Happy Birthday, Raya

Dear Raya,

As I sit here late at night, pondering how to conclude the day which we spent celebrating the passage of your FOURTH year of life, I find myself reading the birthday post from last year. I am struck by one particular sentence, which seems as true as last year, if not more so (if that's possible): Your verve, your energy, your unstoppable drive and insatiable curiosity give meaning for me, finally, to the phrase "larger than life." I used to think this was a metaphor, but now I believe it describes certain people literally. You are one of those people, and we are your lucky parents.

I am not sure, my love, that I can say it better than I did on this same day last year. Twelve months have gone by, and you still wake up, every single day, with the "unstoppable drive" that often seems to fuel our entire household. You talk us through the day, and you make us laugh. Often you tire us, and sometimes you drive us crazy. 

Still, about five minutes after you go to bed each night, your dad and I begin to miss you. We talk about what you did and said that day, and we imagine what you are going to do and say the next day. Not infrequently, we remind ourselves to cherish the present, and sometimes one of us says out loud the unsayable, which is that one day, not too long from now, you are going to wake up a teenager. 

Truth be told, in many ways you are already a teenager. You insist on choosing your clothes every single morning, and you spend a good chunk of your four hours at school figuring out how your charisma and knowledge stack up against the charisma and knowledge of others; you bring back detailed reports of who said what, who played with whom, who was not nice under what circumstances, and whose lunch included what. You've been known to adopt the annoying habits of other children whom you like, such as sucking your thumb to appear innocent (one of your boy friends apparently does that), and you will insist on having a cheese stick in your lunch box on Tuesday because on Monday Katie had one in hers.

In other words, you are innately motivated by others, and you are also fiercely competitive. You will ask a child to help you carry a bag, and in the next breath you'll declare, "You carry one side, and I'll be your leader!" In the case of your brother, that sometimes works because he understands your motives, and he rests secure in the knowledge that he is both older and wiser.

In the case of others, you've yet to learn to balance your instinct to initiate with your understanding of people's internal boundaries.

That said, your dad and your brother and I look at you several times each day, and we marvel at the energy with which you approach even the smallest tasks in life. Except when you are physically tired, there is never a moment that something does not interest you. You will invent scenarios of pretend play that involve your dolls or puppets or your brother or friends. You will take a friend to your room, close the door, and talk to her for a full hour without either of you becoming bored. 

You will play board games and, as of late, do puzzles with abandon. You will "write" letters, draw pictures of yourself, listen to books, and eat bread and butter. Whatever the task at hand, you will pour your bubbly soul into it. That "unstoppable drive," the one mentioned this time last year, makes you stand out in the crowd and awes us every single day.

first ice-skating class! 

So, to celebrate all that you are and all that you will be as your enter your fifth (gasp) year of life, we visited--at your request--Happy Hollow Park and Zoo in San Jose, along with your "best friends" Phoebe and Katie and their little brothers.

I think it would be fair to say that this celebration of the day you were born was at least everything you had wished it to be, and very possibly more.

You tried every possible ride, including, for the first time, the roller coaster.

where is Raya? where is Sava?

You ate pizza, jumped in a bouncy castle, and ran around the "crooked house."

When we came home, you had ice cream cake with Phoebe, and then you requested a dinner at the Counter Burger. At bedtime, you read to me for the first time a very simple book, and then I read to you Chapter II of Winnie-the-Pooh In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets Into a Tight Place. You laughed hysterically when I read the part about Pooh asking if anybody is home and Rabbit replying "No!". I love that you get the jokes. I love that you laugh heartily about them.

I love that you are my daughter, and I love that you love to laugh.

I love that when I ask how your day at school went, you pretend not to have heard for a couple of minutes, and then you say casually, Mommy, I had a very good time at school, but I am not going to tell you how it went.

I also love that, at age four, you can answer when I tell you during our first night of camping that you need to go to bed, with the following enviable syntax:
Mommy, not only do I need to go to bed, but I want to go to bed because I am so tired.
This is the same girl who, when I tell her that because she likes to eat cheese and fruit for dessert, she reminds me of French people, and then I ask her if she'd like to be a French girl, replies:
No, I'm going to live in California. And I'm going to be the only girl in California who eats this for dessert!

School picture 2013

Happy Birthday, love. I can't wait to see what your fifth year of life brings.