you are seeing a person

If I remember correctly, it all started with sunscreen. Liv needed to keep covered from the sun. She despises the cold chill of sunscreen on her skin, especially her face.
At the farmer's market, a woman was selling bonnets like the ones they wore long ago....and on 'Little House on the Prairie'. Liv LOVED hers. She would wear it every chance she got.
After many comments about her hat and 'Little House', we started to read "Little House in the Big Woods". She was hooked. Everything having to do with how settlers managed to exist daily was absorbed and sought after. Their clothing. Their tools. Their homes. Their toys.
We soon started to read "Farmer Boy" without much success or interest because Liv wanted to get on to another book with Laura in it. So we began "Little House on the Prairie". She was entranced by the journey and the loss and return of Jack, the dog. She was intrigue by the building of the house and the digging of the well. But when the Natives were introduced, she was hooked. She was aghast at how Ma 'spoke' about these people. She would bring it up in the car drilling me about how Ma could feel that way and how the First Nations people had lived at this time. She wanted to know MORE. We read about Sacajawea and that night could hear drumming and singing coming from the reserve close to our house. She stayed up late listening at the window asking me to describe how the people were dancing , what they were wearing, what they were saying. We've now been reading books, building popsicle stick longhouses, doing crayon rubbings of the petroglyphs close to our home, learning about the symbols behind each of the animals, creating stories for our toilet paper roll totem poles, listening to music, and taking in anything that may possibly have some form of information about the Indigenous People of our area. She talks nonstop about how she wants to find a longhouse, how she thinks that the First Nations peoples have been treated unjustly and asks about the myths and reminds me "How Robin got his Redbreast" when we see one of the little birds hopping by.

I am so pleased that she is able to find what interests her. What lights her fire of learning and is free to let it burn. I see her growing into who SHE is meant to be and it is humbling to be able to watch her growth and the evolving person that she is.