This girl

This girl lights up my life. She brings me so much joy and love and makes me feel like my life has a great purpose. The weekend cuddles in bed while we wake up to a cartoon remind me of how fun it was to be a kid and to be so excited for those Saturday cartoons. My heart skips a beat every time we are out running errands and she stops to say, "Mommy, I just love you so much." I almost cry every time she does it because I know she means it with all of her heart and I just feel so lucky to have her love. She's growing up now, it makes my stomach hurt when I think about it. My baby isn't a baby anymore, she can finish puzzles by herself, recognize words in books, she can spell the names of her family members, she can count to 100 and she can swing all by herself. I'm happy and excited to watch her grow but a part of me wants to hop in a homemade time machine and go back to that cold January morning when we brought her home from the hospital. When Jason filmed me as I held her walking in the house and showed her the bedroom I labored over for months waiting for the day she would come home. I don't know how we got to this place where her body seems almost as long as her twin bed, where we bought her bathing suit in the "big girl" section of Target and where she sings country songs in the car with me and she knows all the words. I'm not sure how time flew by so quickly but it did and I'm just trying to capture every moment and memory as each day passes. And as long as she is living under the same roof as I am I will always sneak in to give her one last kiss at night, cover her up so she's nice and warm and whisper in her ear, "Mommy loves you princess, all the way to heaven and back."