Stop Growing Up!

(It's that time of year! My annual letter to my daughter on her birthday...)

Happy 5th birthday Miss Bean! Or as you call yourself, “Sunshine Sparkles!” followed with hands in the air.
Where has the time gone? How can you be 5 already when it seems as if you were just born a year or two ago?


Just a few things you did this past year that I’m going to remember forever:

• Telling your preschool friends and random strangers that I got into a fight with a chicken, that’s how I got chicken pox.
• Announcing to the crowd at preschool graduation that you don’t want to be a ballerina when you grow up because you want to be a dolphin instead.
• Your imaginary sisters Sauna and Nana now live at Disney World and we MUST go visit them every weekend because it's their birthday again.
• On the way home from preschool telling me you got married to Marcus at school because he can breakdance. And then me explaining for an hour why you can’t date until your married.
• Learning about Baseball at preschool and then begging to go to a game really bad. When we had gone you said, “Daddy, this is really boring, why don’t they do anything!” Yes, you are truly my daughter.

Your favorite things at this moment:

• Everything about your baby brother, especially his farts which seems to go on forever.
• Going to the movie theater to watch 3D movies and then half-way through asking me to put in a different DVD.
  
• Tea Parties with your stuffed animals in your restaurant and then asking some animals to leave for misbehaving or bad manners.
• Excitement over starting Kindergarten in the Fall and meeting “even more” friends.
• Making up all sorts of crafts and art projects, and making up your own songs and lyrics.
• Ballet dancing to Disco. Preferably to the Bee-Gee’s.
• Playing Wii together and actually getting good at it.
• Eating at restaurants, especially Souplantation (still!)
• Swimming and spending a lot of time at the pool this summer. I suspect this is training to be a dolphin.
  

On the morning of your birthday I’m always going to remember the first thing you said to your mother and I while running into our room “when I was sleeping, I felt my body growing so I can be 5-years old!”
I’m going to miss the fun we had together at 4, but I’m looking forward to what new memories we’ll make together when your 5.

Love,
Daddy