Happy Birthday, Eva Daisy!

Dear Eva,

I'm typing this on the last day of your third year of life, while you sing and read/fling library books upstairs during "quiet time." What an enormous year this has been for you-- you grew into your role as a big sister, you started preschool, you stopped going to the nursery at church and started a combination of Sunday School and sitting in the service with us, and you've begun to draw things with little stick arms and legs and smiles. You specialize in jellyfish.

You love to dress up, read and be read to, and sing and listen to music. Every morning when I fix your hair, you insist I say "Welcome to my beauty parlor!" and tell you a story while I comb and style. The playroom is still your domain, although you're learning to share it with Silas, who is increasingly enamored of your toys and general presence. Just lately you've started kissing him on the head for no reason, or trying to make him laugh, which fulfills the whole Hallmark stereotype of why people give children siblings to begin with, I suspect.



Your favorite foods are sour cream, broccoli with lemon juice, and pretty much any kind of dessert item. A tiny bit of your baby language lingers on when you call oatmeal "me-meal." I will never, ever correct you when you say that.



You love Fancy Nancy, Pinkalicious, the Yoko books by Rosemary Wells, and things you perceive to be the domain of "teenagers," like loud colors or makeup. You also like things with a little bit of an edge, like scary pictures, camouflage snow boots, and Bakugan toothpaste. You're developing a social life, too. Your best friend is named Lily, you love to play with Lindsay, Dia, Jack, and Evan at preschool, and your cousins Will and Joe are always on your lists of favorite people.



Basically, you're awesome. Everyone confirms it.

Happy fourth birthday, sweet Eva!