Rebekah turns 5!

5-year-old Rebekah

Yes, our little Indian princess is five! She is growing up in so many ways, but she is still the same sweet girl.

10-days-old

Age 1

Age 2

Age 3

Age 4

Age 5

To me she looks just the same now as when she was born - just a bit more mature each year. =)

"Look! I'm 5, so I'm big enough to climb trees now!"

Rebekah is still our bubbly, outgoing, excitable girl who never runs out of things to say. She gives new meaning to the term "run-on sentence!" When she is speaking, a sentence can be pages long!

Since starting school last December, Rebekah has come a long way in learning how to read. She is becoming quite proficient at reading one and two-vowel words, and is gradually learning many of other "special sounds" that make up the English language. She gets a bit annoyed at all of the broken rules in our language (can't say that I blame her!), but she is always excited to be able to read a short story that is on her level. She has a quick mind, and memorizes things quickly. At this point in her life she is motivated to memorize (scripture and poetry) mostly by the praise she receives for a job well done (or a verse well memorized), but we are trying to instill in her a love for God's Word and a desire to hide it in her heart.

Rebekah loves all things pretty and girly, and would wear pink dresses every single day if I let her (which I don't, mainly because she hasn't quite mastered the modesty issue yet).

Talking to friends on the phone on her birthday

One of her favorite activities is drawing, coloring, and painting. She's actually a pretty good little artist. She is especially good at copying pictures. She loves mixing colors to try and get the specific color she's aiming for, and seems to be learning a lot about that just by trial and error.

She also seems to be very fascinated with how plants grow. We tried planting a little garden in our yard, but all we produced was weeds! Now we're trying a second attempt at some basil, and we'll see what comes of that. One of her favorite books is "The Little Seed."

Rebekah has also had endless questions about heaven recently. Most of her questions I don't have answers for, but she doesn't seem to mind. She is just excited about the prospect of being there someday, and is concerned that her brother and sister make the decision to accept Christ too. Rebekah accepted Christ into her life just a few weeks after her 3rd birthday. Although we didn't make a big deal of it at the time (because we didn't want to give her false hope if her decision wasn't genuine), she continues to refer back to that time as the day she asked Jesus as her Savior. The simplicity, yet depth of her child's faith is often humbling and refreshing. We are learning much through her - often I think that raising her is teaching us more than we are teaching her!

As we told Rebekah today, our prayer for her in the coming year is that she would grow to love God more and more. Those of you who pray faithfully for our family can be praying that with us for our sweet girl.