Hey There Funny Face

My darling girl, 

You are a delight.  You make me laugh, and I return the favor.  We have SO. MUCH. FUN together.  Sweet baby, it is still hard to believe that you're mine, and that I get to keep you until I ship you off to college.  Or trade school.  Or the Olympics.  Or whatever.

I want to remember these days.  I want to celebrate these mornings, and these silly, sweet, play times.  Sometimes I forget that these moments are brief, fleeting.  Sometimes I forget that I'll miss these times and I get absorbed into my dishes and my phone and my laundry and and and...  

I've never been more grateful for my camera, more thankful for my the morning light that pours in our front window.  The pictures of you, there's never enough of them.  That *might* be the reason for the 81-page 12" photobook I just had printed.  Some call it excessive.  I call it a sampling.

You're fabulous, my child.  You're always hungry and you're always doing and going.  You're my princess, even if you eat like a grown man.  Thank you for working so hard to reach out to me, for helping me to grab these moments and claim them as my own.  To stop all of the other multi-tasking and just sit in the moment.  Grab a few shots, or a few hundred, and then spend out the rest of the moment, enjoy the laughter, and share in the zerberts.

Thank you, sweet pea.  I know I mess up every day, but you give me so much grace.  You love me so well. You love everyone so well, particularly strangers, who you love to wave at and shout at and smile real big to.  Your sweet smile is one of my favorite things about you.  "Is she always so happy?" strangers ask, and I have to tell them yes, yes you are.

Oh, and that weirdo lady in the pharmacy yesterday who wanted to take your picture but left her phone in her car?  Yeah, I wouldn't have let that happen.  But I can definitely understand the compulsion.

<3 M.