Happy 5th Birthday Kenzie!

July 30, 2017

Dear Kenzie,

Happy happy birthday, Sweet Girl! Today you are officially 5 years old! A whole hand! A big girl! I can't believe it. It's so strange to think that when someone asks you now how old you are, you are going to say 5 and hold up an entire hand full of fingers. You are getting ready to go to elementary school aka "big school" and I'm a bit of a mess. To me you are still this 7 pound, 6 ounce baby that we brought home from the hospital terrified that we were going to do something wrong and seriously injure you or something. Five years ago today you entered the world in your truly dramatic fashion and none of that drama has ceased over the last five years.

You have gotten so big. You are seriously tall. I think I say that every time I write you a letter but it remains true. You are around 44.5 inches tall (87th percentile). You weigh around 44 pounds (77th percentile). These were measurements taken by Daddy and me because your 5-year-old wellness check isn't until next week. So, as usual, we may be off. As you get bigger though, our measurements get closer to what the doctor gets because you are more cooperative. If they are right,  you have gained at least 3 inches again in the last year which seems like so much at this age. I'm sure at some point you will slow down... but with how you have been eating lately, I don't know when that will be. You definitely seem to be in another growth spurt. Maybe this time you will put on weight though in lieu of just height. As far as clothing goes, you wear a size 6 usually in shorts and pants though some of those pants are iffy in length depending on the brand as you still have long legs. We still have to find clothes with a tiny waist or adjustable waist to make that fit but you need the length. You wear between a 6 and 8 in shirts and dresses usually or a small to medium. Again, it depends on the brand. Sometimes I can get you into slightly smaller things but that is becoming very rare. You wear a size 10 to 11 shoe (mostly 11 now). Despite your tall stature, you don't have very large feet. I'll take it. Your feet grow slower it seems so it's less buying new shoes. We haven't yet bought tennis shoes for next school year but based on the way your current pair fit you now, I think it is likely that you will actually go to a 12 in those. It just depends on the shoe and how it is made, of course. You still prefer dresses to anything else. You still have this amazing, curly blonde hair. It is definitely darkening some as your tips are far lighter than your roots; however, I think because we spend so much time outdoors, it is remaining lighter than if we were inside more. You have the most amazing natural highlights in your hair, too. The hairdresser that did my hair a few weeks back mentioned it. She said she was jealous and she has people come in all the time wanting their hair to resemble your natural hair. We are going to be taking you to get a trim in the coming weeks in preparation for school but nothing major should be cut off as you are still shooting for "Rapunzel Hair". Your eyes remain super blue. Sometimes they are more of the gray blue like mine and sometimes they are more deep blue but you lean more towards the grayish blue. Yours are bluer than mine though. You have kept your adorable birthmark on the side of your nose and I seriously hope it never fades. You are all legs at this point and you seem to have dropped off all signs of "baby fat" as you are tall and lean. You are some serious muscle too at this point. Sometimes you move just right and I see a full on six pack.  Not surprising with how active you are. You are seriously a monkey and are always hanging on things or climbing. One of your favorite perching places are the arms or back of the couches in the living room. You look like cat lounging there sometimes as you watch TV. Though my favorite part is when you stop paying attention and fall off the arm or whatever onto the floor then bounce up and declare, "I'm okay!" And let's talk about something crazy that happened about 6 weeks ago... you lost your first tooth!!! What the what? That wasn't supposed to happen. Well, it was. But it felt so early. Most kids don't lose their first tooth until closer to 6-years-old but you got your teeth pretty early so this wasn't out of the norm necessarily. You look so cute with your little gap now. You lost a bottom tooth and were so excited when the tooth fairy came to visit you. I can't believe you are losing teeth already! We can now see your permanent tooth starting to come in but it is very slowly making its appearance. It turns out that your permanent teeth do something similar to your baby teeth in that it almost seems like they break through a bit and then sink back down. I don't know if it's just perspective but it looks like that is what happens. It hasn't cut through all the way and remained but we can tell it is coming. It is just taking its sweet time doing so. You ask us everyday to check it and see if we can see your "big girl tooth" yet. So cute. Sometimes I think it might feel as if you other bottom front tooth is loose but if it is, it is minimally so. I don't see you losing that one any time soon but I do think it will be the next to go.

