My Baby Is Six

Hey baby girl,

Oh, you get so upset when I call you my baby girl. “I’m NOT A BABY.”  And then I explain that you are my youngest child, my only girl, and so you are my baby girl. You nod and you smile and you wrap your arms around my neck and you squeeze.

And then I call you my baby girl and we go through the whole routine again. This will happen every day for the next fifty years or so, I’m sure of it.

Last year’s birthday was hard on me because you were five. FIVE. You were in school! In Kindergarten! You even took the bus! You … weren’t a baby anymore. (But you’ll always be my baby girl. See above.)

In this past year you seem so much older, somehow. You’re in the first grade now. Instead of sitting at a classroom table, you have a desk. (A desk!) You have so many friends. Your vocabulary blows me away on a daily basis. You understand things beyond your years and it makes me want to lock you in a tower until you are thirty. You are one of the tallest kids in your grade despite being an October baby; seeing you stand a head taller than so many kids in your class makes me equal parts proud (Look at my tall girl!) and equal parts sad (I miss carrying you on my hip!).

There are still hints that you haven’t completely left babyhood yet. You have a layer of baby chub, just as Graham did, but it’s fading away as you stretch out in this grade one year (just as Graham did). There are words that you do not pronounce “correctly”, and I will mourn the day you say them clearly. Remember is ‘anember’, maybe is ‘naybe’, something is ‘someping.’

Your belly laugh is unparalleled. It carries throughout the house and I can’t help but smile every time I hear it. You are like me in that something will tickle you to the point where you laugh so hard that you cannot speak and the words can’t quite get out. One instant of this is when you have a substitute teacher. You will say substiTOOT and double over with laughter. Potty humor is always funny, at least in our house.

You love your Daddy oh, so much. You look at him with a twinkle in those big baby blues of yours and can get him to do anything that you ask. You have him wrapped around your finger, tightly, and you know it. He knows it too.

You and your brothers have a great relationship. Graham will listen to you as you practice your reading homework and will help you with anything that he can. Nathan is your partner in crime and you two will spend hours together playing Barbies and Hot Wheels, riding your bikes and scooters, and just playing imagination games. I am so glad that you have the two of them to look out for you and I am so glad that they have you as their sister.

I love you, Missy Moo, and while it breaks my heart that you’re getting one year older, I know that you’ll always be my baby girl.

Love,

Mom.

*A birthday post would not be complete without including some of my favorite photos of you.

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