Happy Birthday, Scooter Pie!

It’s been an emotional week for me, y’all. My baby turned 4 on Sunday, and my diva graduated from kindergarten this morning. And I can’t believe how blessed I am, and how much God has changed our lives since bringing these three crazy little girls to me two years ago. It seems like a lifetime ago.

Here’s Scooter the day we met her. She was 20 months old.

See that look of confusion and discontentment on her face? Yeah, that’s all we saw for 3 or 4 months. Scooter was so upside down emotionally that she had tantrums several times a day. Food was pretty much the only thing that made her happy. I don’t think that she was starved as a baby, but I think that people gave her food to shut her up or pacify her. So. Screamed all the time.

Except every now and then I would tickle her under the chin, and she had the most incredibly delightful laugh that you’ve ever heard. Just magic. And I would thank God for giving me a little glimpse into what could be.


But Big Daddy and I were so discouraged. We fell in love with Pooh and Tinkerbell almost immediately, but Scooter wasn’t letting us get close to her. One night we lay in bed and cried and prayed and wondered what on earth we were going to do. And as an immediate answer to prayer, the next day the tantrums lessened to the point where we could see a little light at the end of the tunnel.

The real turning point came when I stopped working full-time and took Scooter out of daycare. I kept the big girls in daycare until they started big school, so that maybe Scooter and I could work things out. And we did. And what I realized is this: Until then, my baby had never realized that we were her family. Why would she? We were just another house to live in. We took her to daycare and left her all day long. But once she and I were able to spend 24/7 together, she let those walls down and decided to trust us. And things have never been the same.

Here she is in the courthouse on the day of her adoption.

Now, my Scoot still has a tantrum every now and then. But that’s what kids do. But now we’re talking once or twice a week instead of once or twice an hour. And when I tell her to knock it off, she does it. And I can handle that.
So. Happy 4th Birthday to my Scooter. She loves to sing. She loves to dance. She wants to be just like her big sisters. She tells me she loves me 40 times a day.

She runs screaming to the door when her daddy comes home. She loves, loves, loves her Grammy and Grandaddy. And she still loves food. But she doesn’t throw fits about it any more.