Maeve, Day 1

Dear Maeve,

Happy birthday sweetheart! 6 is a big year – you started kindergarten  and you are so good at the big sister thing we got you ANOTHER little sister!

I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you every day. You are a smart, adventurous, curious, compassionate and loving little girl. I say little even though you really aren’t little anymore.

Each birthday for you is so, so happy for me and daddy, but also a bit sad. You are our little peanut butter. You made us parents, and as you get older there is less and less of baby Maeve and more and more of grown-up Maeve. Sometimes we’d just like to slow things down a bit, have you be our baby a little longer, but that isn’t how it works. And so we watch you grow up, get bigger and stronger and we get prouder and prouder with every day that goes by.

Mama and Maeve

I feel sometimes like you and I grew up together. I didn’t so much know what I was doing when you were born and the first couple of months were tough as we figured each other out. You looked so wise with those deep blue-grey eyes, like you knew exactly what was going on and were disappointed to have gotten a dud of a mother in the parent lottery. But we stuck with it, and six years later I am so, so happy that you are my daughter and I am your mother.

When parents talk about having babies they always speak about how unprepared they were for just how much they would love their child. Like floodgates of love opened that they didn’t even know existed. I felt, and feel, that too for you and your sisters. But what I was truly unprepared for is how much you would love me in return. How you’d bring me apples when I was sick from being pregnant with your sisters. How you give me hugs when you know I’m feeling down. How you crawl into bed with us some nights and snuggle up close (no matter what daddy says, don’t ever stop doing that please!). How you draw me beautiful pictures of rainbows where red is the biggest stripe because you know it is my favorite color.

You have an extraordinary capacity to give, and I’ve found in life that it is by giving that you let yourself receive in return what you need- compassion, love, chocolate. You can give too much- it does happen- but you’ll find the universe will come back around and make it right somehow. Just know how much we love you, how proud we are of you, how we are here for you every step of the way as you keep growing up into the remarkable person I already see inside of you.

And the Daddy guy too.

Happy Birthday baby girl! Now go eat a cupcake!

Love,

Mama

My Fairy Princess Today