Happy birthday to us!

It's been a busy half-spring, here, and between fun things and not-so-fun-things and vacations and a funeral and the adventures of Life on Earth, I've neglected this space. I'll try to be better, especially since I feel like I have a lot to say right now. For today, though, I'll focus on something wonderful and wonderful and more wonderful:




My Doodlebug is six today.

It is 11am as I write this, and six years ago right now, I was struck with the fact that I had just become a mother. My little bundle of girl, tucked into a blanket with a pink and blue striped hat on her head of jet black hair, came to me hot and smelling like iron, like earth, like my own womb. She had a round face like a penny, and she squeezed her eyes shut and dug into my chest. She woke slowly from her jaundice, and then, once awake, cried for five months, took a big, deep, breath, and let the sun completely into her heart.

She is, without question, a great love of my life. I could hold her in my arms forever.

My doodlebug, my little love, my princess when I am the queen of her world, my friend, my adventurer, my giggling companion on walks, my dear dear child resting her head on my shoulder...my darling, darling one. I was saddened last night as I wrapped her gift that six is a big girl, no more baby, really this time, not like four and five when I said she was not a baby anymore, but REALLY now not a baby.

But then I went to her room to nuzzle her one more time before I went to sleep...and I found her lying horizontally across her bed, blankets kicked off, curled like a newborn, thumb in her mouth. I lay down, wrapped myself around her, and breathed in the scent of her little girl hair against her little girl neck.

"I carry your heart with me...

...I carry it in my heart."