What's So Great About Maria

What's so great about Maria, you want to know?  Okay, I'll tell you:

• She is very articulate.  Even if she doesn't know the word for something, she will try so mightily to get her point across that you might think her head will blow off.  It's not lost on me, the gift of her talking so much to me.  I understand how wonderful it is, even if it sometimes makes me crazy.  And it doesn't even make me crazy too much anymore because she is a Great Communicator, she knows so many words and she has never forgotten one thing in her life.  She might not remember a word exactly right, but she gets really close most of the time, unlike another Beck girl I know.  Ahem.  
• She is physically so strong.  She never gets tired.  That's something that I always forget about kids, they are just not lazy.  She will run and play allll day if I let her.  
• She loves books, loves to read.
• She writes really well!  She asks me all the time how something is spelled (Happy Summer, Happy Father's Day) and I tell her and letter by letter she writes it out.  Her handwriting is really good and I don't know but it seems like four is a good age for that.  
• She is always trying to figure out the rules.  We'll have friends over one day and I'll tell her to offer her guests something first, I'll tell her ONE time, and then next time we have friends over, she'll remind Veronica, WE OFFER OUR GUESTS-EST THINGS FIRST, VEEVSY!
• She is so loud.  So, so loud.  I could never lose her.  
• She mostly wakes up in a really good mood.  
• She doesn't miss a trick.  She makes me be really honest with her because I have a feeling she'd see right through me.  
• She has a good sense of humor.  I can usually chuckle her out of a bad mood. 
• Ever since my mom took her to get her hair cut, it is gorgeous.  It really bounces and behaves and almost has a little curl to it. 
• She is much, much MUCH better in church than Veronica.  
• What else - gorgeous, smart, good hair, athletic, she's perfect, I guess!  

This Time Next Year

This time next year I will be getting Maria ready to start Kindergarten.  Honest to God, if I could make a deal and go to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow and have it BE next year, that would be fine with me.  I feel I have spent a lot of time with pre-school Maria and now I think it's time to spend time with SCHOOL AGED Maria.  But, alas, alack, I can't, she is still not even going back to preschool for three more weeks.

She is driving me crazy lately, she wants me to text my neighbor every second of the day but I feel for her.  She just wants to be busy and it's boring, I suppose, to stay here and be quiet while the baby naps. But TOO BAD.  It's boring for me, too, but that's life!

August

What an entertaining blog, where once a month I say what month it is and that I don't know if we'll survive it with sweet Maria.  I can't help it!  I can't know how to stop it, to quote Maria.

Three weeks from Monday she'll start school.  THREE WEEKS.  The other day, Maria's friend Paige stopped by to see if she wanted to go to Charles E. Cheese, but at the same time, Maria's friend Lorelei, our neighbor, came out of her house.  Maria ran out to Lorelei, who she is always DYING to see, and then I called her back and said come play with Paige, who you were just screamingly excited about seeing!  It was hard for Maria, she is just four years old, and she had TWO FRIENDS THERE and she DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH ALL HER EXCITEMENT.  Eventually, she went to CEC with Paige and Lorelei and her brothers hung out here with me and Veronica.

Anyways, the next day I told her that I got her class list for school and, great news, Paige and Tal are both going to be in your class.  Tal is a boy who was in her class last year.  I thought (because I am an idiot) that I could tell her something was going to happen in the FALL, as she calls it, and it would sate her, make her happy for a minute or two.  As usual, and for always, I was wrong.  She started flipping out, saying 'PAIGE AND TAL ARE HERE?  THEY'RE COMING OVER?  WE'RE GOING TO CHUCKY CHEESE?".  I mean, my head was spinning, I was all, what in the what now?  NO!  I am talking about school!  They are going to be in your class?  SCHOOL STARTS TOMORROW MOMMY?  LORELEI IS GOING TO MY SCHOOL TOO?  She is crazy.  But she is crazy like a FOX, too, she pretends that if she says things are one way, that's how they'll be!  Then I end up feeling guilty that, that, I don't know, that I can't make it be the end of August?  That I don't take her to Chuck E. Cheese every day?

You know, I had a fun childhood.  We had great birthday parties and we played out in the yard a lot.  We had a playroom and we read a lot of books.  My mother didn't take me THREE PLACES A DAY and I feel like she would have laughed in my face, or done SOMETHING to my face, if I ordred her around!  Yet I worry all the time that I am not doing enough for Maria.  She has me, in short, right where she wants me.