Duendesday: pre-teen and 8th grade!

{life with a curious and crazy almost 13 yr old}

And so the time has come to say goodbye to ‘child’hood and enter ‘teen’hood for this gal. I’m sad but excited, she’s sad but excited, Josh is scared but excited (ha!). She’s so tall and friendly people expect her to be older but she still has this great sense of sweet youth and wonder. She loves to dance, sing, draw, swim, bake, and make crazy.

Right now, she is mowing the lawn on the rider mower (I think she likes driving all around, even if it does mean it’s technically ‘work’) and tonight she has her school assessment (8th grade! Yes, She passed!!!). I think she is ready, perhaps not as ready as we would like her to be, but she learns in ways we are not used to – different from us in our studious and academic ways. We are readers (practically from birth, maybe as some escape – but it is a love of reading), we are thinkers, we are expressers – she is a doer. She’s not a concentrator of big thoughts, she’s a mover and a shaker. Life’s a party, and we are in the way!

We’ve got some birthday plans coming up – likely a sushi dinner, a game night with folks, a day at the OOB boardwalk, and a camping trip. She’s already requested Djej Emshmel (Moroccan Chicken with Olives and Preserved Lemons) for camping – could you imagine as a kid requesting something so exotic for a family camping trip? Not that we ever went family camping as kids or made specific requests of our parents, it’s a different world. Her plans tonight after her (favorable) assessment is some mending on a hand-me-down cardigan and one of J’s aprons.

We wouldn’t have her any other way.