The Amazing Molly Ann

I went back to look at my blog, and I realized I have been so careful not to brag about Molly that I have not recorded any of her truly amazing stories or abilities! God has blessed Molly with a great mind and an amazing intellect. We knew this early on. I have recorded that her first word was at six months--bottle. She quickly put my bottle, molly bottle, bottle now, and JACKson together. Language has been easy for her. She was talking in two word sentences before she was 18 months. She knew nursery rhymes. Before she was two, when we were cruising with Nana and Papa, she said to everyone on the ship, "Have you seen my curls? They're beautiful". She could also tell people she was from Keller, TX, and that she was not two yet. Around the age of two, I began reading Yeats to her and teaching her to quote it. She could quote Yeats around the age of two, including "Shy one Shy one Shy one of my heart, she walks in the firelight pensievely apart. She carries in the dishes in a row, to an island in the water with her I would go." My rationale in teaching her this poetry was she already knew all her nursery rhymes, and Yeats' rhythm and style was similar to nursery rhymes. She was amazing. At her first day of preschool, when she was two, she could say, "Don't touch my cash register. It's mine. I want to play with it". It seems like she has always been able to communicate, and her memory is truly a thing of wonder. Yesterday in the car, she told me she went to the store and bought a "lacebark elm tree for 39 dollars" which is what we paid for ours in the back yard a year and a half ago, which is when I told her the story.

At her 18 month check up, the doctor suggested that she was gifted, and that I consider introducing latin and spanish to her. When she broke her arm before she was two, she knew the latin name for the bone: humerus. The doctor was amused, but not overly impressed. Perhaps he thought I was an overbearing mother. She also knew phalanges, cranium, madible, patella, spine, femur and phalanges as toes. She is extremely articulate, and is already writing words and her name, although it is all backwards because she is left handed, something that was clear to us as soon as she could hold a pencil.

One difficult thing about her giftedness is that she is sooo stubborn. On the cruise and at different times before she was two, I used to tell people there is a reason most toddlers cannot talk: you cannot imagine how mean they can be. I remember before she was two, when we were at an airfield with friends, a boy took away her plane. She told him: "Hey kid, I am just a little girl named Molly. You shouldn't take my toys."

It has been soooo rewarding to me to watch her development sky rocket. I think that is why I haven't written about it. Because I AM SOOO proud of her. I also know what it is like to watch your child struggle to develop skills: Jack didn't write until this year, when he was five! It was so hard to wait on his brain to develop those skills. Of course, he was not struggling, he was, like all children do, developing at his own pace. Molly's pace is just staggering, and when I blog, I don't want to seem like one of THOse moms. She is my Achilles heal: I am in love with her and wrapped around her little finger, as the whole family is. She adores Max, and says he is her favorite cousin. She loves the whole family. Her love is strong and overpowering, and I can tell it is a love that will not ever end. She just has a power or a way about her that brings people in and makes them feel loved. Every day when I go to pick her up, her teachers or employees at the school I don't know tell me how special Molly makes them feel by remembering their names and waving and acknowledging them during the day. When she saw her teacher from last year, she said I miss you miss Susan, but I love my new teachers, too. Molly does things Big, and I love to sit and watch the world through her eyes.

She says that she wants to be a doctor or a vet when she grows up, but definitely a Mommy. One of the absolute most special things about her is her relationship with God and Jesus. Last Easter, we taught her about Jesus's sacrifice. She talks about it often, and thanks Jesus during the day for the beauty of the sky, or animals, or plants that she loves. She told Mike the other night that when she sleeps, God holds her in his hands and she shares her day with him. I do not doubt this at all: Molly's heart is really pure and special. I know he talks to her. She loves him, and talks about him ALL the time.

I am most afraid that something will happen to her, and that I won't get to see her talents grow into fruition. I am not sure what God has in mind for her. I would like her to be a medical missionary or a preacher, maybe a vet and most definitely a mommy because she is sooo nurturing. Every night when I go to bed, I pray that God will keep our family together for as long as possible, and I pray that I will get to see my children grow into amazing children who love him.

I believe I have made a mistake, though, trying to hide her giftedness. I should be proud of the gifts God has given her, and I should not be embarassed about them at all. One funny thing about both her and Jack is that they were gestated on Shakespeare: Jack when I taught it and read it aloud, and Molly Ann when I studied theory in a Shakespeare class at UTA. I believe Molly absorbed the drama: she is a force that demands attention and recognition. She loves to paint, to write words, to color and to learn knew things. She is also very dramatic: a trait she gets from me. She whimpers and cries when she wants anything, and she throws herself around like a great Shakespearean actress, like Lady McBeth or Gertrude from Hamlet. I LOVE IT. And, I love that God has blessed us with the treasure that is Molly Ann. I know every child is a gift from God. It's just Molly is mine, and I see that she is a little different, and special in surprising ways that make my heart swell and warm. She is absolutely a blessing to me.

A February Christmas Poem

One different byproduct of my life is poetry. I was going to throw away my gradebook for TCC, but I found this poem that I want to record before I chunk the gradebook. I find things I write a lot at weird times--I should really get a journal and staple it to me. But, alas, I cannot. Here it is, reworked a bit:

Christmas to me

Christmas to me isn't the beginning or the ending,
But it is miraculous!
The creator and king--tiny and helpless,
Held in the hands of the created.
To unbelieving hearts, it is downright perverse that a King would stoop to save.
He became so vulnerable, his infant head pulsed with life.
His mother, not more than a child herself,
Cuddling the one whom the seas obey.
Yet, he could not form a word,
Only gurgle a quiet plea for warmth or milk or comfort.
A woman--a girl really,
deciphering his every need.
A man, full of belief, but unsure of his role
as much as any new father is.
For that unmarked day in history brought:
A cure for the incurable,
Hope for the growing dispair,
A savior, whose sacrifice began as he emerged in a quiet stable in Bethlehem,
And as God filled his sweet new lungs with breath.