Happy Birthday, Miss Flower!

Cub came to visit us in the hospital, 8 years ago, just hours after Flower had been born. He marched his little 3 year old self into the room and looked at me, holding her. "Whose baby is that?" he demanded.
"Ours."
"Where'd you get it?"
"From my tummy."
"Do we get to keep it?"
His big question for the rest of the year was, "Is she awake? Are her eyes open?" (this question was always accompanied by his poking her in the eye).
He left countless action figures (his prized possessions) in her bassinet, "in case she wants to play."
Then she started crawling and actually acquiring his action figures on her own and the blissful year of sibling love morphed into a state of irritation.

Miss. Flower  was our "tie-breaker baby" and when she was born several of the nurses (our CNM had invited the maternity ward nursing staff to witness a natural birth since none of them had) shouted, "The girls won!" Small town living squeezes the excitement out of every opportunity.

As the youngest of 5 opinionated children, one might think that Flower would be quiet and unassuming, a little wall flower. Au contrair. She is just as bossy and opinionated as every one else. She loves to clean and put things right, organize and manage and she'll be happy to direct you to the correct way to arrange things. She clearly has gifts of administration.

She is also snugly and adorable, with a charming dimple. And she really, truly loves to pick flowers, which she does all the time. Our front porch is constantly full of weeds and pods and flowery-type things that she's drug back from the far corners of the property, and often insects and reptiles as well She went through a short season of capturing flies and grasshoppers and pulling off their wings and legs, in order to "keep them as pets." We finally convinced her that she was torturing them. 

She lives to find someone to "take a walk down to the river"with her, loves to swing through trees and eat mulberries out of them in the spring, happily plays in the decrepit barn for hours and can never have enough play time with other little girls. She would rather play Barbies and Polly Pockets, but puts up with hours of Bionicle and Lego play just so that Cub will hang out with her. This doesn't always work out so well as he considers a game well played when everyone is blown to smithereens and dead at the end. This is the equivalent of a catastrophe for Flower.

She kind and generous and inquisitive and loves, loves, loves math and science and numbers and drawing and coloring and reading not so much. But let her count, oh baby. And she would really, really like to be on stage, can sing countless songs and has a wide repertoire of stories to tell. Modified clone child of our oldest.

She is herself. Demanding and little and shy and outgoing and confident and kind and generous and thoughtful.

She is a beautiful and sweet blessing.

Happy Birthday, to our Girl!