knees and toes

Sydney's knees look like...well I just can't think of an analogy or simile that quite captures them. Like her mama don't love her? Like she's been to war? The funny thing is that her little knees make me really happy right now.

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She has always been praised for being a pretty little girl and lately with her obsession with twirling and pink and "best friends" I started to get a little worried that our compliments may be leading her down the wrong path. I don't want her to be one of the many girls I encountered in my high school teaching, so caught up in the need to be physically beautiful that they sold their sweet souls to the devil (sometimes he goes by the alias, "boyfriend").

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During our last trip to Seattle my sweet brother in law kept going on about Sydney's athleticism, which I'd kind of taken for granted and I realized my little sporty spice needs more praise in that arena. Last week she caught herself as she fell from a merry go round and hung on with her legs swung out yelling, "Mom, help!" and her knees skipped a nasty bump. I was pretty impressed by her strength. On our hikes this weekend I was blown away by her stamina as she ran and ran ahead of me down the twisting trail. On the return trip of our trek, she was so amped up by mommy's crazy compliments all the way out that she started running and kept falling, thus the knees of violence.

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When I was a little girl I played soccer on a boys team because we lived in the sticks and I am apparently as old as the hills and there were no girls soccer teams. My coaches often praised me for being brave. Looking back, I think I may have been a complete wimp over my soccer scrapes and bruises, but their praise made me long to be brave and strong, so I became braver and stronger. I'm realizing right now the power of my words for this little girl and I want her to long to be kind and strong and wise, not necessarily pretty because that's something that just is or isn't and she can't do a thing about it and trying can be such a waste of brain and soul space.

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Her first real friend (besides her beloved cousins) is a boy and among a million other things, I'm so thankful for their friendship because he is never going to tell her she's pretty or that her dress is lovely or that her sparkle shoes light up so nice next to the slide. He wants her to run fast fast and ride his new bike and climb the tallest slide. I'm hoping that his innocent love for her is also planting the seeds for a different kind of confidence later.
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All of this to say that I'm so proud of my strong and fast little girl and those crazy scraped and bruised knees that prove she's living her 3-year old life to its summertime fullest and not worrying one bit about how pretty she may or may not be.

Now if telling Elias he's such a good sleeper and that he's so brave about his teeth coming in will work this same fulfilling magic...

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p.s. The second half of my post title is in reference to my toe that I broke getting out of a lawn chair today. Somehow telling about it didn't end up fitting in here. Alas, maybe God is telling me to lay on the floor and play with my babies more.