Our Felicity: 8 Years Old

It's hard to believe that our first baby is eight years old! Felicity Renee lives up to her name and brings us more happiness than words can say. She is many things but confident, smart, motivated, hard working, persistent, creative and very social are some that stand out the most.

Felicity loves school and all of the learning and socializing that happens there. She's convinced her second grade teacher is a genius and always has a new story from the second grade lunch, classroom, or playground scene. Her teacher tells us that Felicity's classmates come to her for help and that she's eager to give it.
Music and Art continue to be a joy for Felicity. She loved playing Velveeta in her first grade musical "The Cheese Stands Alone", and she's always singing songs she's learning in class. She's hoping to play the violin, and she somehow manages to know every word to all of the songs on the radio. Felicity enjoys learning new art techniques and spends a good amount of her free time drawing, painting and coloring.

This summer, reading became a real love for our girl...or maybe Harry Potter became the real love. She read the whole series between the last two weeks of school and summer's end! I love that she shares the love of reading and will read to her brother and sister as they are going to bed at night. 

We are so incredibly proud of how brave Felicity was this spring as she took on swim lessons for the first time. It was challenging. We prayed a lot. She persevered and was able to meet her goal by September. It's such a joy to see her enjoy the water and bob her heart out!

Felicity is so grown up in many ways, but she still loves to play. Legos are one of her favorites. Her big present this year was the Harry Potter Great Hall Lego set, and she begged and begged to work with Daddy on it every day until it was done. She's also really good at using all of the jumbled up pieces from various sets to create a whole new world. I love her creativity and patience in the process. She also enjoys playing LOLs, Baby Merlissa and Husband (and Taunaties), and Barbies with Moriah, and she can't go to sleep without Teddy and Moosie (one under each arm).
This spring when Mommy was huge and uncomfortable (waiting for Zina) we started watching Just Add Magic as a family. The show really inspired Felicity in the kitchen. She created her own cookbook of magic recipes and asked us almost every day to let her and Moriah try their hand at cooking them!

Something we can't leave out is Felicity's continuing obsession with the KC Chiefs. If there was a queen of Chiefs Kingdom I think she would be in the running. She not only loves Chiefs games but now keeps up with other teams' records to see how we match up. One of my favorite quotes from our girl was "yeah, I think we're gonna win on Sunday. Trubisky and his crew aren't as hot this year." (insert smiley cry face and sorry to all our Bears fan friends!). We took her to her first game in December and a preseason game in August. Sadly, they lost the game in December at the very end because of a two point conversion by the Chargers. I'll never forget seeing her sweet little face melt into tears. Thankfully we won the preseason game so she no longer thinks she might have been bad luck ;).
The biggest blessing in our sweet girl's life is watching the love she has for Jesus continue to grow. She is so faithful to hide His word in her heart and flies through the AWANA verses with great joy. It's a gift to watch her apply the truths she's learning at Sunday school as she works through God time cards in between Sundays. At the end of first grade her teacher wrote us a note that said Felicity shined God's light so bright. We were amazed because that was our prayer for the school year, that God would shine His light upon her. Before second grade started, she wrote out a beautiful prayer for the year. We're not even half way through, and God has already answered so many things: she has a new friend, jogging laps in P.E. are getting better, and she couldn't be happier with her teacher.
Felicity enjoys her church family so much that she doesn't want to sit with her own family at Wednesday night dinners! She's eager to be baptized, and we are eager to see the good work God has ready for her in days to come.

When she grows up she wants to live in Paris or next door to us (we have to paint it something other than yellow first). I asked Felicity some things she'd like to accomplish in her next year. She said she'd like to learn to do a cartwheel and something that "probably isn't possible but..." she'd really love to learn to throw a football as far as Patrick Mahomes. When she grows up she wants to be a scientist, artist, ballerina or an Aldi worker. I just love all of these responses because they're so our girl...Eight years old, dreaming big with a good head on her shoulders.

