Hard work

The thing that is so impressive to me about Lilly is what a hard worker she is. Often times she has to work much harder - sometimes 10 times harder - than other people to learn the same exact things - but the thing is, she does learn it. It amazes me. Her work ethic is so strong. Because things don't come easy, she's never scared of anything new. She looks at new challenges and meets them. She doesn't ever see something and say: "I can't do that" and many times she doesn't even look at us and say "How do I do that?" Instead, she has this internal drive and motivation that she says: "Let me figure out how to do that. And let me practice and give it my all until I get it perfect." She notices everything going on around her, more than the average person, and wants to know everything, learn everything, do everything, experience everything. And most importantly, she wants to do it with a smile on her face (most of the time). When I grow up, I want to be just like Lilly.

Earlier, we went to Target. Just me and my girl, after a fun Halloween party with the little girls in her class. And after going to church, out for bagels, and swimming with daddy this morning. This little girl was kind of exhausted. But she was in a fantastic mood. We parked like a gamillion miles away, but she laughed literally the whole walk to the store - joking around with me, saying the funniest things. She knew exactly what we needed in the store, got a cart, and pushed it around. She helped me pick out what we needed, put everything in the cart, and pushed it back to the front. She patiently stood in a long line, having the best time ever. She loaded everything on the conveyer, paid for it, and took the two big heavy bags, one on each arm, and walked the gamillion miles back to the car, carrying them the whole way, while they were clearly super heavy for her. She never complained, never asked for help (although I offered), was just so proud of herself. We got to the car, and she loaded it up all by herself, got in and put on her own seatbelt, and when we got home she brought it all inside, without any help. No prompting on anything.

I tell her all the time how strong she is, how proud I am, what a hard worker she is. She is so independent, and wants to be. Honestly, I think she could have done the whole thing by herself without me even with her - she is so capable.

Trust me, I worry about everything. But I don't worry about Lilly. She is ready to meet every challenge. I think of Jon and I, and how so many things came easy to us, and how it made us - in some ways - lazy. I don't think I studied much until law school - I didn't need to- and if things were hard, I quit - cross country, tennis, horsebackriding, etc. Lilly doesn't have a quitting instinct in her. Give her a challenge and she'll show you how to beat it, and look beautiful while she does it.