Faery chatter

When did she grow into such a little lady?

Blissing out on ice cream.

We've had some wonderful chats recently.

Walking home from school the other day (like most kids, the Faery has been asking for a puppy since, well, forever):

"Mum, why do people let their dogs poo on the street, and not clean it?"

"Well, I think it's because they're lazy."

"Dog poo is gross."

"Yep, sure is. But that's part of having a dog. When you have a dog, it has to be walked, and its poo has to be cleaned up. It's like with babies - they do lots of poos, and even though it's gross, it still has to be cleaned up. It wouldn't be right to just leave it. The same with dogs - it's the right thing to pick up their poo, even if it's really disgusting and we don't like doing it. If someone doesn't want to do that, then they're not really ready for the responsibility of having a dog."

"Well then" - her eyes widening for emphasis - "I am definitely not ready to have a dog yet!"

"Neither am I. Or Dad. Miss Pie isn't toilet-trained yet, so we already have lots of poo to clean up every day. And there's also Emily's cat litter. We feel we have enough poo in our lives at the moment."

"Wow, that sure is a lot of poo!"

Her mature acceptance that now isn't the best time to get a dog left me gobsmacked. The days where I think I'm too hard on her, and expect too much from her - she's not even six yet - are often flipped over by the moments when I realise I don't give her enough credit for what she's capable of understanding. 

Also, I love that we can have entire conversations about poo. She may be stretching taller and getting wiser, but she loves nothing more than good old fart humour. It's in her DNA.

Compared to her sister, she was born with an old soul; always taking everything in, observing, analysing, questioning, pondering. Despite this, I don't want her to grow up. There's still such a precious innocence in her - more than I see in a lot of other girls her age. I want to protect that, because her little spirit bruises easily.

She has a school project to be finished at home this week. It's a poster, titled All About Me, with various areas to write in, draw, and decorate. I've never seen her get so excited about a project, and she insisted on doing it all in one afternoon. After completing each section, she had to explain everything to me in painstaking detail. Permission to talk about herself? Who knew she had so much to say? I mean, we ask her questions all the time, but she seemed to relish this even more.

We had a few bumps. When it came to spelling certain words, she was adamant about doing it the American way - fair enough. She had to write how tall she was, resulting in the tape measure coming out, then me panicking at which way to express it. Obviously, metric was out, and inches in... but should we use feet, or just inches? This is when I realised I had no idea where to put the " ...after feet? Or after inches? No idea, so just inches were used (46, to be exact).

She was required to cut and paste pictures of her favourite things from magazines, but my recent spring clean left her with very little material to work with. She didn't care though - as long as there were butterflies and chocolate, all was good.

Her finished effort made J and I a little teary-eyed. It's a glimpse into the soul of our gorgeous girl, and something I wish I could freeze in time.

Oh, to be that age again.