She’s five already?
Yup. She’s five. I’m starting to feel a measure of kinship with the countless parents I’ve heard complain about their kids growing up too fast. I say “a measure”, because there’s no “too fast” in there for me, at least not yet. My daughter keeps getting smarter and more independent, she keeps learning new skills and dramatically improving old ones, her sense of humor keeps getting more sophisticated, she keeps getting cheekier, and she understands more and more of the world by the day. She’s even facepalming me now.
It’s pretty extraordinary to witness. And so far it’s mostly made life easier and more interesting for us parents. Facepalms and all. (I’m sure there’s a tipping point coming. I’m guessing puberty.)
But it is a little disconcerting to think about how much of what she knows and what molds her as a person comes from outside the home now. The outside world has been there from the start, sure. Grandparents and other relatives, friends of the family, her friends and their parents, day care, random people, media, silly gender stereotypes and other sociocultural relics. But she’s never been the kind of sponge for formative input as she is now.
Sponge.
If there’s a theme for last year, it’s knowledge. I’ve been regularly surprised at how much she already knows and understands. Heck, many a palm went to the face after I started explaining something that she already knew. (Either that or she just wanted me to shut up.) She’s interested about everything and she asks questions all the time, sometimes really hard ones. I just hope she gets the right answers when not at home, or eventually learns to be skeptical of the wrong ones. (Yes, she absolutely gets the right answers from Mom and Dad. End of discussion.)
Learning to manage your emotions was also a big thing. But that’s a whole other action-adventure story with frequent dips into psychological horror. Maybe next time.
01.04.2015 / 02.04.2016 / 02.04.2017 / 01.04.2018 / 07.04.2019
PS. My daughter declined, in no uncertain terms and on multiple occasions, to shoot a follow-up video to last year’s action plan. So we’re left with a textual report:
- Sleep alone in her room. DONE.
- Stop thumb sucking. PENDING.
- Learn how to jump rope. DONE.
- Learn how to ride a bike without training wheels and training handle. DONE.
Works for me.
* * *
Dad’s shirt from 35 years ago. My parents are still cheap. Rocking the look, though.
Thoughts on a summer evening.
Unsuspecting wide-eyed child inside a troll’s maw. Pretty sure there’s a metaphor or two in there somewhere.
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Māori challenge, anyone?
Checking out the real estate in Hobbiton.
Scenery-schmenery. I got my chocolate ice cream to finish.
20 hours on a plane one way? No problem.
Playing “Pillars of Eternity II” with dad. We poked the boar with swords and made it fall asleep.
Public transportation FTW.
The unbearable anticipatory excitement over a CHRISTMAS PRESENT!
Waiting for the grownups to switch to “PAW Patrol”.
Watching the world explode from 2018 to 2019.
Ice skating sucks. (Except when it doesn’t.)
Skiing rules. (Except when it doesn’t.)
Not pictured: Ragequit when she missed the golden dog biscuit.
Nothing clever here. Just a cool photo.
Yeah. Just go with it.
Bonus video from HopLop:
dreameling's 
Brilliant, this is legit one of my favourite events of the year, and if that sounds like hyperbole I’ll double down and say if we’re just talking online, it’s in the top five. Offline events vary more so it’s harder to gauge.
Great to see all the changes to sassy Miss Lagus. You guys are quite clearly doing an amazing job. Making humans seems like such a fun idea at the kickoff meeting but the scope changes just keep coming.
Yes, the kickoff meeting is sex.
Well, I’m glad you liked it, no matter the ranking.
Since you have more project experience: How often are you supposed to have status meetings to follow up on the kickoff? I feel like mine are not frequent enough.
(One day, my daughter is going to be reading these comments. Maybe her friends are, too. Shit. Well, at least she’s already learned facepalming dad.)
Anyway, I’m just happy the scope changes have been almost exclusively positive so far. Whenever I tell someone how amazing it is to watch your child grow I feel like a lame parent doing lip service by way of a cliché, but it just genuinely is amazing. Of course, I have very few points of reference, as I have just the one child, so pretty much anything new she does or learns is brilliant by default.
Our follow-up hypothetical kickoffs were a bit scarce for a while owing to cancer, and then a second actual project … but when that one was such a smooth ramp-up, we took the step of moving to a pure sandbox environment. Now we can do all the kickoffs we want without it actually creating a funding-requiring project.
:D
Oh, man, I got nothing to follow that up with. I say we just leave that beautiful thing there for all time.
It’s nice to watch Julia grow up, especially the development of her intelligence. She is a lot smarter than I ever was, even though I’m 40 and she is five. I’m not embarrassed at all, quite the opposite.
Anyway, already waiting for her 6th year birthday…
Even thought I’m embarrassingly biased and think my daughter is a genius, as one does, I’m pretty sure she has quite a bit of catching up to do to your 40-year-old smarts. :)
Thank you for all nice pictures. We are lucky to have such a brilliant grand daughter. It is good for us, that we have to check what we tell her. We do not want to give her wrong answers, so we even learn new things almost every day. :)
Nu fortsätter jag på svenska. Lilla Julia är nog en sådan liten person att ibland blir man alldeles till sig. Hur kan hon veta så mycket och kommer ihåg allt hon hört!
Yeah, it’s both hilarious and a little frightening the way she remembers stuff and then later puts it to use.
Also, for the record, your son-in-law was not suggesting that his parents-in-law give the wrong answers! :) (Well, maybe Papu occasionally, but certainly not Momi!)
Thank you Timo dear for Julia’s wonderful photos! It’s nice that you keep record of how Julia grows up. When she is older, she will most certainly read them.
Oh, she will absolutely read the posts. And the comments.
Let’s see if she’ll actually appreciate them. :)