All growing-up!

Tonight Hannah and I sat down to go through the rest of her birthday toys from this weekend. I have been pacing her so that there was no huge influx of toys in my house. We need time for these new things to overtake our home gradually!

Hannah loves all her toys but her favorite of the night is a Disney Princess Purse complete with pretend make-up, car keys, cell phone, and various other princess necessities. With three boys at our house all week long (the Richards are here from Tucson and we have loved their visit!) Hannah has not really had a lot of "girlie time" to play with everything she wants to play with in peace. Since all the boys went to bed early she has had free reign tonight!

Her favorite game of the night has been to walk around the house with her shopping bag (a birthday sack), her purse, and an old pocket planner that she calls her "shopping list" and purchase things from us. "I need to give you my moneys," she says as she has you swipe her credit card. She has now successfully re-acquired all of her new birthday presents by "purchasing" them from us. She cracks me up!

One of her newly reclaimed birthday presents is a set of clip-on earrings and a princess crown. After clipping her earrings on, my baby girl looked about 8 years old. It just about broke my heart. She cannot be growing up this fast. I sent her over to Chris to show Daddy her earrings. He, of course, said that the earrings made his little girl looked so grown up. Hannah responded by saying, "Daddy, I'm still growing up!"

I never thought that it would take my growing-up child to remind me that she still has growing-up to do and is not as big as she seems sometimes. When things do get stressful or irritating around the house it gets very easy to wish my life away; hoping for a day that things will go better or everyone will behave properly. It is my goal to stop and take mental pictures and to make the memories. After all, the memories will be all I have to hold onto after my baby is all grown-up.