Happy Birthday to the Firecracker Princess!

My baby was four yesterday. Four years ago, I gave birth in a drug-induced hazy calm, just hours after the Red Sox won their first world series. I had just finished the requirements for my bachelor's degree (online), and it was conferred Oct. 27. I was so, so desperate to have the baby born already. I'd stopped working on Oct. 2, and was just laying around on the sofa like a bloated whale.

That child changed my life. My first born baby, whose smell I breathed in endlessly. My baby whose head fit perfectly in my cupped hand. The girl whose sunny smiles pushed me through a post-partum depression. The baby that lazed with me in bed, sleeping sometimes until noon and watching tv before a nap. The little girl that didn't move into her own bed until she was 18 months old, when I tiptoed into her room several times a night to check her breathing, not sure how she could survive sleeping without me by her side as I clearly could not sleep without her to snuggle.

My precious baby who loved her little brother as soon as he was born, fawning over him, protecting him. Who walked late and talked early and is really, truly beloved for her sweetness and sunny disposition. Who I sometimes think will kill me with the iron strength of her will, who often makes me want to just stand down in my weariness. Who calls me "momma", when her brother calls me "mommy".

The girl who wants to read NOW and loves Sleeping Beauty, and who believes that she is beautiful and that the whole world loves her. I hope she never loses those things. Happy birthday Princess. I am so grateful to the King for you!