Granddaughter - ASAK

Before our youngest granddaughter was born my daughter asked me if I wanted to be with her in the operating room as she knew she would be having a c-section as she had with her first child. I eagerly said yes and we had the date planned for a Monday. On Saturday evening our son-in-law called to say our daughter had gone into labor and they were going to do the surgery right away. Since I was three hours away, I couldn't make it in time. So I missed being at her birth, but the good part about that was that HB and I were able to pick up my mother and the three of us got to see her early the next day.

She's five years old. Whenever I look at her, I see her mom when she was a little girl - those beautiful blue eyes and that smile that goes clear across her face. Her mom said she was her reward when she was born, because she was a quiet and easy baby. No one could quiet her except her mom and she clung to her above all other people. Every mom should have a child like that. Today, she is probably the most loving child I have ever known.



She melts my heart. She will look me straight in the eye and say, "Nana, I just love you so much!" At that point I'm ready to say to her, "What do you want, you can have anything I own". But she's not doing it to get anything, she honestly loves people. I've heard her do the same thing to her Grams, my mom. She was given two middle names, one after her parents' best friends' daughter who had died several months before and the other after her Grams. Her parents gave her a long first name, but shorten it and most people call her that. But I think her name is beautiful, so I call her by that. She's made comments about that and so I asked her if it was okay with her and she said she loves that I call her that.

She started kindergarten this fall and on the first day our daughter was driving her and she heard her praying in her car seat. "God, please help me today. There are going to be a lot of people there I don't know and Mommy and Daddy won't be there to help me." She also practiced introducing herself to people and asking them their name. She sings and makes up songs and dances. She can amuse herself for quite a long time, and seems quite comfortable with being by herself.



Her mom never never liked wearing dresses but ASAK prefers them over shorts or pants. Here she is making a funny face.



But, lest you begin to think that she doesn't have other moments that aren't quite so loving and compliant, I have a story to tell about her. She and her brother were spending the night while her mom and dad went camping near our home. For some reason she did not want to take a bath or put on her pajamas and her brother was telling her over and again that she had to take a bath. Finally, she stamped her little foot and said, "That's enough, I don't want to do that and don't say it again!"



I love these last two pictures of her, but then it's hard to get a poor picture of any of my grandchildren, they're all 'hams' and did I mention - beautiful?