And with the passing of another day, my baby girl completed her very first spin around the sun.
We celebrated with a dinner as quiet and lovely as she is. There was lily of the valley, and lilacs - flowers that will forever remind me of that sweet season in which she was born, and of herself as well. She is a happy girl, this baby of ours, pure sweetness and light.
There was a little bit of sewing for her birthday - a crown, of course (there's a pattern in my first book, The Creative Family), and a new dress (the smocked sundress from Weekend Sewing). She ate a favorite 'first birthday cake' (Gracie's Yellow Cake from Feeding the Whole Family). And there were all the regular birthday traditions that now have a life of their own with the help of older siblings who remember to hang the banner, and find the cake topper, and clip the photographs. And on and on and year after year, we celebrate one another this way.
I am not all that far into my parenting journey in the grand scheme of a whole lifetime, but this dozen years has not passed without teaching me the most important lesson of them all. The days can be long, the years most certainly short. Hold them close and love them. Oh, I do. I really, really do.
