Because Fairness Is Everything: The Excellentness of E

E says, "Are you going to write a post about my excellentness?" I tell her I will when I have a good example of her excellentness. She says, "Are you saying I'm not excellent? When am I not excellent?!" I tell her she is excellent. She says that post doesn't even show M being excellent. I tell her I will write a post about her excellentness.

Here are some ways that E is excellent:

She and her best friend G play for hours and hours and have only had one fight ever. Their longest play date was 26 hours. They play Animal Rescue Center, and write reports about famous women, and make friendship bracelets, and spy, and solve mysteries. They are interested in the Red Sox and the Obamas and how the world works. They are most excellent girls with a most excellent best friendship (and G even has an awesome mom!).

While E has had best friends before (K, A, E), she used to have trouble with casual encounters. Once, when M was seven and E was three, we were in the playground at Holland Park, and M had made a new friend in about three seconds, as usual. E, after various playing with parents, turned to me and said "M always makes a friend. I want to make a friend. How do I make a friend?" It was one of the most poignantly self-aware things I've heard from a child, so we talked about how to figure out who might want to play, and how to start playing alongside them, and how to ask "Do you want to play with me?" Unfortunately, E picked some very young children to approach, and they, not being ready for playing together, ignored her, but she was very pleased to be learning how to do it.

Well, those days are over. Yesterday I took E to her first gymnastics class. She has been incredibly excited for months, with excitement mounting in the last hours. On the way, she asked, again, if the teacher would be nice and what they would do, and again I told her that I hoped so and I didn't know, and then she asked if she would make a friend. I said, "I bet you will. You always make friends these days," and, sure enough, when M and I arrived a few minutes early to watch the last bit of class, E was attached at the hip and hand-in-hand with a girl with long black braids, whom we'd never seen before. E is excellent at making friends.

In the last few months, E taught herself headstand (yes, it was my New Year's resolution, but apparently it was hers too, or so she told me, and she succeeded, so take that as you will). She wrote and published her first book which has nine chapters, a title page, a dedication (to her grandparents), and a blurb on the back, and is sewn together (all six first edition copies) with blue thread. These are some excellent things that E has done.

OK, I'm going to hit Publish Post, but I may be back if E wants me to record any further excellentness on her part.