Emily's turn

I tried to put a slideshow on here, hope it works. Well, I covered Steven and Kirkland so I will move onto Emily.
Emily is our 8-going-on-30 year old. I call her my "mini-me." Sometimes it's just like someone cloned me. Everyone says she favors me the most out of all of them, but I honestly think Jay favors me more. I absolutely adore the sprinkle of freckles across her nose. While she isn't always very photogenic, sometimes when she's sitting there it takes my breath away she's so pretty.
I'm sitting here on this rainy cold ooky day and I'm actually finding it kind of hard to write about Emily. I mean, there's tons I could say about her but I don't know how to say them without either a, sounding like one mean hateful mother; or b, sounding like I have put her on a pedestal and I'm bragging. Also there is this problem that Emily is just like me. Just like me. It's scary. Our relationship is complex and complicated and some of you are thinking, "she's 8." And if that is what you are thinking then it just shows you haven't gotten to know Emily very well.
I guess the bragging first. Emily was a beautiful baby. But my first month with her was ROUGH. Talk about high-maintenance..... I swear I nursed that baby 24 hours a day with occasional breaks. But after that, things evened out and she was just wonderful. Emily shocked us because she was speaking in sentences at 18 months and we were coming off of Kirkland who didn't talk hardly until she was almost 4. So seeing this little thing walking and talking was almost funny to us. She has continued this same path. She is a genius and it is amazing to me sometimes to see how her mind works and how quickly it picks up on things. I was told by one of her teachers, speaking under the promise of anonymity that she had the highest IQ in her grade. I don't know if that was true then (last year) or if it still is, but I could believe it. One thing Emily has that I never did is she LOVES math and is outstanding in it. This past summer she worked Kirkland's whole 3rd grade math workbook for the fun of it. The lowest grade she's ever brought home on her report card was a 96 I think. On top of being ridiculously smart, she has the maturity to go with it. You can carry on an intelligent, mature conversation with Emily. Sometimes I think her mind is more 12 or 13 years old instead of 8. Sometimes its kinda freaky. And then on top of all of this, with everyone (outside of us) she is always polite, quiet, sweet, friendly, helpful, etc, etc, etc. She has never gotten in trouble for behavior, talking, anything. So everywhere she goes, people just love Emily. She's quiet and shy to the point I told her she's starting to look like a snob! :)
Ok, so now for the bad parts where I sound terrible. She can be the most hateful child. Now she would never be that way at school or church or anything, just generally at home. She can be so ugly to me or Kirkland or Jay. Just that teenager attitude that she knows more than we do. She knows exactly how to torture Kirkland...... I realize some of that is typical sibling stuff. She is incredibly strong willed. Has been since she was a baby. We had a whole battle with her when she was about 18 months old over my niece's bottle and that child never did give in. We should've known then. Clothes, for instance. If I pick something out, she's not going to be wearing it. If I pick out 5 of her favorite outfits, she will still change something before she'll wear any of them. The other day we had WW III over the fact that I wanted her to wear a shirt under a shirt.... she was convinced she looked stupid..... I thought she looked so cute I took her picture. And you know what?? Most of the time whatever it is she is battling me over not wanting to wear, she winds up loving it. Not that she would ever admit it. Emily also has this way of talking to me so disdainfully..... she can make me feel like a complete failure as a mother. I have to remember that she is just pushing my buttons and let it go, but it's so hard not to kill her sometimes! :)
Emily loves soccer. She's not the greatest player on the field, but her love for it makes her a good player. The child cannot play offense, but she is great on defense. She loves to play defender and goalie. Her coaches have told me before she really does have a gift for defense, but she needs to continue to work on it. She was on the traveling challenge team last year, but I don't know if she'll do that this year.
She has two very bestest friends, Grace and Maggie. If she could spend every weekend with one or the other, I'm pretty sure she would. She is quite the social butterfly.... she likes to socialize, and be around people, and do things. She is very tender hearted (even if she is hateful!), and simply dotes on animals. She isn't afraid of any of them I don't think, and she is so good with them.
I have a lot of guilt where Emmy is concerned. I know that I expect more out of her and sometimes maybe put too much on her. I trust her too much and count on her too much. She gets so frustrated having to help with Kirkland so much and I understand that, but I still need her help. She helps out more around the house and more with the boys. I probably let her get away with more sometimes just because I have a lot of guilt because I know I put a lot on her. But just like William said this past weekend, I assure you, if Emily doesn't want to do it, she doesn't. So while I do count on her and expect her help alot, she wants to give it most of the time.
She doesn't miss a thing. She is very observant, understanding, and inquisitive. She loves her family very much and was extremely close to JC. In the weeks that JC was in Batesville before she went to Sanctuary, anytime we were up there Emily stayed right by her. She retrieved things for her, fixed her drinks, talked and visited with her....... she just adored her JC. She is so much like her, too. Strong willed, intelligent, kind hearted. She also loved being with my PawPaw. She loves to fish, read (she'll knock out a chapter book a day if we'd let her), scrapbook and make stuff, garden.......
I love her so much. I had to do an in-class poem the other day and I wrote about the shirt war.... I had a line in there that I can't remember exactly and I don't have it in front of me but the gist of it was that it is so hard to raise a child so like oneself..... continually walking a line between bliss and failure. and it really, really is.