With mild eyes agaze, and lips ready to speak, ...

Her studyblr serves as a visual diary of the work she puts into studying, and looking over it makes her proud of how far she's come.

The salesman presented me with a dizzying array of choices, and I was hard pressed to choose between them.

[> A transgender person is going to a lot of trouble to insist on adopting a particular gender. Why wouldn't 'they' want to adopt the usual pronoun?] Separate issues. Some cisfolk might also prefer 'they'.