Getting to Know Em

The thought occurred to me recently that my attention tends to focus more on my younger kids and not on Emily. A sad image of her wanting to feel accepted but not finding full acceptance in my relationship with her flashed through my brain. That may be jumping to conclusions but if there's any bit of truth to that then I'm not serving my daughter the way that I should.

So tonight I took her out on a date with that in mind and we had a wonderful time. We got some ice cream and then drove down to Orem to see Dad. We talked the whole way there and back and here's what I learned about Em:

• She felt a sense of accomplishment that the family enjoyed her work in the "Mall" yesterday.
• She likes to take care of the younger kids on Sunday.
• She likes to make her brothers laugh by being silly when playing legos.
• She knows that Claire loves it when she plays dress-up with her.
• When she draws a picture, the plans it out in her head first by picking the options of what to draw, then visualizing it and then just drawing what's in her head.
• She likes to plan things
• She did a good job in accomplishing her goal of reading all of Matthew in the Bible.
• She likes to see Ben laugh when Mom plays with him.
• She is very responsive to feedback (I challenged her at the beginning of the drive back to practice listening to people and asking questions and immediately she asked my question after question about my youth.)

I often say that Emily is a remarkable person but I think you can see some of the evidence of her character above. I love her and am so glad that she's in our family.