Worry not, dear homeschool mom.

Yesterday, Jayla found a notebook of hers from way back in the day when she was just a sugary little gumdrop of a button nosed thing. Oh my shimmering stars. We laughed and laughed flipping through the pages of her Most Important Notes and Serious Drawings. Then my heart strings tugged and pulled and squeezed and ached at the small girl she once was, the one time has mercilessly ushered away, the one I have to work hard to conjure up in my mind's eye now. It was one of those genuine laughter through the tears type of moments. 

I mean. Those HEARTS. Peep those hearts. The shape, the scribbley coloring, the shape! And then the shape. It's all just too much. I {heart} the shape of her hearts! 

And what we have here is a perfectly healthy representation of the family unit at the time. Hairless Jayla in the middle, her identical sized bald Mom to her right, and a much smaller version of chrome dome Dad on her left. Then, her wee little brothers, Onyx, Tyden and Stryder are floating, insulated by hearts in space like sibling satellites waiting to be invited into The Big Lumpy Heart Where The Primary Family People Reside. (((((ALL))))) the therapists would agree, this girl had it figured out.  

Then there is a blank page 20, not to be confused with page 02. 

I can tell because it's right before 21. 

Here she was talking "ol obout Nana" in 2009...

...just before olso mentioning ol about Grandpa.

And on page 26, a tribute to her brother Stryder who is her best fren. Hee wots to sllepeg in her bed. She likes snofllarse. And again, Stryder is her Dest frend. Oh, how she LOVES her blakites. Plus, she likes to tok to her Dest frend, which we've established is Stryder....her dest frend.  

When I look at her now, I see such a smart, articulate, eloquent, sharp witted, talented, expressive, HIGHLY capable girl who is steadily working her way toward becoming my peer and I think to myself I needn't have worried myself so much when I was a younger home educator about correcting her p's and q's, dotting all her i's and crossing every one of her t's. She was getting there. In time. With exposure and practice and ample room for freedom of expression she has developed into a fine young woman whose broad intelligence shines. And when all else fails, the girl can rock a spell check like nobody's business.  

So these days, when my 6 year old dolly girl writes me a note like this, I'm learning to not fret over it because Clover, you ore the best too. And I also love you. Yes, baby. I will rede to you...

A spotted dog with flight ears. Perfection.