Seven

Her birthday was actually at the beginning of the month, and she recently found a birthday buddy.  I'm just slow and have been busy, hence the late celebration post.

I got told once (not directly, the person doing the telling was telling it on a forum) that personalities are more or less developed by the age of 7 or something to that effect.  If this is the case, then my daughter has my nasty streak which is not something I wanted her to inherit, but fortunately she is a lot nicer than I am most of the time.

I have often described her to others as my "perfect" child (local society's often idiot notion of "perfect", seeing as I use the word to indicate how happy or annoyed I am with something), as she is really cruisy, easygoing, compliant, helpful and frighteningly mature and responsible for someone that age.

We adopted a 5 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel named Angus towards the end of October.  He used to be the baby of a friend's mother, and they are moving to a place that he can't go.  Ru must have overheard me joking with my friend that the dog could be like an early birthday present for her as she has since decided the dog is hers.

After briefly attaching to me (my theory being that I was an adult female-looking thing and his last human was an adult female) and getting lavished with attention from Ru, he's decided she's his human.

A girl and her doglet

She has been awesome with him, very loving and attentive, grooming him twice a week (she comes and asks me at the beginning and end of the week if today is the day she should brush him, I usually say yes as her timing is usually right), feeding him every night (though she's told me I can do the meat because picking it up with her hands was "gross", I told her she could do it with a spoon if she wanted, I just used my hands as it was quicker for me and I know how many of my handfuls each cat and dog eats, she also went so far as to tell me to "make sure Daddy tells Angus to sit when he gives him his food because he always forgets" when she went for a sleepover at Nanna's), taking him for walks, training him and wanting him to go everywhere with her (she got quite miffed once when I told her he couldn't come to the butcher with us).  The dog sleeps on her bed, much to Josh's consternation (he keeps turfing it off, it simply jumps back on afterwards).  One night when she wanted to sleep in my bed, he skittered frantically around the house at bedtime searching for her, eventually found her on my bed, and after somehow levitating up onto my bed (which he has never been able to do before) and being turfed off (he's not allowed on my bed, the cats sleep on my bed), he stayed down the side of the bed Ru was on all night.  I never have to remind her to aerate her sea monkey tank as she always remembers and reminds Tao (I do still remind them, and they tell me they've done it already).

She is similar with her friends, very conscientious and thoughtful and gentle and kind and caring and loving, and always looking forward to seeing them and wanting me to organise sleepovers and play dates.  She's an awesome help to me when I'm trying to go out as she will often whip her brothers into shape, help Cub find his shoes and used to help him put them on before he finally mastered the art himself, and getting everyone's water bottles together.  She's easy to take out as she merely tells me things ("I'm bored, when can we go?" "I'm hungry," "I'm thirsty," "I'm tired,") without being disruptive, and I really have to remember she is only seven when sometimes things get all too much and she simply bursts into tears instead.

She is artistic and creative and I wish I'd taken photos of her birthday invites before stashing them into envelopes to send to people because she did an awesome job on them, much better than anything I could have come up with (I am not exaggerating).  Perhaps she laterally inherited those talents from my sister and my mother as they definitely don't come from me or her father.  She is always well dressed or at least well coordinated (laterally inherited from Josh's sister, most definitely not from either of us).  She is always cuddly, often coming in to curl up on my lap and telling me she "needs LOTS of cuddles!" and is followed around the house by an adoring spaniel.

She's just awesome.