Our Felicity: 7.25

I can't believe it has already been three months since Felicity turned SEVEN! I was out of commission in the early days of carrying baby number four so we didn't get around to her pictures until recently. What a great excuse to get outside in Felicity's first for real, fluffy, you can really build a snow man snow since she was one and a half! I love it too because she has recently started reading Narnia on her own, and it feels like we got to enter into it for a bit...

For her seventh birthday party she wanted a Greatest Showman theme. She has fallen in love with the music and loves to crank it up and sing and dance her heart out. Our circus decorations were up, but she just couldn't resist dressing up as Belle, village Belle to be precise. I love that Beauty and the Beast still holds a special place in Felicity's heart four years later.

Our girl continues to love school and goes bounding out of the car full speed ahead each day. Her teacher says she's much more talkative this year and is a wonderful helper. Felicity has great enthusiasm for math and a mind made for it. She's always asking for math problems even during bed time snuggles. She likes to solve them on her sequins flip pillow. I'm amazed at how quickly she can do mental math with large numbers and how many math facts she already knows by heart. We're excited to have this new gifting in our house and not so sure we'll be able to keep up for too long!

The biggest surprise of the year has been Felicity's obsession with the Chiefs. We started casually turning the games on, and she was captivated. Week after week she learned the game and players by watching the entire game. She was so focused. We were amazed! Her enthusiasm caused us to become super fans as well so when things were looking good for an amazing season, Dan got tickets for all three of us to go to a Thursday night game. We bundled up in at least four layers, and Felicity cheered her guts out. She loved watching all of her favorites: Mahomes, Kelce, Hill. We played the Chargers in a close game that ended with a devastating loss in the last seconds due to a two point conversion. Her heart was broken, and her face showed it. Immediate tears flowed and an expression appeared that I haven't seen since we put stuffed Santa away after Christmas when she was three years old! Thankfully we recovered from the trauma and continued to enjoy watching our team through the playoffs. She took the AFC championship loss a bit better saying she was happy because we still had a good season, BUT she is still saying she will NOT be watching the Super Bowl!

A few other things that can't go without mentioning are her mad skills in Monopoly and Clue, her forever first loose tooth that finally came out just before her birthday (while Mommy and Daddy were both gone for the first time in her little life), learning magic tricks from Daddy, still downing cheeseburgers with the best of them, reading her first book of the Bible (Mark) on her own, and setting high goals: In response to the table talk question "What do you hope to accomplish in your life?"...

"I want to get a 100 on all of the rest of my spelling tests and get back my Arabic." 

                                                                                          - Felicity Renee

Our Felicity: 6.5 Years

I just can't believe it. She is six and a half years old...

In just a week she'll finish American Kindergarten, although I recently overheard explaining to a friend that she's on a different timeline because she has already finished Tunisian Kindergarten (insert smiley cry face). 

Felicity loves school. She hops out of the car and marches right in like she owns the place. We're so thankful that she has made friends this year. At first she was a little confused at why kids weren't surrounding her, eager to play. It took a few conversations about how to engage others when you're not the only blonde with fair skin from America, but now she's a pro at navigating the playground scene. 

She knew the names of every kid in her class after the first week and comes home everyday telling me all about what everyone said and did that day. At recess she loves to swing (she just learned to pump!) and play tether ball. She also likes to invent games with her friends about vampires and villains (yikes) and "Let's help 'B' (a fellow classmate) know Jesus"...quite the wide range of interests she has! Aye-yi!

Having a mailbox is a new thing for our kids this year, and Felicity LOVES to race to it right after school. She also continues to be very social, especially with adults. The other day I stopped watching the girls for a sec to deal with Ephraim, and to my delight I found them at our sweet neighbor lady's house helping her sweep up her driveway. Felicity is such a good helper and inspires her sister to do the same! 

It makes my heart happy that she still has a deep appreciation for parks and Happy Meals. Watching her swing and sink her teeth into a McDonald's cheeseburger are two things that give me such delight because she understands that these are extras, things not to take for granted...I hope she holds on to this and carries it over to other pieces of her story as it grows. 

