Le petit artiste, and a ball of emotions

I'm hoping Crannie has received some artistic genes (that are NOT due in part to either Dan or myself, as the extent of our drawing skills is stick figures-- and Dan is even worse at them than I am!) from other people in our families. She is so very into drawing, painting, coloring, crafting, and basically anything artsy. She tells us all the time that she is the equivalent of a 'baking talent' and an 'art talent' fairy in the Pixie Hollow world.

I look at her drawings, and think they are just perfect. She is getting better and better at drawing things by herself. She loves coloring books, but also loves inventing her own things to draw on construction paper. She gets so detailed too, and loves drawing houses with clouds, tulips, and of course all of us standing in the front. The other day she drew a picture of a hot air balloon that I thought was really great.

******

Completely unrelated, but Cran has also been a ball of emotions as of recently. I don't remember exactly how I felt when I was little when it was somebody else's birthday and not mine, but maybe I also felt the way Maddie did this week? She gets so happy for Faith and fuels Faith's excitement about things, but at the same time she then gets teary-eyed and asks me when it is going to be her birthday. For weeks now, she has been so excited to talk to Faith about her party, but in the same sentence then she wants to talk about her birthday also. I do get a little frustrated, and I hope that I handled it all OK with her in wanting to make sure that she understands that everybody has their own special day, and it has been Faith's time to celebrate her special day.

I know she means well in everything she does though, and I know how guilty she gets at feeling the way she has been feeling. She is totally my child when it comes to the way she handles her emotions, and I feel even worse for her about that. There are times that she'll get quiet, and when you ask her what she is wrong, she tells you "nothing" and stays quiet like that for a little while. When you tell her, "Cran, you can tell us" it always spills over into a huge ball of emotions about the littlest things, and then the guilt that she gets for expressing herself through crying. My little Cran. She gets very upset with herself about feeling certain ways, and then she'll apologize and apologize. I know she always has good intentions in everything that she does though, and I tell her that.