Hey Baby, my little Leeny Loo, you are 7 years old!
Happy birthday Baby! Wow 7! We are going to have to stop calling you baby soon (spoiler alert, I’m never stopping calling you Baby). 7 whole years with you, aren’t we the luckiest?! Here is my letter to you on your 7th birthday.
What happened in your 6th year?
School
You started your 6th year with the schools being closed again. You didn’t go back to school after Christmas until they reopened again on March 8th. It must have been so confusing for you to go from school to homeschool to school again, especially being so young and so new to the school system. You handled it like an absolute champ though.
Then as the school year went on we went through the ‘pingdemic’ and lots of bubbles closures and time off isolating and being homeschooled again. You’ve started afterschool clubs several times only to have them be cancelled again and restarted again. It’s been a confusing year for you.
I often wonder how growing up during the pandemic during these formative years is going to affect you when you are an adult. Will you crave planning and organisation or be entirely averse to it and crave chaos? Actually, the other day you told Arlo that when you are older you will ‘be crazy and live in chaos when I grow up’, so I think it will be the latter! (You can read about other funny things you’ve said lately here – 12 funny things my kids have said lately – instalment 11).
Sadly Arlo caught COVID-19 (Omicron we assume) on January 16th and then we all caught it with you being the last to test positive on 21st January. Fortunately, we were lucky and you weren’t too poorly with it. You had a temperature, ‘spicy throat’ as you like to call it and mild cold symptoms. You did milk it for all it was worth to get out of homeschool though but it didn’t prevent you from running around causing havoc. We did have one day during recovery where you were super emotional and tantrummy which reminded me of when you were a threenager! You can read all about our experience of COVID-19 in my blog post Preparing for COVID in a household with children.
Despite it all, we had fantastic feedback from your year 2 teacher (who is great and we love) at your last parent consultation. Your teacher said that from September to November 2021 the progress you had made was ‘phenomenal’. They had predicted you might fail your phonics screening test but you smashed it. You went from sounding every letter out to reading fluently. Your teacher told me it was experiences like this that makes being a teacher worthwhile and was clearly overjoyed.
We are still keeping an eye on you for dyslexia – you still write a lot of letters and numbers back to front but your teacher isn’t overly worried. I’m also keeping an eye on you for ADHD (something I’ve started to think I might have too). You are in perpetual motion and constantly distracted, often going off on many tangents when talking. Your teacher says you can concentrate and focus in class when you need to though.
Holidays aged 6
We’ve had a few getaways whilst you were 6. We rented a gorgeous house in Scotland for your Granma’s 60th birthday in August (see Our holiday to Angus, Scotland) and you enjoyed playing in the pool and hot tub all week with your cousins. I struggled to get you out of the hot tub!
We had a couple of camping trips to Northumberland – the Boe Rigg in Bellingham Northumberland in June and Beadnell Bay in Northumberland in August.
In October we had a nice little overnight stay at Seaburn (see my The Seaburn Inn review – a family mini-break in Seaburn, Sunderland.
Then in November we were back to Northumberland again for Kielder Winter Wonderland with a weekend lodge stay. You were at a magical age for this and you loved seeing Santa and the reindeers up close.
We just got back from a week in San Agustin, Gran Canaria where you had the time of your life. Sadly Arlo got a really nasty case of food poisoning for 5 days which spoilt the holiday for me, Daddy and Arlo but you made a little friend at the resort and had so much fun going between the park and the pool.
We joked that it felt like we had gone on holiday just us two as Daddy was in the room with Arlo whenever I wasn’t. We had a lot of time together just bonding and I’ll treasure the memories of our girls dinners on the terrace as the sunset. Every time the lights came on automatically as it got dark or the sunset sky was pink you’d explain it was just for us and it felt like it was. Your swimming came on a lot whilst we were there too.
What are you like right now?
You are simply delightful! Words can not express how much I love you and how much I love being in your company. You are so unique and are constantly delighting me with the weird and wonderful stories from your head. You never stop talking, singing, moving, making noise. You are exhausting but never ever boring. You are the centre of our home, everyone gravitates around you.
You adore me and it’s so wonderful to feel so loved by you and special. The feeling is mutual too and I’m sure I’m always boring people talking about you. You are my little shadow, everywhere I go you go, ‘helping’ me. You love to help me cook and bake and you help me empty the dishwasher.
You create mess at about 5 times the speed I can clean it though which I admit is frustrating! You are very strong willed. You always know exactly what you want and are unrelenting to ensure that you get it (also exhausting, choosing a family movie can be torturous). You are ridiculously cute – your little voice and laugh makes my heart sing. Everyone who meets you falls in love with you because your are adorable and your zest for life is contagious.
What do you love right now?
You’ve had a recent mild obsession with the 1987 Taylor Dayne classic, Tell it to my Heart that you’ve been playing on repeat and dancing round the living room to. You love music, singing and dancing and as we both say ‘you have the music in you’.
