A Year in Review

The following is the letter I wrote to the princesses' birth parents recounting the past year.  In the letter that goes to them her name and nicknames are actually in it, but I did change it for the sake of the blog. We'll send this along with a dozen or so pictures from the past year.  In the princesses' case neither her birth mom or birth father has asked to read or see the pictures so they all sit in a file cabinet at the agency.  It makes me sad because they have one pretty darn cool kid!

Another year has passed in blur of changes that has us now celebrating the 10^th year of our beautiful daughter.  I do hope that one day you are able to know that the baby you chose to give life to is a remarkable person. 

The princess continues to grow up and up.  She is now 4 7 ½  tall and weighs a skinny 64 pounds.  She seems to have one of those great metabolisms that allow you to eat anything and everything you want and still be skinny as a rail. As you can see in the pictures she is also sporting glasses this year.  In November she could no longer see the board at school so we headed off to the eye doctor and found that she was probably missing a few other things beside the board with her eyesight.  She is already asking how long before she can move to contacts! 

She has decided that she prefers to be called Queen.  This school year she decided that she would begin to sign her papers with the nickname and most of her friends have obliged and now all her teachers call her Queen.  She is starting to develop some consistent and close relationships with friends.  Aubrey and Lauren have become her closest friends and most sleepovers and/or play dates involve one or both of them.

She continues to be in love with all things girl.  She loves going to get her nails done, she can shop until I’m ready to drop, and loves to wear her heels!  She loves to create interesting outfits and enjoys “making” clothes for her dolls.  She loves to accessorize any outfit even her pajamas!

At school she is working hard to learn how to survive in a 4^th/5^th grade combination class.  She continues to excel academically, but it is taking more work on her part now and not coming quite so easy.  She still loves science and math far more than she likes to read, but she is learning to enjoy books more.  She was able to compete this year on the Battle of the Books team.  It was a team made up of 12 students who read 12 books and then compete in an all day competition with 43 elementary school teams.  It was a very positive experience that made this year much better. 

The princess continues to be a very compassionate kind hearted kid.  Unfortunately she is beginning to learn that the world is not made up of all kind people who treat each other fairly.  We are beginning to experience drama among friends at school and she has to learn to stand up for herself, which is good, but hard. 

Her relationship with her brother is very neat to watch.  It certainly has its moments where she acts like the typical sibling, but more often she is playing with him, reading with him, or teaching him.  She loves to play teacher and uses him as her star pupil.  He is very willing to take an order which makes the whole relationship work pretty good!

The princess played her 4^th year of basketball this winter.  However, her season was cut short when she broke her arm at the 3^rd game.  She managed to play the game without getting hurt and then she and a friend got tangled up after the game and she went down wrong.  She is still healing from that and rocking a lime green cast, but she should soon be cast free. Thankfully she has not been deterred from basketball.  She was determined to still practice and dressed and cheered her team on for the games. 

We had lots of adventures in the past year.  She took a road trip with her Dad to visit some of the many places he lived as a kid.  She and I took a trip to Atlanta to visit the American Girl store and enjoy a meal in their Bistro.  We were able to travel as a family to the beach for Thanksgiving.  We spent the summer going back and forth between a local pool and Tweetsie Railroad in the NC mountains. 

The years are moving faster and it seems that the princess is moving past the little girl years way faster than we planned on.  She is moving quickly into those tween years which we know are going to bring a whole new set of normal for us, but we are excited to see how she continues to grow.