Pancakes, phone calls, patriotism and poetry

Every so often, you have these developmental growth spurts that stop your dad and I in our tracks to say, "You are such a big girl now!" The most recent one started about a couple weeks ago. We knew something was coming because of the dramatic change in your sleep patterns I noted in my last post. You, the girl who has always needed to get up between 5:30 and 6 a.m., has been sleeping until between 7 and 7:30 a.m. - consistently. I even had to wake you up one day because we were leaving for work and the babysitter.

And then Grandma and Grandpa came to visit on Feb. 18 for the weekend. In one day, you had eight 2" banana-berry pancakes with margarine and maple syrup for breakfast, an entire peanut butter and jam sandwich (from two pieces of bread) after swimming lessons, a bowl of soup and crackers for lunch, three pieces of toast for an afternoon snack, almost four potato and cheese perogies with sour cream for supper, then topped it all off with two yogurt tubes for bedtime snack. Wow. (And I know that's a lot of carbs.) Okay, this much food would typically be consumed by you in about four or five days. And, to a certain extent, you've kept up the pace - and gotten rather courageous. On the eating marathon day I detailed above, you also began to experiment with lettuce. Two days later, you declared all you wanted out of our Chinese stirfry was the broccoli - but ate the chicken, too. Then on pizza and caesar salad night, you flirted again with the dressing-covered romaine. You know, we try to not make a big deal our of any of it in case we jinx it, but girl, it all seems like a very big deal.

Then on the Sunday of the weekend before last, your dad and I were sitting at the counter in the kitchen watching the Olympics when the phone rang. It was my cell phone and when I answered it, it was you on the end! I knew you knew our phone number (except you kept missing the third 5 when reciting it); it was just surprising to know you could carry out the task of giving us a call.

And yes, those Olympics. Grandma and Grandpa bought you a red, Olympic Canada t-shirt which we couldn't force you to try on because it was too big. But the two weeks of sports-watching inspired you so much, we had to make our own Canada flag to wave when we won. Apparently Dad's side was better than the one you and I did, but it did the trick. And you embellished it with flowing ribbons from one side to give it that special touch. Then Nana bought you a whole Olympic sweatsuit, with bunny hug and sweat pants. Of course, the smallest size was size 5 but you had to wear it over and over and even to school with your size 7/8 t-shirt underneath. And everytime we won a medal, you would get a little too excited with the woo-hoos and high fives, slaps on the back and "Canada is the best!". Okay, no such thing as too excited, but maybe too aggressive.

Which brings us to yesterday. As you sat on your Dad's knee playing Playstation, you threw me a rhyme when I asked how much you love me. When I told you how wonderful your poem was, you said, "Write it down, Mom." So here it is:

Up to the sky
Then way down low
Up to the roof top
And down below

– by Lily

All of these pancakes, phone calls, patriotism and poetry are mighty impressive. I'm guessing there's more to come. And I didn't even mention how you can waterslide all by yourself - or swim under water with your eyes open - or that after two years, you've named your baby Violet.