There's so much to say, but I definitely can't leave out that Felicity is a hard worker. She gives her best and goes above and beyond most of the time. She's always rehearsing everything she's learning in school whether it's songs from music, reading and math, or P.E. warm-ups! She even had MoMo and me doing high knees and seat kickers in our living room! Her determination in learning to jump rope was amazing to watch. She came home from school one day wanting to learn and kept jumping and jumping until she finally got it a few days later. So proud of her for not giving up!

She is obsessed with drawing and coloring and loves to do drawing contests with anyone willing to face her. Her sweet singing voice melts me, and I love to look in the car mirror to see her dramatic expressions that go along with it. She loves Ryan Stevenson's song "The Gospel"  and insists that Daddy sings it better (in a very sweet way) to every song on the radio that she has heard him sing.

My favorite recent story is when she told me that a boy at school was unkind to her even though he was nice to the other kids. She finally came to the conclusion that he just didn't like her. I loved her gracious spirit when she remarked, "But I decided to just roll with it and be nice to him anyway." A big thank you Jesus moment for Mommy!

Felicity Renee is brave and just watching her navigate all of the transition of of the past few years is a beautiful testimony to many prayers answered and the kindness of our God. He is faithful, and I love watching His story unfold through the life of our Felicity. What a privilege.

Our Felicity: 2.5

There are lots of moments when Felicity is definitely two-and-a-half. Sometimes we all feel like this:

But there are also so many fun, funny, sweet things about Felicity these days...

Imagination: Did you know Felicity has a purple house in America and Malta? Her friend "Doby" lives there and so does her "other family". Her other mommy is PINK. What can I say, there's really no competing with that. :)

Joking: She loves to read books "the other way" replacing words...For example turning "God made turtles" into something like "God made porcupines." Thank you daddy for developing her sense of humor. :)
Another favorite is quoting this verse when we're having a talk and she's in trouble: "Obey your parents in the Lord for this is 'tomato' (right)."
She also noticed her shadow recently and continues to crack up at it. Melt my heart.

Imitation: She's starting to become a little source of reflection for her parents. The one that really showed what a great person I am was when I overheard Felicity struggling with something and saying, "God please help!  Help! What's wrong with me. Please help!"Aye, yi, yi...

Becoming Girly: "Poe Nolish" and lipstick are her first obsessions...as well as candy. She is desperate for them. Highlighter and crayons have been used as substitute, and we definitely found her with a trail of nail polish from the bathroom to her room and PINK all over herself.

Favorite color: PINK. What kind of ice cream do you want, "Pink"!

The Girl's got Skills: JUMPING...her feet don't really leave the ground yet, but it's a big step considering she wasn't even walking a year ago. ;) MAGIC TRICK: falling forward on our bed, "Mommy, watch my magic trick!"

Some Firsts:
Family living room picnic with chicken nuggets from Geant, lots of ketchup and mayo, blankies, and Fliss' current favorite flick: 101 Dalmations.
Quoting a movie: "Wretched pen, blast this wretched, wretched pen!" -Cruella Devil.
Building forts/tents :)
Fear: We saw an orange floating man at Piazza Navona. She was so terrified we had to leave, and she continued to fixate on him for some time. Needless to say we said lots of prayers for the orange floating man. She also now knows how to sing "When I am afraid, I will trust in you."

World Traveler: She threw two dinar coins into Trevi fountain. I guess she's going back to Rome twice! At the end of our visa trip she did not want to leave, she pretended to be going to Rome for at least a month while simultaneously pondering the orange floating man.

Favorite Foods: Berries! It's strawberry season, and Felicity cannot get enough. So much so that she earned the nickname "fraisa" from my Arabic teacher which is strawberry in our language here.

