Cherish the Moment: Halfway to "adulthood"

Wasn't 12 years old considered adulthood in Bible days? If so, my "baby" is halfway there. Sophia turned 6 two weeks ago! She has changed so much. I'm starting to forget what she was like as a baby and what she looked like as a baby. She was soooo chubby!!! It's hard to imagine now that she's getting so tall and thin.

Here's my baby as a baby...

Here's my baby now...

Sophia is our determined one. She is our natural, born leader, and when she was younger, I used to think that was a bad trait. She could really wear a body down. :) However, the older she is getting, the more I am realizing what a blessing her strong personality is. She is a hard worker and isn't afraid of challenges. She is creative and thinks "outside of the box". She is such a good helper! I am so thankful that the Lord gave her to us first. I need her to help me take care of the boys. :) I hope that she uses her strong personality to stand up for the things that are right as she gets older. Her personality is a blessing, a great big in your face blessing. :)

It's wonderful to have a little girl in the house. She is very girly, and she does have two brothers who she runs and rough-houses with quite often. I like to think of her as both a girly-girl and a tom-boy at the same time. I love that she wants to learn to paint, quilt, and craft,and that she loves bugs, balls, and string. It's fun to be able to do all of these special things with her.

Her latest is that she wants to be an artist. Someone was playing the piano beautifully at church and I leaned over and whispered, "would you like to do that someday". She replied, "no, I'm going to be an artist". Her drawings are getting more detailed and I am so happy that she has been writing sentences and notes to people on her own. I wondered when all of that was teaching was going to click with her (hey, I'm a newbie homeschooler).

As I mentioned before, she loves butterflies, so she wanted a butterfly cake. She wanting to use my house cake pan, so it ended up being a "butterfly house" cake. Last year I let her do a lot of the decorating of her cake by herself so this year I was stuck...she wanted to do it again. Long term, I think her learning to decorate cakes will be a good thing! Here is her smarties encrusted, butterfly adorned, purply (she loves purple), loverly birthday cake.