Mini turns five in about a week. Five feels like a girl; she is firmly out of toddlerhood. I can’t believe it, and yet here she is: hand on her hip, making astute observations and issuing pointed questions and sprinting around in bare feet. She is immensely creative, and rare is the day she comes home without a bundle of drawings and paintings from school or does not descend from her bedroom far after bedtime with a complicated illustration she’s just meticulously drawn by her nightlight. She is somewhere between believing she turns into SpiderMan when she puts on her Halloween costume and asking me how it’s possible that Santa “fits his enormous bottom” down the skinny chimney on the building across the way from her school, as she did earlier this week. I don’t think I can bear another step into childhood. I want her to believe in the magic for much longer. Already, though, the wheels are turning. Last night at dinner, she asked me how God made the world, and after I’d run through a spotty version of the creation story, she paused and asked: “But how did God get his powers?” Oy. Nothing like contemplating the metaphysical over chicken nuggets and talk of bedtime logistics. I love it, nonetheless: children are unconcerned with context. You might be brushing your daughter’s hair before bed and find yourself explaining the concept of heaven, casually brushing aside her questions about why people die, buying yourself another night.
Anyhow, time continues to march forward, and her fifth birthday is nigh upon us. We bought her a Tonies box (a digital storytelling cube), a Botley coding robot, an American Girl Bitty Baby doll and some accessories/clothes (her request, but if your little one has not yet discovered AG, the Corolle brand baby dolls are beautifully made and much less expensive, and I think their accessories are even cuter), and a couple of books and activity/sticker sets. I am especially excited to be giving her one of these Usborne “Look Inside” books that many of you have recommended. She is so curious and I love the way these books get at “how things work.” There are tons of different subjects, including seas and oceans, “things that go,” and more.
I worked in close cahoots with my MIL to procure what appears to be one of the last Encanto Lego sets (<<I did find one here, but quick! these are SO HARD TO FIND) in the universe. Mini is — obsessed — with Encanto and specifically “the strong one” (the sister Luisa). She is going to lose her mind over the Lego set from my parents-in-law! I also coordinated with my mom to pick out a Playmobil set, which was her other top request for her birthday. The neighbor boys are big into Playmobil and so it’s been her top request for both Christmas and her birthday. She looks up to them so much.
All my top gift picks for this age below…
P.S. More great toys here and here.
P.P.S. My daughter is my other heartbeat.
P.P.P.S. Something strange happens to time when you are a mother.