You are not stuck.

Pooks and I have been having some very emotional conversations lately. They span a variety of topics, but if Pooks has ever felt anything, she has felt it wholly and deeply. It is just who she is. She is passionate and intuitive and she feels things- ALL things, good, bad, uncomfortable, sad, empathetic- with every fiber of her body.
Tonight's topic was friends and friendships. She is having a bit of a crisis with not feeling like people understand the way she plays or how seriously she takes her play. At one point she said, "What would you call me?" and I said, "You are you." and she got huffy and said, "No, I mean, like, sometimes I think I am too diverse..." (Really, Pooks? Diverse? Oh, the drama)

She was describing the typical playground drama, the cliques and friendships, and I finally just said, "There is something I am going to tell you now that I wish I had understood at your age. You are not stuck. You are NOT STUCK. You are in control of you. You hold all of the power of who you play with, what you play, and who you want to be friends with. That doesn't mean that you aren't nice to everyone and that you don't give everyone a chance. And then even after they have had a chance, you should probably try again, because people change. But you, are by no means, stuck where you are. If you want to play alone, play alone. If you want to try to hang out in other groups, do it. Not everyone has to be on board, and not everyone needs to understand. Sometimes it's better to be "diverse". I just want you to remember, in any situation where you feel unhappy, you have the power to do something to change how you feel about it- even if it's just your perspective. We are never stuck being unhappy. We have the power to change the way we feel about it. We can find the good."

I wrote it on her mirror in dry erase marker. "You are not stuck." She got annoyed, and said, "I don't like mushy things on my mirror!", but I heard her repeat it to herself a couple of times..."I am not stuck".

The world is at your fingertips, my love. You have a million moments in front of you. Life is too precious to be unhappy. You are not stuck. Your life is the very best choose your own adventure book you will ever write. Take control of the pen. I promise, there will be someone out there (besides your mother of course) who can't wait to read your story.

The happiest place on Earth.

BR is awesome and has been working hard and diligently saving up some of his incentives at work. They are able to earn "spotlights" and they translate into gift cards. They can choose from a variety of restaurants, activities, stores. Instead of splurging on himself, he has unselfishly decided to share them with us.
We received 6 of these in the mail in the past 24 hours...



As BR says, "That's a lot of Mickey Money"!

And because of this Mickey Money, we were SUPER excited to let Pooks in on our secret.


Notice how she glances over at my hand to see if there is anything new and shiny on it? Ahem, BR. I am not the only one, haha.

We told her on Friday, which happened to be April Fool's day. About an hour after dinner, she panicked- "Wait!! This isn't an April Fool's Joke, is it!?" Jeez, Pooks. Give me some credit. I am not THAT mean!

We are all SUPER excited about this vacation. And we are SUPER grateful to BR for being such a hard working guy and for loving us enough to take us on this dream vacation!! Never in a million years did I think we would ever be able to pull this type of cruise off. :)

We are still in the planning stages, but definitely all have tropical paradise and Mickey on the brain!





On a side note...feel free to stop reading, these are more for my memory and reference. ;)
Things I want to remember about this week:
Pooks skipped recess and lunch to spend time with Ms. Kutch and finish her independent study. I am so proud of her. And me. ha. I didn't help AT ALL with this. She managed to keep herself organized, keep herself somewhat on her timeline with little prompting, and wrote her paper with little input. She wrote a two page research paper, a snowboard and a google slide presentation. She is 9. I am pretty sure at that age I was hanging out on the playground singing NKOTB songs with my friends. She has matured so much this year. It is so bittersweet.

This week was really windy. And rainy. And there were a million birds in our yard. One of them got stuck in our garage. Pooks tried so hard to lure it out by giving it verbal directions. I didn't have the heart to tell her it couldn't understand. :)

We signed her up for the Great Train Race! Pooks as a runner!? I never thought I would see the day. She is doing running club after school. We have been talking a lot about how awesome having a strong body is. This comes after some comments she has made about the way her body looks. She wore a bra to school today for the first time...I am beside myself. We are now entering the thick of body image. I am sad to hear her make comments while holding on to her skin on her back and thinking it's fat, and I am hoping that it is a reflection of something she has overheard and NOT her true feelings. Either way, we will continue to promote a strong, healthy body and do our best to love herself no matter what.