JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Michaela in the middle. Our dear three-year-old daughter, I fear, sometimes suffers from being #2 in a family of 3. Big Sister’s getting lots of attention for being the pioneer of the family, breaking ground, doing all the new things first, like reading, writing and dancing. While Baby Sister’s also doing a lot of Firsts, walking and talking. She’s pretty exciting too.

Michaela though holds her own ground there as the middle child. For a day or two, she was talking a lot about “the whole wide world”. She woke in the morning and said “Mercy and glory to the whole wide world” and she repeated the phrase again and again. The phrase “the whole wide world” makes me think of Michaela. How she loves life. Everything is an adventure and she enjoys sharing her joy.

When I take her in the pool, she has a natural buoyancy, Holding on to me, while wearing her turtle pack, she can begin to float on her own, extending arms and legs into the water. When we go in the lazy river area, with the strong current pushing us, she is almost able to swim on her own – and she knows it, telling me excitedly “I can float by myself”. Together we dance in the water, like the skaters we watch on TV: I hold her and spin her through the blue.

Or maybe WWW would mean wide-eyed wiggly wonder:
Michaela’s got wide eyes. Happy eyes. Eyes eager to eat up life.

Or maybe just Wiggly Wiggly Wiggly. Michaela loves to move. Unlike big sister, she’s had a harder time learning to sit still. There’s always something she wants to touch and explore. Even in my lap, she likes to move around to keep getting comfortable.

She’s energetic and enthusiastic. Michaela will hop or jump rather than walk. I think her goal in life is to be a grown up so she can bounce on her bed!

The other day she cut me a piece of paper and brought it to me. To me it has a random shape, like an arc with bridges. To Michaela it was a “wiggle”. She told me to hold it and watch it wiggle!

One afternoon this week, Michaela was in her prime. She put on a purple bandana, cocked on her head just so. Then she went through her sticker collection and decorated her toes, fingers and hands.

“I’m all dressed in stickers” she exclaimed “with the perfect hat!” proud of her bandana. In her T-shirt and jeans, bandana askew, she reminded me of sixties and seventies style. The world stickers on her fingers only seemed to emphasize this resemblance.

Easily the family extrovert, although she can be shy around strangers, Michaela is a three year old ball of fun, chatting away, constant conversation…

“How did you know I wanted a food set?” she has asked me many times since opening her Christmas gift.

Between bites of banana at breakfast she sings “Rejoice! Rejoice!”

“That makes me snuggly”

Talking about making a card for her grandmother, she says, “I’m going to make her something she’s never seen before.”

“Why does the computer go to sleep?” she asked me.
“Why do you go to sleep?” I returned.
“Oh, it’s bedtime. It goes to sleep at bedtime just like we go to sleep when its our bedtime.”

She’s modest:
“I folded the diapers better than you.”
“Sometimes I say funny things.”
And she’s also right.

My favorite though is: “We want you to be a kid.”
For you, Michaela, I’ll try….