kapria faith | 7 years old

I want to talk about my Kapria Faith. This girl is AMAZING.

Kap's in first grade. This means that she knows all about how everyone should be doing things and that she knows better than me. This can make for some really hard moments. (Like when she wanted bangs and I said no. So she cut them herself.) We've been learning how to communicate better with one another. The first few months of first grade were rocky with a lot of meltdowns from Kap and poor reactions from me (which only make the situation worse). But I've been reading Parenting with Love and Logic and have been trying to be more conscientious about parenting and it seems to be helping both of us. One thing that has really worked - which Travis started - is the "restart." When one of us is struggling, we can restart the moment over. Apologize and begin again. Kapria has really taken to this, and it has saved us all in moments when we're going down the out-of-control, unkind road. We've done a restart, and she has followed it up with the sweetest service - like making my bed or giving me a huge hug and kiss or fixing Mila's necklace that she broke. 

Kap and Mila love each other so much. They share a room (always have) and get along most of the time. Like any siblings they do annoy each other: fight over borrowing clothes, refuse to play each other's games, and make each other cry regularly. BUT those moments are surrounded by love: cleaning up each other's messes when the other is having a bad day, loaning toys and clothes, playing for hours, and recently helping each other with reading. As Kap says, they're, "Best Sisters Forever." And seeing them happy together makes my heart so full.  

Kapria is CRAZY in love with her baby sister and loves being in her face all the time. Because she loves Ever SO MUCH she doesn't know what else to do but to intrude on her personal space. It's so sweet and yet so overwhelming at times. When Mila was born, Kap was just 2. I didn't have to fight over being a mom. I could easily distract her from bothering the baby and could mostly hold the baby all I wanted. Now I find that my baby time has to be shared with two other moms who think they often know better than I do what Ever needs. Sometimes I'm patient with them. Other times I'm not. It's been an emotional but wonderful ten months.

Kappy has the biggest imagination and is great at telling stories and doing pretend play. She loves to put together costumes for a favorite character in a show she's watching. So if she's watching Scooby Doo, she'll pause the show to go put together a costume to look like Daphne. Or if she's watching Monster High, she'll put together a costume to look like Laguna Blue. The costumes are always super creative. I love it. She loves to create things, too, with paper and tape or string or anything she can find. She'll put together a whole setup across the living or create her own kite - pretty much if there's something she wants that we don't have, she'll figure out a way to make her own. She's ingenious.

She is learning to read, and it's slow going, but she is doing so great. At the beginning of first grade - and for several months - she still prefered to tell book stories in her own way rather than reading the words on the page. But we have made sure to read daily, and as she is recognizing more and more words, reading has become exciting to her. She has started listening to Mila read and helping her, and I love seeing them read together.

She's very much into what's fair and right and equal. If she feels wronged, she gets very frustrated and REACTS. We are working on ways to appropriately and kindly respond to injustice and honest mistakes alike.

She has so much energy to use up in a day that must get out through some means, even if it ends up being through bouncing off the couch and into the love sac or wrestling with her dad.

She adores her sisters and loves her cousins. Loves rock climbing with her dad. Loves singing and dancing and absolutely NEEDS to be outside every day. She has so much energy and excitement and JOY. She truly is happy every day all day. Sometimes it can be hard to remember that her excitement for life is just that - because she doesn't want to listen in her excitement. But her happiness is so all encompassing that it shines throughout our home. 

She has a fierce love of Christ and is always the one to remind us of reading scriptures every day and saying prayer. She regularly tells me how much she wants to see Jesus and how much she loves him. She longs to bear her testimony in front of others, but gets nervous. She has born her sweet and simple testimony to me on two different occasions. Each time she was nervous, but so proud when she finished. And each time I felt her sincere desire to share what she knows to be true and it was beautiful.

I love this girl with all my heart. She amazes me every single day.