My kids: Jori

I love them. Fo realz.

Jori:
loves barbies, she chose four the last time I was with the kids at D.I. and she's so happy.

This is after we gave them perma-swimsuits, with nail polish. 

She's still all about everything fancy.

She is such a ray of sunshine, honestly. She's always saying positive, makes you stop for a second comments like "Willow's smiles just brighten up my day!" or "We are so lucky we have so many things!" She's still really enthusiastic, and will say excitedly "This is going to be so much fun!" with little provocation.

Like the other day at my parents, when her cousins were jumping on the bed in the next room and she was about to join them. 

 She's very bright, and has been learning sight words. She has a truly fantastic memory: she'll tell us stories about something that happened one time, a year ago, frequently. She told me about a dead mouse that was in the firepit up at the cabin a week or two ago, but that was clear back last summer. Things like that happen regularly.

 (Can you figure out what's happening, here? I just love this. The bucket is scooched over, box of donuts on the ground, cut marks on box, but only until it was discovered it could just be taken off, and play dough knife obviously was in the process of slicing off a chunk of that maple bar before daddy called her upstairs again for stories.)

  She likes things to be accurate and correct, and trusts me implicitly to teach her these things. (Even to the point sometimes of discrediting comments from daddy, if she feels they're not what I have said.) It's kind of a...heavy privilege, I'd call it. I try to lead her well, not wanting to give her any reason to distrust me. (Except that one time where I told her the chocolate I was eating was poison, 'cause I didn't want to share.)

  She's quite artistic, she loves creating these cute/funny little brown paper bag puppets.

Usually princesses. She draws the face on the top part and body on the rest...they're great.

 She still loves her special blankie her Grandma Hatch made for her. She's losing the few speech flaws she has left, so those that remain I kind of cherish. (Rather than saying it 'other,' it's 'uh-ver', things like that.)

 She has a hard time paying attention, or focusing...I think she might have ADHD, just the inattentive classification. Same as I have.

 But Sam and I can't really get mad at her (shouldn't, anyway: we aren't perfect), because honestly, sometimes I'll ask her something six times and then finally lose my temper, but it'll really startle her because I think she genuinely wasn't taking it in the first six times. So she doesn't get why I'm mad, all of a sudden (to her).

She's very imaginative and can have a hard time not...kind of living in her own little fantasy land mentally, sometimes.

 She's still trying to learn give and take with conversation with kids her age, I think; she gets excited to tell them things, but sometimes doesn't really listen to them and just keeps telling what she wanted to say, regardless. Or won't hear what they said, cause she was in the 'fantasy land.' She also gets frustrated when kids don't acknowledge what she has said, though, which could be how they feel too...hopefully she'll get the hang of the give and take of conversing sooner, rather than later.

 
She's got a tender heart, my Jori. A real gentility. Just feels things a lot. Cries often, laughs often. I think I passed this on, too. She's good at trying to make things fair and good for all around her, most of the time.

Overall, she makes a great oldest. We sure love our Jori Pori.