Happy birthday, darling girl!

Once upon a time, there was a woman and a man...
... they were happy together, working and playing and spending their days together...
... but something was missing...
... they needed a little person to join them... to make them more of a family.
They thought they'd have a baby...
and so they did...

A couple of weeks late, on July 27... after picking the greenbeans in the garden, the woman
went into labor, in the middle of the morning. They went to the hospital, checked into the birthing center, and had a perfectly textbook labor.
In the early evening hours, a fierce storm rolled in... lightening and thunder and a drought bursting rain... and while the radio played 'brown eyed girl'... a little girl joined our family.



With nary a cry, she was born with wide opened eyes. The expression between her father and the tiny little girl was exactly this "I've come to change your life!" Eight pounds even, exactly 20 inches long, exquisitely perfect in every way.

Life turned in that moment that we became parents for the first time.
To imagine a world where she was not ours was not then, and is not now, possible.

Now lest you think I'm about to tell you that life was easy, let me hasten to say...

We didn't much sleep at all... ever again. Not the normal thing... where after a few months a child sleeps through the night... noooooo.... our child learned to sit between us in bed and pry our eyes open and say "you've sleeped enuff"... and she didn't cry nor was she angry or ill... she was just simply a '20 hour a day' child... Indeed, on the rare occasions when we did not pass out when she slept, we would 'capture the moment'...



She was a kid...
With an attitude...

and a style all her own...

She did things her way...

She was a country girl...

and a beach baby...

And she grew up with her own unique perspective...



Then, she began to grow up...
and travel... with her friends....

and have parties,,,

complete with dental hygiene...
She was a water baby from the start...


but it sort of took on a life of it's own...



and so, sometimes, we held our breathe... and let her go..



and it always turns out ok...


Also, from the start... she had in mind what she wanted to do with her life....



and worked hard to make it happen... with good friends along to make the hard road bearable..

Hard work and determination pay off... closing in on a dream makes even the very tired smile brightly...
This week, I realized, full well, that 24 years have passed... a grown woman is now my child...
a grown woman that I admire and respect. She still hugs like my little girl, and seeing her sometimes still takes my breath away. Her father and I are proud of where she's gone... and who she is.

We welcome to our family a man that she met 'on the water'...
who has stolen her heart and placed a ring on her hand...
who makes her smile...





a beautiful extension of our family and our love. We were 24 when she was born... 24 years ago... and we wish her, in her life, the joyful fullness that she has brought to us and for all of her dreams to come true.