Meera Turns 6

Today Meera Grace turned six years old. It seems that in a blink of an eye she went from being born, to being six. How could six years possibly have passed by so quickly?

This girl is all sweet surprises. She was a surprise from the start, unexpectedly and perfectly completing our family. And in six short years she’s packed in surprise after surprise after surprise. She’s made us pause, reconsider everything, and she’s changed us. For the better. A Girlie Girl to the Nth degree (who would have ever thought it?! — that we — Braydon and me — would have a pink-loving, dress-and-skirt-only-wearing, sit-quietly-for-hours-playing, all frills-all-the-time, stereotypical-in-so-many-ways-GIRL!). The way that she’s made us re-think everything we thought we knew is the biggest surprise of all. She fundamentally challenges us, and she foundationally shifts us — all with flair and fashion and a feathery lightness about her that makes her hard to not adore. She has taught me more than any other person on this planet ever has. She changes us, and we wind up better for it.

Meera is all sweetness and grace, yet a powerful willful challenger of the status quo. She’s keenly aware of all around her, yet easily enveloped in her own highly imaginative mind; she refuses to wear pants 99% of the time, yet is the fastest runner in her kindergarten class; she’s all sugar, yet can dish out the spice. We could not be more proud of who she is.

As is our tradition, she got to choose dinner. She chose a Brazilian Steakhouse (churrascaria) restaurant that she loves. It was Classic Meera: dressed in pink, and wearing a skirt (of course), with perfectly matching shoes, carrying a handbag and a doll (a doll with matching outfit, no less), the girl chowed down on a ridiculously large amount of steak — the more rare (pink!!!!) the better — and she delighted in having her “6” candle placed atop a pile of mashed potatoes instead of on a cake. That’s our girl!

For her birthday she wanted two things: 1) an American Girl doll, and 2) anything-and-everything Calico Critters. MorMor made sure she got #1. We went with MorMor and MorFar for our first-ever trip to an American Girl store, where Meera got to pick out her first official American Girl doll. So the Johnson-McCormicks have now officially entered that world (Kyle and Owen remarked, “Wow, this store is for Meera what Dicks Sporting Goods is for us!” Yes, precisely.). Meera picked out her doll, and about 100 items that Makayla (the name Meera chose for her) most definitely needed, and in the end Meera could not have been more pleased with the whole entire thing. American Girl Doll sidenote: I was surprised — as in, jaw-dropping shocked — as I watched Meera confidently and self-assuredly pick out her doll… a doll that was not pale skinned and straight-blonde-haired, as I would have expected… but instead a doll that would be the exact mixture of her and her brothers — a doll with light creamy brown skin and black curly hair — a doll that would be the look-alike of many black-white-biracial kids). In retrospect, of course, I should not have been surprised by it. But I was. Of course. Because my girl always surprises me.

Her end-of-the-bed present this morning was an embarrassingly large amount of Calico Critters anything-and-everything. We know her, and we know she’ll spend endless hours playing with those toys. So — surprisingly enough — we don’t even feel guilty about spoiling her with an over-abundance of everything she wanted.

Of course — surprise! surprise! — the real hit of the day was her brothers’ gifts. After all that American Girl and Calico Critters frenzy, it was her brothers’ gifts that really hit the sweet spot. Carefully chosen, Owen gave her a Barbie with hair she can comb-and-brush-and-spray-and-color-and-curl-and-straighten, and Kyle gave her a Tinkerbell that can really fly. Those boys know her. Nothing about her is a surprise to them. Nothing whatsoever. Which, is, yet again, another surprise to the three of them’s mother.

She chose mango-orange ‘push-up’ ice cream novelties for me to bring for her kindergarten class birthday treat at school. She didn’t want cupcakes because “all the kids bring cupcakes on their birthday.” So, she chose ice cream — her favorite food on earth. And she wanted me to read a book to them — which I did — and she chose one of her favorites, The Berenstain Bears’ and Too Much Birthday. And she, and her friends, all loved it.

She was a beaming and thrilled new 6-Year-Old today, and throughout the day she kissed and hugged me many, many times and whispered things that mothers dream of their children saying to them. Things like, “This is the best birthday ever!”; “Thank you Mommy!”; “You are the best mommy ever!”; “I am so glad I got you as my mommy!”; “You are the best mommy in the whole entire world!” etc. It is ridiculous how sweet and adorable and generous she is.

She is an abundance of riches and gifts to us. She is nothing we expected and everything we needed. She’s the icing on the cake, the butter in the mashed potatoes, the pink in the steak. She’s our girl and even though she’s six now, she’ll always be our baby.

Happy Birthday Meera Grace!