This is the most recent photo I've taken of Selah. She's currently over four feet tall, weighs around fifty pounds, and wears a size 2 shoe. She's modeling a new dress that was handmade in Nicaraugua from her Grandma Yayu (Susan). She was quite insistent on Winnie (the pug in the background) staying put and being a part of the experience.
Here is a video of Selah dancing with her new dress on... This video was taken approximately two weeks ago. If you can hear the audio, the song is "The River is Flowing" by Sky Cries Mary (a Seattle band). Selah has quite a diverse list of songs that are favorites, and typically she wants to hear the current favorite a minimum of between four and sixty times per day.
Currently, Selah attends Waters of Life Charter School. In her first grade class of 18 children, she is currently learning Japanese and French, Hand Crafting Skills (currently this is knitting), Yoga and Dance Movement, Reading and Story Telling. The Waldorf trained teacher of her class is Megan Cannon -- an angel born to be Selah's first grade teacher. After an exhaustive search of our limited options for her education on this island, Waters of Life opened up like a ray of sunshine from a giant cloud. Miss Megan, as they call her, will be Selah's teacher all the way through grade six. She is truly a beautiful soul, and we couldn't be happier with her fondness for Selah. When we went to our first parent/teacher conference, she began our meeting by taking a big breath, and then broke into soft tears, saying, "Selah is an amazing gift to our class. She has truly the most golden heart." You can imagine that there wasn't a dry eye in the room.
Aside from going to a great school, Selah's major interests are in Star Wars movies, the animated series about a young warrior boy who can 'bend air' called The Avatar, reading and story telling, and drawing. She's quite articulate and deliberate and focused upon whatever she's immersed in, and her imagination continues to amaze us. About one year ago, she began telling Paul and I that she had 10 brothers that only she could see. The list has grown and grown, but rarely does she include any female characters -- those come in the form of her other fascination: Fairies. On and around our very pretty land, she's found nooks and pathways, and she will often disappear for moments at a time, shouting she's found a fairy forest, and she'll be right back. She loves the idea of bridges, as well. I tend to see her dragging large planks of wood from under the house to build bridges over small burms, and using water from the hose, and dug-out crevices to create streams.
Selah talks constantly about being an animal healer or vetrinarian, and I have a feeling that one day soon she's going to bring a lost dog or chicken or wild pig home and swear that it just followed her. She will often make small terrariums out of white 5 gallon buckets, filling them with chunks of black lava rocks, making sure to spritz all the surfaces with water, and then spend four hours trying to catch slimey black salamanders that live under the rocks. These salamanders, she explains, are the good-luck-dragons for the fairies that live on our land. Ah, to be seven again.
Be well, everyone.
Love,
Hope
