Another birthday is here and you are a WHOLE hand full of fingers. And Nan, you are nothing if not WHOLEY yourself, at all times. This year was another year of reminding us that your presence is always felt. When Blythe saw your birthday pictures she said, "Man! She has a lot of emotions!" And that is the perfect way to describe you :)
Your fourth year of life started in a strange way-- at home, isolated, celebrating small as the coronavirus swept the country. But you didn't miss a beat. You relished the time home with your sisters and just kept right on truckin'. You'd have questions about it all from time to time, but mostly, you just trusted that you were safe here with your family. And that is how you have usually been about stuff-- giving yourself freely into what is right in front of you. So if what was right in front of you had to just be time at home with your family, you embraced it. You also loved the extra time it meant with our neighbors, latching on to them and coercing them to play limitless games of hide-and-go-seek or crack the egg on the trampoline. You had those teenagers pushing you on the swing and giving you rides in the golf cart, and while it's to their credit because they are great kids, it also says something about your tenacity in relationships.
Tenacious. That's a good word for you. I just looked up the definition and yes, it definitely describes you at this age: persistent determination; tending to keep a firm hold of something; not readily relinquishing a position, principle, or course of action; determined. not easily dispelled. Whew, does that describe you, Nanny Lou! Underneath this definition someone online asked, "Is tenacious good or bad?" And I get that questions-- tenacity could lead to ostracizing people, only focusing on your position or what you are fighting for. But you tend to someone bring other people into your tenaciousness, wrapping us into what you are holding onto in a way that brings us into the thing with you. I pray that this is always the case-- that you bring people into your passions in a way that is passionate, but doesn't forget the relationships in front of you. And I pray that what you are passionate about is the Kingdom of God.
This tenacious spirit in you, mixed with the fact you are still in need of a lot of help, can be exhausting as a parent, though. There are many times I am completely spent when it is time to tuck you into bed at night. Your emotions are big, too, and so I will have spent all day riding the wave of your highs and lows, never quite knowing what's around the bend. I think being willing to express your emotions is a good thing, though. And express you do! Like I said last year, you can still go from laughing to crying to somewhere in between. Many time a day you have to push your glasses up on your head and wipe at your face because you have "cries" in your glasses.
One scary thing that happened this year was shortly after you had turned four. I was sitting on the porch and you were playing in the hammocks with your sisters. I heard you crying which, due to how intensely you feel everything, didn't make me worry too much right away. I thought maybe one of your sisters had hurt your feelings or you were frustrated because you couldn't get into the hammock or some combination of all of the above. But as I reached you I realized something was wrong-- you had fallen out of the hammock mouth-first into the stool you had moved over to help you get in and out. At first I thought you had bit your tongue or cheek, but upon further inspection I saw your teeth totally pushed back! I called our dentist right away and, since he is not a pediatric dentist, he referred us to another office. It was the SECOND DAY that dentist offices were open again after the covid shut down, and I was so grateful. We made an appointment that afternoon and then made the decision to totally extract the two affected teeth. You took it like a champ, didn't even cry when they pulled them, and only cried when we got to the car and you saw the blood on the gauze in your mouth. You won't have teeth for years, but we've all gotten used to your toothless grin!
One thing that never ceases to make us laugh right now is how you get so many opposite things just not quite right. For example, you'll say, "I'm REALLY hot! I'm FREEZING hot!" You ask us to "buckle you up" when you mean unbuckle. You get frustrated when you can't get your shirt "outside in!" I could write for days on the funny things you say, but some of my favorites this year have included: "Baby Sloan! You got snort on me!" or "What if a horse could bite you in a language?" At least once a week you tell me something is "all junked up." You call syrup "syrlup", the bank safe is the "bank saver", wrinkles are "crinkles". Once I asked why you were so cute, thinking it was a rhetorical question, but I should have known there are no such things with you. You responded: "Because I have puffy cheeks and straight eye balls and not crinkles!" One day we were coloring and you said, "Mom, why is my name 'Weeze'?" I told you it was "LOUISE, after Nini." As if you were hearing it correctly for the first time in your life, you said, "Ohhh. LA-weeze. Oh good." Christmas night I asked if you had a good day, and you said "No. It was SO much work to unwrap everything. My hands were doing so much work." You've never been afraid to tell it like it is. I asked you what you wanted for your birthday and you said, "I want to be a mom so I could charge everybody." [Be in charge]. You told me the park has swings for 4 year old and 5 year olds and 6 years olds..."but not for dad-year-olds and mom-year-olds." Oh Nan. You never cease to make us laugh AND get your point across.
