Harper at eight.

That was a hiatus, that's what that was.

It has been over a month since Harper's birthday. I think the interview was conducted about three weeks ago. Specific dates and holidays are such a chore. Has anyone ever done a study to show that people were actually happier, if not more productive, before we had clocks and calendars? Although their life expectancy was something like 19 years. But I would wager they were happy years. Just running around spearing the wooly mammoths not thinking about whether or not they had remembered to order the finger puppet bald eagle from Amazon in time for it to arrive before the actual birthday. (The bald eagle finger puppet has still not been ordered. Also no wooly mammoths were speared. And my floors are sticky with watermelon juice. What day is it again?)

This girl is now eight years (and one month old):

She was showing me an acorn sprout, uprooted because it was growing where it did not belong.

Here is what I want to remember about my oldest kid on and around her eighth birthday. She defies easy categorization. She has a strong personality. She leads because she usually knows what she wants to do, and if friends or siblings want to join her, they are welcome, as long as they follow her rules, which are incredibly arbitrary and generally made up as she goes. While she is delightfully inquisitive and loves learning about things that she is interested in, she has not been an easy student this year. She would prefer to spend all day reading and drawing and painting and crafting.  She is messy, messy (like her mother).  She loves to swim, as long as she can wear her goggles that cover her nose. She builds excellent blanket forts. She is noisy. She really wishes I would teach her to sew properly (except I don't really know how) so, in the meantime, she takes matters into her own hands. She has a collection of hand-sewn stuffed birds that she would like to sell on etsy for around $1,000 each.

She is tall (not sure how many inches) and slight (48 pounds). Her hair is long and wavy and usually tangled and in her face, though she has, halleluia, recently learned how to actually brush it. She loves to wear her charm bracelet. She rarely loses any of her things. She thinks very highly of her abilities, and occasionally manages to keep her self congratulations to herself. She adores her grandparents (and the new easel she got with their generous birthday gift)

Here is the first painting she did on her easel. She wanted to use her new acrylics, though I think her real talent is in watercolors.

She loathes Explode the Code (but we do it anyway). She has a large gap between her front two teeth (like her mother did). She loves Sasha the dog, and greets her every morning with extravant kisses and "shzuh boo shzuh boo szhuh boo." She loves all of her stuffed animals, in particular her stuffed goldfinch from Mrs. G, her frog Frog E. Dew, her handmade roseate spoonbills, and her Mr. Cardinal. For her birthday, she requested cupcakes festooned with roseate spoonbills. She decorated them herself.

In this picture she was flapping her hands to dry her nail polish (a birthday request) while wearing a pink camo t-shirt (size 4T I believe) while perusing a Star Wars Lego catalog. That sums things up pretty well.

 Let's call it a day. This post took a ridiculous amount of time because I am trying to use the program that supposedly allows me to post pictures from the ipad. Somehow it won't work. Because the internet hates me, obviously.  The goal is to transcribe and post the birthday interview sometime this week.