Your biggest passion remains animals. You love learning about them and can reel off facts about them. Your current favourites are horses, guinea pigs and dogs. You’ve become quite the guinea pig mam since getting 2 pet guinea pigs (Cruella and Guinea Ginge) for your 6th birthday. You love nothing more than to get them out and sit with them on your lap stroking them. You watch lots of YouTube (which you call nootube – cute) videos to learn how to look after them properly and about all their different sounds. I think you know more than us!
You still love playing Roblox and Minecraft, especially with your dad and brother. You enjoy a game but your attention span is limited. You love to draw, mostly animals or very weird macabre stuff. This year your dad had matching t-shirts made for you both with one of your drawings stitched in.
You did a project at school about inspirational role models and have become obsessed with Malala ever since which is super cute. You got her book for Christmas and have read it lots of times.
You like to join me on my workouts sometimes and I got you some little fitness outfits for Christmas – although you are so slight they are a little big on you yet! Your favourites are yoga and jumping around punching things. You often just make up your own stuff and cause chaos whilst I’m working out.
Your favourite food is cheese pizza, hands down no contest. You have got a lot more adventurous with food this year and whilst you can be fussy and are a grazer prefering snacks to meals, you are slowly improving. You have the biggest sweet tooth I have ever known and get so excited for pudding after every meal. You are a true chocaholic!
Most of all you just love to be outdoors going on adventures and being around people – talking their heads off. You love your grandparents and cousins especially.
What’s on your wish list this birthday
You ask for a pet dog almost daily but sadly Arlo isn’t ready yet. You want to go somewhere where you can hold, walk and pet animals. You’d like your best friend from school to come over for a play date. You’ve asked for a Huggy Wuggy and Kissy Wissy birthday cake where they ‘hold hands and there is a love heart’ so good luck to us trying to sort that! You’ve asked for a Huggy Wuggy costume. We are getting you a coat with guinea pigs (affiliate link) on it from Boden. You’ve asked for a new suitcase for our upcoming holidays and other shiny tat from Smiggle. It’s been quite hard to buy for you this year. You ask for almost every toy you see but you actually don’t really play with toys that much anymore so we know they aren’t going to be good value for money.
Milestones this past year
Last year we said we hoped that you would start to go to bed on your own and in the last month of being 6 you only went ahead and did it! Well done Lena. We are so proud of you right now. We waited until you were ready and we promised you a toy of your choosing if you did 7 nights of going to sleep on your own after a cuddle and story. You chose these terrifying cuddley toys called Huggy Wuggy and Kissy Wissy. You get very annoyed when we call them terrifying and assert they are in fact cute and not scary at all.
You can read all about our experience of getting Lena to go to sleep on her own in this blog post – How to get your child to go to sleep on their own.
You lost your first tooth on 11/7/21, your second on 15/10/21, your third on 8/2/22 and your 4th on 19/2/22. You currently have a big gap, no front teeth and a cute little lisp. You very much enjoy writing letters to the tooth fairy and asking her about unicorns and reading her teeny tiny letters back to you. You lost your 4th tooth on holiday and got 2 euros which was exciting for you.
You had your first eye test and are a little short-sighted so you got your first pair of glasses and look very cute in them.
I’m not sure if it happened before this year but you definitely had a couple of nosebleeds this year. Including one in the car on the way to holiday when we had nothing to deal with it. You arrived at the holiday home like you had committed a massacre!
You got your first proper haircut in a salon this year. We went for a ‘lob’ or a ‘blob’ as you requested to the hairdresser. You looked so cute and so much more grown up.
Hopes for 7
This year I hope that you finally stop waking in the night and needing us there. We aren’t in a rush for this but I’m hoping that now you aren’t scared to go to sleep on your own, this will soon empower you to realise you don’t need us in the night either.
I’d love you to learn how to swim this year but we are really struggling to get you into classes. I’d like you to start doing something musical – like learn an instrument. Once gymnastic classes re-start I’d like you back at those again as you really enjoyed them.
Mostly I just hope it all keeps going so well. You are happy at school and enjoy it, you are happy at home. Everything is pretty perfect, long may it last.
Words can not describe what a sheer privilege it is to get to be your mam and be around you every day. Your spirit, individuality and Joie de Vivre are infectious. You are a mile a minute bundle of energy and everyone can’t help but get swept up by you. You are full of ideas and passion all day every day. I’m torn between hoping you never change and being enthralled by seeing who you become. Whoever it is I hope I get to be by your side always as theres no place I’d rather be. I simply adore you, you special, special little girl.
Love you infinitely, Mammy xxx
#BeMoreLena
If you liked this blog post then you might also like the previous birthday letters to Lena:
- Happy 8th birthday to my daughter letter
- Letters to Lena – on your 6th birthday
- 5th birthday letter to Lena
- 4th birthday letter to Lena
- 3rd birthday letter to Lena
- 2nd birthday letter to Lena
- Letter to Lena – 19 months old
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