Happy Birthday to My Beautiful Daughter!

I have to beg my reader's indulgence today to celebrate a personal event.

Today is March 20th, the first day of spring, the International Day of Happiness, and the day my daughter officially becomes a teenager!

She was a strawberry-blond for awhile as a baby

I'm finding myself a bit astonished that I'm actually the mother of a 13-year-old teenager.  Tempus fugit.  I looked this up in a Latin dictionary to get the literal translation and it is "time flees", or "time flies" as in escaping or running away.  That's what it feels like here, that time has escaped and is quickly fleeing.  It seems like such a short time ago that I was a new mother with absolutely no idea what I was doing or even how to get a shower in during the day.  I remember being totally consumed with love for this tiny being.  When she was about 6 days old she was sleeping on her blanket on the floor and my husband and I were watching a special on Sesame Street.  They got to the part where they were talking about when Mr. Hooper died and I burst into tears (in my defense, postpartum hormones were coursing through my body).  My husband said to me, "oh, this is sad isn't it?"  I told him that it didn't have anything to do with what we were watching, I just loved her so much that I was completely overwhelmed.

She's always loved to read and brought so much fun and laughter into our home

I'm so proud of the person she's become, and very excited to continue watching her grow.  She's such a hard-worker and does so well academically.  She is beautiful inside and out.  She has been on a mission trip to help clean up in New Orleans and she has volunteered at the Ronald McDonald House here in Denver.  She's putting aside her fears to travel to Europe on a school trip this coming summer (we'll see how I handle that one!)  I've seen her be very kind to others.  My son has an older friend who started middle school at my daughter's school this year and I watched her go out of her way to talk to him, find out how he was doing, and make him feel comfortable.

I'm glad she's always been willing to put up with a paparazzi mother!

She likes Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, and 80s synth pop.  She's so creative and really good at art, especially drawing (guess that's my husband's genes).  She's definitely my daughter when it comes to reading though.   If we ever can't find her, we know she'll be in some corner curled up with a good book.  

Notice the Iron Maiden shirt?

My beautiful teenager!

So happy birthday, baby.  I know you're not a baby anymore, but never forget:

I'll love you forever,
I'll like for you always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.

 - Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

Mescinna and Markku Korolainen, if you're reading this, thank you for giving us that book and starting our now extensive book collection back in August of 2000.  Last year one of her presents was a second book shelf for her room!