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It’s hard to believe this tiny, enthusiastic child is 12. I thought she’d stay a child forever, but now I’m starting to see glimpses of adolescence.

She’s very interested in the idea of Romance. Her eyes light up whenever she sees signs of affection between her parents or if she sees a couple in real life or on a movie. She told me that she keeps telling two of her classmates that “they should date when they turn 16.” Occasionally she’ll bring up romance or crushes in conversation or her ears will perk up if she hears about someone getting married or falling in love. She has random periods of being extremely distressed that she doesn’t know if any boys in her class have crushes on her, but she is usually only distressed for a few minutes at a time.

Nicole continues to find bugs fascinating and adorable. It always makes me smile to hear her passionately arguing with someone that insects are adorable. When she thinks of attractive bugs, one of the first examples she mentions is locusts. Sometimes she gets out one of her books on insects and goes page by page extolling the virtues of each bug in an attempt to sway her audience. She is also totally ok with insects eating each other. She can be talking about how adorable a grasshopper is one moment and hoping a spider enjoys eating it the next. She started a terrarium of bugs she had found in the yard and as she added new bugs to the container she would often remark how it would be ok with her if they ate each other. It’s uncanny how she can switch sides so regularly between adoring and wanting to protect a creature and wondering if another creature might enjoy eating it.

Her interest in bugs and romance collide when she starts to imagine or project romance onto her creatures. Sometimes she’ll ask if I think two particular bugs will fall in love or she will say “I hope they marry each other.” She was disappointed to find out that all her Millipedes are females and is eager to introduce a new love interest into the habitat at some point. The idea that these little creatures are crawling around having millions of love stories and marrying each other just thrills her.

Nicole is still enamored with the 80s. She is constantly belting out 80s tunes no matter what she’s doing. Her ideal hair style involves lots of teasing to make it big. She likes side ponytails and one day would love to have an 80s style hair poof. She says people today are too lazy with their style.

For the first time in her life, Nicole has started to feel and express embarrassment. All her life she has been completely genuine and never cared what anyone thought or felt about her, but now she has a new awareness of how others might see her. She worries that people don’t think she’s attractive or that her voice is ugly. She will now get very upset sometimes if she hears me talking about her or telling a story about something she did. This might sound like a bad thing, but in some ways it’s also a good thing too, because her lack of self awareness causes her to alienate potential friends. She still struggles to see other’s point of view, but is starting to realize that other people have thoughts or feelings about her.

Nicole does not like to go places or see people very much. When the quarantine started, she was very excited about the prospect of not going anywhere. After more than a month of not leaving the house other than to play outside or ride around the neighborhood, she still has no interest in going anywhere. While some of her siblings got super excited to see their classmates in Zoom or Hangout meetings, Nicole had no interest. I did talk her into a few online meetings, but I couldn’t convince her to participate in any of the end of the year events with her class or go to the reverse parade at her school.

Nicole has had an interest in diseases for many years. Some diseases she has thought about, talked about, and sung songs about the most through the years are leprosy, the black plague, and rabies. As one might imagine, living through a pandemic for her has been both intriguing and terrifying.

Nicole finished her last year of elementary school online. She does ok academically. Her tendency is to race forward without stopping to actually learn how to do the assignments and then be resistant to one on one coaching. I’ve also learned that she doesn’t like to learn the concepts from the videos because she “hates the way the guy on the video sounds.” As you can imagine, crisis/online school with her was not my favorite. I still can’t handle the fact that this child is entering middle school next year. Luckily she attends a charter school designed for autistic children because the idea of sending into the public Jr. High would terrify me.

She has a love/hate relationship with her siblings. Her sisters are still her best friends and she says she wants to marry a boy like her big brother Isaac because he is so kind. She likes to think of ways to make her siblings happy and regularly shares things with them. She really likes to be part of the sibling group and gets super upset whenever she feels like they’re not including her. Unfortunately, she also does things that alienate her siblings at times. She is often really loud in the mornings when her siblings want it to to be quiet. She often talks too much without giving her conversational partners enough turns to speak. She also reacts very loudly with yelling and crying instead of working out disputes.

Nicole is especially interested in Asian culture and treats. Some of her favorites are Pocky, YanYan, Ramune, and Popin Cookin. She loves to play computer games and watch videos of people making crafts, doing experiments, or growing plants. She loves to listen to music and sing at the top of her lungs. She likes to create things.

Nicole is a moody eater. She tends to love one food and want to eat it all the time; one day she asked how much mushrooms to eat a day. then suddenly refuse to eat it at all. She will also be super particular about weird things like the color of the spatula used to cook something, the store brand of cheese, and the dishes she eats on or the stove that cooked the food.

Lately she’s been asking me if I’m glad I had her or if she’s too much work. She asks if she’s worth it, if she’s worth all the extra effort she requires. I always tell her that I absolutely am glad and that I would never wish I didn’t have her. She might often take more work than all her other siblings combined, but she also brings a tremendous amount of joy, love and laughter to my life. She brings so much love and light to our family that I can’t even imagine life without her.

Here is what I wrote about her last year.