Some of your favorite things are broccoli, cherries, apples, oatmeal,
and Daddy Mac (Velveeta Mac and Cheese).
You much prefer water over milk and while I wish you’d drink more milk I
don’t fight you on this anymore. You eat
plenty of dairy, you love cheese like your Daddy, and yogurt is an easy sell,
so I just offer you milk at dinner (which you rarely drink) and just let you
have water. You prefer Chicken Nuggets
from McDonalds, while Abby like cheeseburgers.
Like all kids, you love snacks more than anything. I swear, as soon as 3pm hits all you want is
snacks on snacks on snacks. Your
favorite snack is cheese and crackers but a close second is apples, WHOLE
apples, that is. You want to try to eat
the whole dang thing, which often leads to apples with three bites missing
laying around the house…not my fav. But
we’re working on that part, I’m just happy you choose healthy snacks!
Favorite Outfit: To say that you have one favorite outfit isn’t quite
right, it’s more that you have a signature style! Your style is loud and crazy and as mixed up
as possible. I thought maybe this was a
toddler-hood thing, but as you are growing up I’m seeing that you have many more
opinions about what you wear than Abby ever has! Abby, at nearly age 8, is still totally fine
with me picking out her clothes each day.
Not you baby girl. Most days you
come down from your room, already dressed, and, no matter it’s seasonal
appropriateness, there is no changing your mind! Whatever you pick is what you are going to
wear, and trying to change your mind is a waste of all of our time. So, I just go with it and embrace your style
for what it is…it’s just you! You like
wild colors and there is no such thing as a matching outfit for you. You like to add skirts of just about any
outfit, a headband to top it all off, and let’s not forget that your shoes are
on the wrong feet about 80% of the time!
Favorite Movie: “Spies in Disguise”
Nicknames:
These are
not new by any means, but rather, they are sticking around and likely will for
years to come. You still refer to
yourself as Hiker Hazel whenever it’s time to do something that involves being
strong and powering through. And,
anytime I say it’s time to pick up, you remind me that you are “my best
cleaner”, which, honestly, is still true!
- Franny
- Hiker
Hazel
- Tootsie
- “My best
cleaner” – I’m certain someday you’ll have a Cinderella complex because
sometimes when I negotiate with Abby that she can do X if she does Y, you are
quick to ask what you can do to do the same.
Since you aren’t quite reading on your own, and oftentimes I’m
encouraging Abby to read for a while, I put you on cleaning your room. While you are by far the best at focused
cleaning, you are also the messy pack rat of the family and your room could
ALWAYS use a little clean up.
A sweet story about you: When I was little, a neighbor told Joey and I, that
if you could shake salt on a bunny’s tail, it would stand still and you could
catch it. In a moment of genius
remembered this story earlier this summer and told it to you. Well, sweet girl, you believe it 100%...with
your whole being. And, now, since that
day, you are out in the yard chasing bunnies each and every single day. I admire your tenacity. Most days whenever you wake up (sometimes 5
am, sometimes 7….but most days around 6:30), the first thing you do is come
into our room to ask me if you can go catch bunnies. You want to do it as soon as we get home, and
before you go to bed (it’s quite the delay tactic). I ended up getting you your own shaker of
salt after you went through my entire shaker of salt in one evening.
Little did I know when I told you
that story that this would be the obsession of the summer! Dare I say that I even looked into a rabbit
hutch and the possibility of getting you girls’ rabbits. The jury is still out on that front. I have some more research to do, but at least
for now, you are 100% obsessed with the idea of catching (and then keeping)
your own rabbit right from our back yard.
So, sweet girl, I hope that your birthday is everything you'd hoped it would be and if there is one thing I know for sure, it's that we are going to make a lot of memories together in the coming year. Here's to being five sweet Hazel girl.
