Dear Maren,
Happy 6th birthday. You’ve had such a special year that it’s hard to be anything but thankful for where you are today.
You started kindergarten in August and have absolutely
soared. A friend to everybody and adored by your entire class, your teacher
said that you’re unequivocally the leader amongst your peers. You’re reading, working ahead in
math, and pulled out of regular instruction to head to enrichment where you
really shine. Your birthday party is coming up and you wanted to invite about a
million friends. It makes me happy that you feel so loved by so many kids all
around you.
Our bedtime routine has gotten so fun, flying through
different book series that you just can’t get enough of. We finished Dory
Fantasmagory, Junie B Jones, and are working our way through Pippi
Longstocking, all of which make us laugh and laugh. I wasn’t sure a 5-year-old
was ready for chapter books, but you are so engaged and ask so many pointed
questions along the way—you never don’t surprise me.
You finished out several years of going to the Little Gym, moving ahead now to a real gymnastics class. Soccer is your favorite, though, playing on a team of your friends and following fully in your brothers’ footsteps. Your happiest place is still being outside in our neighborhood with all of the little girls that are like your sisters, mixing mud and leaves in pots and riding scooters around together. You play for hours until it’s dark outside in rain or shine. Whenever you’re in your imaginary lands far far away, you call yourself Mary, always telling me that I should have named you that.
You’re losing teeth left and right, with all 4 of your front teeth now gone. One you knocked out in the snow while sledding and said you’d find it in the spring.
Within our family you are still closest with August, who has all of the tolerance and patience in the world. Oskar and you continue to butt heads, both as stubborn as they come. You also fight with Hobbes-the-dog since you’re both the same age (in dog years) and some days it’s quite obvious I have two kindergartners under my roof.
You’ve graduated from Peppa Pig and Paw Patrol to Super Kitties and K-Pop Demon Hunters, putting on solo performances of their biggest songs in a head-to-toe costume you wished for every day until it materialized.
We went to the Dominican Republic, Italy, and Finland in your 5th year, with Mexico, Switzerland, and Finland on the docket for the next. You love a vacation and are such a good traveler. There’s nothing cuter than a little girl with a huge bookbag, on her way to see the world.
It’s been a hard and heavy year to explain what’s going on politically. This presidency has been so difficult to parent through. You understand more than you probably should and are an outspoken advocate, wise beyond your years.
For your birthday, you want a unicorn pancake breakfast, to leave school just one hour early to make sure you get your crown and allotted birthday attention first, and then to celebrate the day away by going shopping, opening presents, and eating all of your favorite foods.
I think the hardest thing to describe on paper is how funny and witty your personality is. You miss absolutely nothing. I wish I could memorialize it forever right here and try to do justice the jokes, the one-off comments, the stories we tell about you all the time. You’re magnetic. May you always be this bold, this brazen, this confident. The world needs you.
Happy 6 years to our beautiful baby girl. Like you say at bedtime, “I love you to the biggest number in the world even though I obviously know there isn’t one of those.”
Love, Mama