You are so smart. I know I sound biased (and I am) but your little mind constantly amazes me. You rocked preschool and are so ready to tackle kindergarten in the next couple of weeks. You know all your letters and letter sounds. Sometimes you need some help with sounds, but it's rare. We are working on helping you figure out how you can blend those sounds together as that is still a skill you have not mastered. I know it's coming though. You can count to 100 with minimal help. You can count by 10's to 100 and 2's to about 38. You tend to forget 40 as you have some issues with the tens place unless you are counting by 10's otherwise you would go farther. You can add simple numbers and have started to subtract, as well. You get the concept. The numbers just need to remain small enough for you to do mental math or have enough fingers to figure out the problem. You can write your full first and last name. You can spell some simple words without help such as "love", "dad" and "mom". You love to have us read to you. You aren't doing it on your own yet but I figure that we will be having you read to us before too long. You love to rhyme words. You have a serious obsession with space. You know so much about it and are constantly asking questions about it. You love a good rocket launch and want to know all about the specifics when you see one. You have a serious obsession with math and science related things at this point. I'm not sure if that will keep with you but you seem so much like a mini Daddy sometimes. Your reasoning abilities are amazing and we are constantly in awe of what you can figure out and problem solve.

You are still dancing. Going strong and you have come into your own this year. You can remember the dances without help much easier. You still liked having your teacher, Ms. Rebekah there as a crutch but I see you look away and do the dance on your own more and more often. You will have a new teacher for dance this coming year and you are going to take ballet and jazz which you seem very excited about. I'm excited to see how you take to a new style and if you still continue to love ballet above all else or start to shift your focus some. You have been talking about wanting to play soccer this season so we will be talking more about that. We have some concerns with timing of everything since you obviously plan to dance and we have talked with you about joining Daisies (Girl Scouts) this coming year. You love to run and jump. You are constantly showing us "tricks". You love to play outside. You and your brother can play out there all day together. You are pool obsessed. You have finished swimming lessons for the year and you constantly amaze us. You went into it with some nervousness (as you told us) but you did so well! Your still lack some confidence in your skills, but you have the skills. You also love love love the beach. You would live there if we let you. You take off immediately for the water as soon as we enter the beach area (after asking if it is okay if you go alone of course). You like to play in the sand and look for shells but have realized that the water is where the fun is at. You like to have one of us with you, which we are fine with but you love to jump waves and "swim" in the ocean. Despite all of this, you have some fears we have learned. You are generally okay with a lot of things but you express fears over heights and things that are out of your control more. Like going deeper in the ocean without us being attached to you. We think you have finally just come to the point that you realize some things are not in your control and can easily go differently than you plan. I can't blame you for most of it. We try to make you comfortable but encourage you at times to try new things when we can. We have learned to not push you too far though because you will shut down on us. We just try to wait you out and eventually you seem to come around about some things. We will just give you time and see where we end up. I do admit, sometimes we get frustrated with you but we are a work in progress, as are you. We will get there.

You have a memory like an elephant. Seriously. Tell you something once, and you remember it. Or say something in your presence and don't be surprised to see you repeat it back at a random time. That helps in things like science at school. Like I said,  you seem to love science. You remember all sorts of information about space, planets, butterfly life cycles, and weather. You will randomly tell us about things that happened years ago that we had forgotten about until you bring it up. For instance, we were talking about going to Cracker Barrel a few weeks ago. We mentioned that you haven't been there in a while and you informed us that the last time you were there (which was probably a year before), we went with Nana and Papa and Nana gave you a blue flashlight that you still use at home. Um... yeah. That did happen though it took some adult brainpower to remember if that was entirely true. You are also really great at remembering directions. You can tell us how to get to many places without help. You are also good with your left vs right. Thankfully... because I'm terrible at it. You got that skill from your Daddy, for sure. You LOVE to build things with Legos. You not only make the things that the directions tell you to do, but you also like to make random other things and give them names and tell us what they do. Everything you make has a number as an ending in the name. For example, the other day you made something called "The Boat Restaurant Ride Around 4000". Weird kid. Your spatial skills are stellar. I hope you keep that. We have also realized that you have some serious reasoning skills. Your school psych mom is proud. You can use information you are given (or already have) to solve problems without help. The other day we were talking about space and you were informing us about the temperature on some planets. I asked you what was warmer, Venus or Mars. You had to ask for some help in remembering the order of the planets and then told us that Venus was warmer. We asked you why and you told us it was because it is closer to the sun which means it receives more heat from the sun. Um. Yeah. We have moved from you asking all the "why" questions to us asking them to try to stretch you and see what you can figure out.

