Margaret is Five!!

My darling girl turned 5 last week. I really can't believe how quickly the time has gone since she was born. I can so vividly remember that ride home from the hospital, and the sheer terror of knowing that we were completely responsible for the tiniest, loudest person I had ever known. Those first few weeks were crazy, with my total exhaustion from surgery, the helplessness I felt upon finding that I had exactly one tool to solve her crying fits, and sometimes that didn't work, and the total loss of our previous life as friends brought over gifts and sat for awhile while I had no conversation except to recite the number of times she had eaten or pooped. I'm sure my pajamas-at-4pm attire and deer-in-the-headlights look was enough to scare of legions of visitors, so kudos to my friends for continuing to show up! Here we are, 20 hours after she was born. Wes and I managed to survive that year, and the 4 subsequent ones. Now Margaret has become a Daddy's girl (finally!) and a bit of a daredevil. She doesn't fear heights or dangerous configurations of swings and ropes, even after breaking her arm a year ago. She loves to write and is learning to read. She is very opinionated, and I'm not sure I'll ever discover the secret to getting her to try new things. She is painfully shy with new people, but with friends she knows well, she is a beloved leader who loves to make up new games to play. She has a memory like I've never seen, and will consider things she's seen or heard and months or years later, she'll ask about them again. She loves to draw, and is pretty good if I may say so. She loves to dig in the dirt and gets her dresses dirty. She loves dolls of all kinds, paper dolls, Barbies, and baby dolls. She is very generous to her little brother, often sharing her things with him without being asked to. Her food choices tend to run a bit on the tedious side, with the standard pasta, PB&J, and toast being popular options, but she also loves canteloupe, apples, peaches, grapes, broccoli, edamame, chili, and sometimes (if we don't make a big fuss) she will eat brussels sprouts. I suspect that she'll become a vegetarian in high school, since she eats so little meat now, especially compared to her carnivore brother. She loves to bake with me, and we have cranked out cookies, cakes, soft pretzels, breads, and a myriad of other delicious treats. She is always developing some contraption or other, so I have to keep an eye out that she doesn't accidentally strangle her brother or herself on one of her projects.

She is in preschool full time this year, and I really miss not knowing what is going on with her for so many hours a day. When I ask about her day, she usually responds with "I forgot" even though she can remember what I was wearing on her last birthday. Every day she has a different best friend, and she can't understand the boy who thinks that boys only play with boys, because that's just not true.
Here she is at the birthday party we had at the house, with 21 (!!!) kids in attendance. The kids ran around the yard, played on the swingset, trapeze and slide, and covered themselves in sand in the sandbox.

I adore her. She's got such spunk, and I am really enjoying watching her become her own person.