When all is said and done, life with a two-and-a-half-year-old is challenging for sure, but it's definitely worth it...especially in the sweet times when we all feel like this:

Simple Life

The other day we were swinging after school. There's a little plastic swing set tucked behind our center with concrete/tile-ish floors and walls surrounding it and just enough space for a toddler to go "really high".
Though I try not to let my mind go there, sometimes I find myself wishing for green grass and space to run and climb for our little girl and every other child here. Just as I caught myself going down this not so helpful path, sweet words from this darling girl, reminded me of the privilege of this place and our lives here.

"Mommy are we at the park?"

 I'm amazed at how this little 2 year old teaches me. "Out of the mouths of babes..." She doesn't have to say much, and it's not even so much what she says as how she says it: twinkling eyes, sweet smile, a tone that says there's nowhere else I'd rather be...

"Yes, honey, we are at the park!"

And I'm so happy to be here with you. Grateful for this swing set, grateful for simplicity and grateful for your little thankful heart...may God continue to make it grow and grow and grow and continue to grow mine too.

2.25

Since turning TWO it seems Felicity is changing at turbo speed.
She finally has hair! Beautiful, blonde curls like her daddy...

She's still reading stories...

And starting to tell them too: "Mommy, can you please listen?" "Yes, of course, Felicity." (Did she really just ask me to listen?)
"Once upon a time there was a Mamma Bear, a Papa bear, and a baby in a manger..." A little confusion there, but still a great story :)

One of her N. African teachers declared that our girl is really becoming one of them because she LOVES cheese, baguette, and OLIVES most of all. She once ate so many olives at our friend's house that the dear girl gifted Fliss with whole bottle of homemade Zetoons which made for one happy girl...

Talking: We love the moments we have with her before she goes to sleep. The new big girl bed set-up has been a catalyst for great conversation. Almost every night she says, "Mommy and Daddy, I want to talk. Can we talk?" The first time this happened was when we were staying in a hotel for a conference, all in the same room. She and Dan went on talking and talking...when we finally said it was time to go to sleep she said, "I love you Daddy." It was the sweetest thing, and I think we've discovered one of her love languages: Talking.
Playing: She is definitely coming into her own in the area of play. She is actually playing WITH other kids sometimes instead of just doing her own thing, and she has lots of her own ideas about how things should be done in her little kitchen. Pot pie, pancakes, cake, and pink cookies are her favorite things to "make". We've also done the same animal puzzle so many times that she can actually put pieces in on her own now.

Grateful: Dan was afraid the kitchen we got Fliss for Christmas was too tiny when he got it (on Christmas Eve as he watched the person in front of him buy the last kitchen we had intended to get for Fliss), and in fact, Felicity can actually pick it up and move it around her little room. But one day while playing with daddy, she looked at her kitchen and declared, "I have everything I need!" Bless her heart.

She also has an obsession with knowing "Who got this for me?" She even asks it about everyday things like her breakfast...a great opportunity to teach her gratitude for others and the One who is the giver of every good and perfect gift. The giver of one of our favorite gifts, Felicity.
As this little two-year-old girl asserts herself and tests limits more and more, we know all too well that she's definitely not perfect, but we remind her all the time that we love the way God made her, and she's definitely perfect for us:

Fluent Fliss

Today Felicity's teachers sent us this...

We are so proud of our little Arabic speaker. Keep up the good work Fliss so at least one of us in this family will really know this language :)
Ok, ok...maybe two...

And a shout out to all of our teachers...we could not be learning this crazy language without you! You are Tie-ar-ra!

TWO!

We didn't know what to expect celebrating Felicity's birthday in Africa...but I guess we should have known it would be super fun no matter what because we love this girl more than words can say:

She squealed with delight as we covered her with balloons and she kicked them out. Over and Over...

Family Breakfast was a real treat: baguette french toast with Grandma Val's jam (limited supply, people...only for special occasions or really bad days):

We opened Grandma Kathy's card with glow sticks, and Fliss even wore her Minnie Mouse costume from Grandma and Grandpa J to school. Fliss' friend, "Hife" brought her a mini cake and two roses for TWO years...

After nap time we decorated her cake with Ms...