In addition to a serious amount of sass, you also have entered into the teenager years a bit early it seems. =) You get annoyed with us easily and sometimes slam doors in frustration. You get so irritated if Will wants to play in your room and you aren't into that idea at the moment. You keep trying to lock your door to keep Will out. We are seriously considering turning your doorknob around soon to keep you from doing it, though it's mostly for safety reasons at this point. Despite getting easily irritated with your little brother, you love him more than anything. He bothers you but we see you love on him and try to teach him new (and sometimes not super helpful) new things. When you are in the mood, he can be your best friend. Speaking of friends, you are still wonderful at making new ones. This year at school you seemed to have some kids that were more of your friends than others and when we planned your party this year, you knew immediately who you wanted to invite. You still have no issues walking up to someone new to make friends. You want to make friends with everyone. You are still so very social. We still aren't sure where that came from. You also want to help in any way you can. You love to help people at Publix or Winn Dixie bag the groceries and are so excited when they actually let you help. You want to do things for us to help out but that is usually on your own schedule. If it is your idea, you are gung ho. If it is something we ask you to do, sometimes it takes a bit more "encouragement" for you to do it. You love to help set the table and are getting pretty good at remembering where everything goes without help. You have a set of chores that you are responsible for. In addition to making your bed, cleaning your room, and helping to clean the playroom,  you are supposed to feed the dog (though Will has been taking that job from you a lot lately) and help me do laundry. I fold but you bring laundry in to the laundry room and help move it to the dryer then out of the dryer when it is done. We have recently reassessed your chores list and have added a couple new things because we weren't doing our best making you follow through with some of the other ones so we needed to freshen up the list. You are looking forward to doing chores to earn money each week to give as offering at church. Just last week at VBS we discussed offerings and tithing and you really want to earn some money of your own to give. Those things make our hearts happy. You have such a giving soul and truly have a servant's heart.

You love to eat lately and are really starting to get out of the picky stage some. I say that every time I write you a letter but I'm happy to see you finally moving towards a normal diet instead of the "typical toddler" type one. You still love chicken nuggets, cheese, pancakes, fruit, and hot dogs. You have now found a new love of what you call "Daddy chicken" which is basically any lunch meat and you will eat an actual sandwich without taking it apart. You also have started to enjoy hamburgers (as an actual hamburger and not pulled apart) and have even asked for, and eaten, sliders at a restaurant. You love love love bacon (because you are your Daddy's daughter). You enjoy goldfish, popcorn, cheerios, and chips as treats or snacks. You aren't as huge a sweets eater as some people but you do enjoy a good candy bar or cupcake. You seem to lean more towards salty foods though, similar to me. You are eating more and more veggies with less argument lately and are getting somewhat more willing to try some foods that you would not have touched before. You LOVE juice but we try to limit your intake. You still enjoy a good glass of milk and drink water like it's going to all be taken away from you at any moment.

I think I could seriously sit and talk about how amazing of a little girl you are all day. You are truly a blessing to us. We are so thankful every day that we were chosen to be your parents. You bring joy to everyone you meet. Your smile is infectious and you love to show it off. We love you so much baby girl. You may be a whole hand old now and you may be getting to be a big girl, but you will always be out little baby girl. Happy 5th birthday, Kiddo!

XOXO,
Mommy