My dear N,
Last weekend we began celebrating your 8th birthday. Our family doesn't do huge birthday blowouts, but we make up for that by extending the partying in little snippets for days on end. Tomorrow will be your final 8th birthday celebration with a couple of your girl friends.
Every year when I write your birthday note, I look back at photographs of you from when you were an infant, a toddler, a preschooler, a kindergartener, and every year it feels ever more that I am seeing someone I don't remember. Those days have slipped past in a blur of busyness.
My heart yearns for the times when you were smaller, when I could plop your entire self in my lap, when you weren't up to my clavicle in height. And yet my heart yearns to know more of you as you are now and as you will become throughout the coming years.
When I was a girl, (like most kids do) I often didn't feel that my parents loved me. They didn't show love as affectionately as what I felt I needed at the time (or perhaps they just didn't give into my every whim).
Now as your momma, I worry that I am the same way, that I come across as too critical, too naggy, too grouchy. If you like you can blame your little brothers since they do take whatever stores of patience I may have with your name expressly written upon them and use them up before a quarter of the day is through.
But you should also know that I am so, so glad you, of all girls in this world, are my daughter. That I always adore you, even when we are fighting about doing your homework or practicing piano. That you were the key that first unlocked doors of my heart I didn't know existed and began filling them up with love.
My love always, dear girl.
Momma
Last weekend we began celebrating your 8th birthday. Our family doesn't do huge birthday blowouts, but we make up for that by extending the partying in little snippets for days on end. Tomorrow will be your final 8th birthday celebration with a couple of your girl friends.
Every year when I write your birthday note, I look back at photographs of you from when you were an infant, a toddler, a preschooler, a kindergartener, and every year it feels ever more that I am seeing someone I don't remember. Those days have slipped past in a blur of busyness.
My heart yearns for the times when you were smaller, when I could plop your entire self in my lap, when you weren't up to my clavicle in height. And yet my heart yearns to know more of you as you are now and as you will become throughout the coming years.
When I was a girl, (like most kids do) I often didn't feel that my parents loved me. They didn't show love as affectionately as what I felt I needed at the time (or perhaps they just didn't give into my every whim).
Now as your momma, I worry that I am the same way, that I come across as too critical, too naggy, too grouchy. If you like you can blame your little brothers since they do take whatever stores of patience I may have with your name expressly written upon them and use them up before a quarter of the day is through.
But you should also know that I am so, so glad you, of all girls in this world, are my daughter. That I always adore you, even when we are fighting about doing your homework or practicing piano. That you were the key that first unlocked doors of my heart I didn't know existed and began filling them up with love.
My love always, dear girl.
Momma
1 comment:
What sweet, sweet pictures of N getting bigger a little at a time... Happy birthday, N!
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