I can't hardly believe it's been 11 years since Elaina came into this world! Crazy man, Crazy~! I have to say she is a challenge to keep up with sometimes. As a small baby, she had horrible colds/pneumonia/asthma that we were in and out of the MD office and once or twice the hospital. Thank goodness she appears to be out growing it! Walked at 10 months, oral fixated and sucked her thumb, didn't talk until the age of 2 but when she did start, it was full on sentences. And from the time she was teeny tiny she has always had an opinion on how she liked things. Once, her grandmother made her a dress, cute little green and lavender butterfly print sundress and short jacket. Elaina and Emily were up on the window seat at Great Grandma's house in Spokane, Elaina was all of 2 as Eryn was about four months old. My mother in law kept talking up the dress, got Elaina into it and then asked her frowning face "Honey, don't you like it?" Elaina responded with "Nope. I don't yike it." and shook her head in a sad little way. (Great and I were stifling giggles.) "OH HONEY!? Really, you really don't like it??" Grandma asks again. Elaina responded "Nope, Not today." and realized that Grandma was about to cry, finished up with, "It's too bad. Maybe tomorrow." By this time Great Grandma and I are literally ba ha ha ha-ing rolling on the floor. Elaina has always been the kind of child who wants to put her clothes on, have them skin tight to streamline her body better, and then not think about it for the rest of the day. All hell breaks loose if she is uncomfortable in ANY way and heaven forbid should something pinch,scratch or be too loose! When Elaina got the chicken pox at the age of five, she would be so miserable that WE were too. I would run warm water into the tub with oatmeal bath and she would totally submerge her body in the water with just her face showing and go to sleep. I spent many hours by the side of the tub. She had a VERY light case of the pox... her sister's were covered in head to toe and didn't fuss nearly as much.
Now Elaina is a beautiful young girl. Right on the edge of young women's. She has a gentle heart and loves to help her little sisters read, do math and is a patient kind teacher. Elaina's goal in life is to grow up, be a teacher and live by the ocean so she can surf in the summers. She loves heat, likes to lay in the hot sand at the beaches and loves to be bundled in her blanket over the heat vents in the morning. I love it when she comes into the kitchen and ties an apron on and asks "How can I help you, Mama?" and she loves it when I let her chop, stir, mix and cook. Book smart, so smart that it's kind of amazing to think she came from me! But sometimes, she needs help with common sense reasoning...and that is where her sisters step in and help her out. Elaina is pretty much the only one who excels at Rock Band, the only one of the six of us with good rhythm and pitch. :) She is so in tune with the spirit! We can always tell the level of spiritual calm in our house by how happy Elaina is. When she gives her testimony of the Savior, it can bring tears to our eyes and the spirit touches even the hardest heart in the crowd. (We know this because she bore her testimony of the Savior to my parents and even they were impressed with her.)
We are all so excited to watch her grow up and are so very happy she chose to come to this Earth and live with us in our family. We can't hardly wait to see what will come next in her life! But for right now, we are content to have her right at the cusp of teenager life and still think her parents know it all, listen to awesome music, think up amazing things to do and are still cool to hang out with on a weekend.
You rock it girlie!
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