nine

I'm not sure what you all do when you have a sick day, but this is what we do.

We read on the couch before breakfast. 

With hot chocolate, when it doesn't interfere with the patient's recovery. 

Breakfast is plain toast, which the patient would eat everyday if allowed. 

Then we pull out every single toy that hasn't been played with in months (sometimes years), 

spread them across the living room, 

and have an epic hours-long playtime encompassing characters and activities from endless literary and film sources. 

We return to the couch and fuzzy blanket occasionally for a short nap or a cuddle. 

We retire to our room to create handmade party invitations for one's upcoming birthday. 

We pull out old comic books from yours truly's stash from college and ask what the difference between hypothetically and literally is. 

Then we decide to finally recreate our favourite page from Calvin and Hobbes which we've been talking about doing for months and just never get around to.

My personal favourite is the top right corner.

Those photos above? Encompass only a tiny portion of the personality and person my Sweetpea is becoming.

Today she is nine. She is filled with curiousity, sass, crazy dance moves, deep compassion, a blithe avoidance of anything chore related, more math skills than I possessed in the whole of my school career, a desire to share every thought in her head with every person she encounters whether they are listening or not, a stick-with-it-ness that recently found her picking out the tune to Chariots of Fire on the piano without sheet music after only two months of lessons, optimistic assumptions that if she asks me questions about atoms she will get an answer (I pass these on to English hubby), and best of all - a willingness to love and accept love and feel every emotion to her core. 

I am her willing student.

Note from Sweetpea:  She gave her permission to share these photos as long as you know that's not what she really looks like and that it was a tribute to her current favourite character.