We have sporadically done preschool. I won't lie-- I have been way less organized or intentional about it than in years past, but it worked for us. We did stuff when we could, you baked with me, we counted and read a lot, and you can identify your numbers and letters and you're ready for kindergarten so I think it all worked out :). I think that overtime I have just realized more and more that you're home for such a short amount of time, that tromping through mud puddles with your brother is more important at age 4 than me trying to teach you how to graph colored fruit loops. But you do love any time we do something even sort of school adjacent, and don't even get me started about how much you love your nature days with Papa. He is always so good about having it planned, and now even includes a little "homework" for you-- a coloring sheet of an animal he has drawn with a few questions for you to answer [i.e. what color are bison when they are born? etc]. But let's be honest, of all of your sisters you are the least interested in the education and are just in it for the time with Papa and Casey's slushies. Which is okay in my book! You are very excited about starting Kindergarten next year though, and asked within moments of waking up on your birthday if you got to go to school that day since you were now five. We have been prepping you for calling Stacy "Mrs. Blythe" while you're at school, and you've vacillated between "I think I'll just call her Stacy" and questioning why it's "Mrs. BLYTHE" and not "Mrs. NAN... Why is she named after Blythe?" I guess all of that is still a little confusing to a five year old.
One big thing happened in the last several months and that is that Becks got to move into your room with you. Except for a few months when Sloan was first born, you haven't shared a room with anyone. You don't remember sharing with both your sisters when we were at the old house, and you always have felt slightly left out that Blythe and Becks have been able to share a room-- so we decided it was a good time. You and Becks had been bickering a lot, and instead of giving you more space we decided forcing you together would be the best way to resolve that ;). You were thrilled out of your mind, and while it has taken some adjusting for you to just stop talking and go to sleep with someone else in the room, you are soaking up having Becks with you. After only a few months we are seeing your relationship grow, as well.
Nan, you still have a great fire in you. Your dad and I feel like it is constantly our job to make sure it doesn't burn outside its boundaries. You feel FIRST and process second, which is not how I operate so it has been a learning curve for me to parent you through that. But ultimately you have a wide open heart for life and the people in your life. You live with your arms wide open to whatever may be happening, and this is a gift. You've asked me a lot lately about how God can be inside of us, and I can tell you're trying to process and figure out these bigger truths about this great God we love. I pray your curiosity and questions lead further and further into His heart and His great love for you.
You love your siblings, and movie night, and working puzzles with Dianna, and reading books, and drawing. You love baking with Nana and having PopPop push you on the swing. You love any project Nini creates for you and being outside, chasing our neighbors' cats. You still nap a few days a week--hard-- and still run into walls and doors from time to time because you're going a direction before you think to look! You love snacks and noodles, horses and unicorns. There is something unique about you, Nan; something untethered inside you that others can feel. We pray that you don't lose this spirit, but that you would also one day soon invite THE Spirit to live inside you as well, to love you and guide you and grab the reigns inside of you. Not to harness you or bridle you, but teach you how to harness and bridle the wild inside for His good and His glory. When I look on a field and see what wildflowers can do when we let them grow and spread, it is an awe-inspiring sight to behold. And that is what the Spirit in your can do with your wild-- He can help it grow and spread into a beautiful display of vibrancy.
As I have ended all birthday letters, I want to end this one to you, sweet Nanny Lou: We hope you understand the why behind our no-s. We hope you feel safe in the boundaries we set. We hope you feel freedom in the wide open places we leave for you. We hope you see God in our actions and in our words. We hope when you leave our little home for good and go out on your own that you'll look back on this simple little life we had together-- chaos and mistakes and messes and all-- and see that it was Grace that held us together; that you see that it was God's daily bread that provided it all.
We love you, Nan Louise. There is nothing you could ever do that would make us stop loving you.
