Amelia Grows And Grows

Amelia is consistent. She is constant. She is involved. She is thinking. She is experimenting.

Amelia looks at her world and sees it as an opportunity to mold and create and move.

She observes minuscule bugs marching through the sand and reports on their activity.

She watches spiders prepare to catch their prey and move through their meal.

She collects her eggs and knows which bird laid them and why they have their bumps and why they are enormous or miniscule.

She plants succulents and ferns and bulbs and trees and veggies and herbs. Lots of them.

She worked for months to get an avocado seed to sprout. After failing and failing, she kept trying. She has two avocado seeds sprouting.

She sees personality in mother hens, in bossy roosters, and in awkward pullets and gives them names and calls them their meals. She calls chickens and they come. And then she hand picks the finest ones she’s raised to eat and helps process them. 

She takes pruned vines and twists them into baskets.

She weaves grasses and yarn and straw.

She makes dies from flowers, ashes, rocks, dirt, grass, sand, eggs shells, or pinecones, or beet leaves and draws and writes and paints.

She sketches the birds from her window. She sketches hummingbirds.

She twists wire into bird shapes and hangs it from a chain to wear. 

She bunches together beet leaves, fern branches, rye grass, flowers, and bush branches into arrangements.

She wakes up and mumbles to the table to work through her math.

She thinks about foods that might go together — frozen mango, cilantro, lime juice, and a sprinkle of sugar for her snack.

She helps Hannah when I can’t.

She thinks about ways to include William

She climbs a tree anytime anywhere anyway.

She writes stories, takes pictures, writes letters, molds clay, builds forts, jumps on the trampoline — and wants to know why she is tired.

She sings and laughs and talks and sings again. 

She is real.

She reads a story in one sitting - if we let her — and then asks for another one and another and another.

She is content. She curls into bed at night. Content. Because she has utilized the day. All the crevices and folds and moments have been exhausted with activity and thought and learning and laughter. 

She grows, like her plants with pace and life and reaching towards the light.