Story Turns 18!

Story was born a few months before our 5th anniversary.
She was our first,
and although we planned a home birth,
my water broke 3 weeks before our due date but labor wouldn't start ...
so we ended  up 24 hours later with a C-Section.




She started life with a bang,
and has continued ...

She was the "best baby ever" ...
really - never cried,
slept anywhere,
nothing ruffled her feathers,
and she loved everybody.

 

She copied everything that she saw ...
whether it was reading the newspaper with Daddy,
or getting dressed.

or cooking pancakes for breakfast ...
without supervision...

http://knittedbygodsplan.blogspot.com/2012/03/memory-monday-just-tryin-to-help.html

That was the morning after
she washed the kitchen floor with Crisco.

She loved dressing up,
tea parties,
and princess hair and clothes.

She was constantly making up elaborate stories,
I wrote many of them down,
but I haven't seen them for years.

Her stories were about crayons getting married,
horses flying,
swimming underwater,
and other strange things...

since we put classic novels on for her to listen to
all day and at bedtime,
she had plenty of fuel for her active imagination.

In fact,
the only thing that ever gave her pause ...
was the first time she saw "The Nutcracker" on TV.

Literally, she paused.

She was dancing in the livingroom watching Barney on PBS,
and "The Nutcraker" came on next,
sudden quiet and I came running,
only to see her standing with both arms and one leg lifted in the air
as she had frozen mid dance ...
it was several minutes before she lowered her arms and leg,
but she didn't move for the entire show.

Nor did she move for the second, third, or fourth showing.

But the next day,
she danced to the entire  show.

And she has loved nutcrackers ever since.

That summer,
she discovered her second great love - giraffes.

She also loved DIRT.
She still loves dirt.

When her aunt (they almost shared a birthday)...
was married,
Story was her flower bearer.

She still has the basket.

Dressing up and Tea parties
remained her favorites ...
especially when hosted at our local library.

 

Eventually,
her cooking skills increased,
and she soon took over most of the cooking.

 

Grammy always made her elaborate cakes for her birthday.

She loves to be helpful ... as long as she can be messy.

She's a pretty great big sister too.
Telling stories and elaborate plays with her siblings
and younger cousins.

She is the 4th grandchild (of 27) on my side of the family,
and the first of 7 on the Ref's side.

So she has tons of younger cousins.

 

She has turned out to be quite handy to have around the house ...
even if we aren't always sure what she is making.

 

She's had a "starving author" party one year.

And last year she had a garden party.


And this year ...

She's having a Blog Party!
I posted about it earlier today.

This is the best recent picture that I have of her ....

I guess we need to do a photo-op!

But I love this one of her and Sunshine ...

Two peas in a pod.