our daughter

[kip_w]

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When Sarah uses words and phrases that are oddly familiar, I know she's my daughter. Once in a while, i see signs of Cathy in her too.

For instance, on the floor around her bed (also known as the living room floor -- she says she'll sleep in her bunk bed when her room is finalized from the paint job), she has little stacks of books, categorized by series. These stacks are carefully and neatly squared off and parallel to the wall. On top of each one is a little sheet from a memo pad on which she has written the series title for the books.

It's true that I have kept lists of things like that over the years as well, but Sarah wasn't around in the heyday of my organizing, so I can only conclude that she's being her mother's daughter when she does this. God, I love this kid.
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Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I didn't pile the books on the floor. I lined them up on the shelf and penned my own classification numbers on the lower spines.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Mine are on shelves, but I do have unread series all piled together up there with a list of what order the books are in -- currently Alastair Reynold's books. Maybe she'll be a librarian!

[meggins.livejournal.com]

Gotta admit, also thought "librarian in the making."

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Perhaps she's feeling a trifle insecure about being disposessed of her own room, or perhaps she's discovering the sense of Control that comes with being able to write down lists of the Names of things. (At least, I think those may be reasons for why I do stuff like that.)

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It's always possible she feels insecure. We make sure she knows we love her and will stay with her, but (possibly as a result of being adopted and having lived in an orphanage for her first year) she still likes reinforcement. I think the sense of control is there too.

She wasn't dispossessed, though. When Cathy's mom visited last year, we put a Queen bed in the guest room next to Sarah's bedroom. She became immediately enamored of that bed and could barely wait for Grandma to leave before she started claiming it. She slept on it for a few months, claiming her old mattress smelled bad. Then she migrated downstairs, first to the sofa, and then to a neat pile of bedding on the floor (amid a sea of her junk). When we got the bunk bed and I put it up, she slept on it for two, maybe three nights before returning to the downstairs living room floor.

She told me she likes being there, because she doesn't have as far to go when she wakes up to be near the TV. I think she also likes being close to our bedroom. I do sometimes think it would be nice to have the downstairs back at night, though. Those two or three nights were lovely. I could walk around with the light on and turn the TV on if I wanted.

Why do I suspect she'll find a reason not to sleep in her bedroom when everything's arranged the way it's supposed to be?