We prepared some of her favorite foods to share...

 A chalk board pic attempt was made, but we quickly gave up:

And then the guests started to arrive...

We sang, opened presents, and cut the cake: 

And just when we thought the party was about to end more guests arrived...

This is when Dan coined some of our friends, "The Feed the 5,000 Crew" because we ran out of drinks and food, but they saved the day by running to a hanoot for drinks and serving pizzas from the "make your own pizza station". We have really nice friends:

Bellies were full, children jumped on couches, and a good time was had by all:

 Especially this one who slept so hard the next day that I was actually able to take a sleeping picture. Doesn't she look bigger already?

But still our baby girl. always.

Our Standing Flibbertigibbet

flib·ber·ti·gib·bet

  [flib-er-tee-jib-it]  Show IPA

noun

1.

a chattering or flighty, light-headed person.

2.

Archaic. a gossip.

Of course we are referring to the first part of the first definition: a chattering person...

Behold, our standing flibbertigibbet:

It's so FUN to be ONE!

A friend of mine warned me to plan ahead for the big ONE. I meant to follow her advice, but true to form, good intentions left me scrambling the week of.Thankfully my mom came to town, and my husband sort of has to do what I want right now because I'm teaching Sunday school for him. ;)

I'm so grateful for all of their help! And as for the one year old, she was of little help as she spent most of the week teething and desperate to be constantly held by moi...it's a good thing she's so cute.

And I forgot to mention our dear friends who say they just happened to be in the neighborhood 30 minutes before the party. Say what they may,  I'm convinced they just know us so well that they knew we would not be ready without their intervention:

For the party we decided on a FELICITY theme because she hasn't developed an affinity for much more than bugs, yogurt drops, iphones, butterflies, daddy's funny faces and mommy, and she certainly does not have a favorite cartoon character at this point. Plus, we like her a lot and knew we would enjoy planning a PaRtY to reflect our little delight.

The decorations were simple enough and inexpensive which is a bonus...

 Initials on the high chair and a felt party hat.

We thought of Felicity's favorite foods, but gave them a grown up twist. She does not eat baby quiches every morning, but eggies are certainly one of her favorites...We also printed a few pics of her eating her favorites to go along with the food...fruit, veggies, eggies, mac & cheese, Fliss mix, and drinks.

 Yum!

 And for the decorations we printed her ONE year pictures and made a collage and a wordle with all of her favorite things.  Dan also made butterflies outlined with lyrics from his song, FELICITY. I love these things because they are not only party decorations but items we will love putting in her room and continue to enjoy.

Thank you Nita and Adrian for arranging it so it all looked much more amazing than anything we would have dreamed up!

We also set out some of Felicity's favorite books...Elmo, Girl Bible, If you Give a Pig a Pancake, etc.

And my very favorite pinterest idea is the line of her little faces. I found a variety of Felicity expressions, cropped them so the picture showed only the face and had kinkos print them in black and white (less than $2 total). We cut out her faces and used scrapbook paper to make party hats. Then we labeled them with Felicity's various nicknames. I simply showed Dan a picture, and said, "What's the first name that comes to mind?" We had Whoozle, Fliss, Crumpy, Felicity, Wootie, Baby Clown, and Flo-Zo. So Fun!

For the favors we gave the kids Fliss Mix and the adults Izzes...

Of course the BEST part about the Felicity theme was Felicity in real time...

Can you tell we are so in love with our little girl. I didn't even tell her daddy to wear pink...

We're not the only ones who love this Whoozle...

We are overwhelmed at God's faithfulness to answer our prayers that Felicity would bring glimmers of happiness to those she meets. Thank you friends and family, near and far, for loving her so well. We are blessed.

Happy FIRST Birthday to YOU, Felicity Renee! We love you!

Epilogue:

Felicity: Really, two iphones? This is the BEST day of my life...

Mommy: Family hugs are the best. I just can't stop smothering these two...

Daddy: Whoozles and their mommy's are WORK. Finally, nap time...