My sweet baby Charlotte,
Tonight is your last night as a one year old. Tomorrow you will wake up and you will be TWO! You don’t really know what your birthday means but sometimes you answer correctly that you’re two (sometimes the answer is four or eight!) and when you saw your cake today you got all giddy and and said, “My birthday cake!”
I can’t believe that two years ago from this moment you weren’t even here yet! We waited so long for you and were so excited to welcome you to our family. These past two years have been the best of our lives. You bring such joy and excitement and energy to our family. I can barely remember what our lives were like before you graced us with your presence.
You are our little princess and as I think back to what the past year has held for us it has been a crazy ride. At your birthday last year you still weren’t even taking any steps and now you are running FAST, FAST, FAST! We have to run as fast as we can to keep up with you! Your little pigeon toes have already proved that you will be one fast little girl!
This time last year we were weaning you off of nursing and your passy. Now you drink exclusively from straw sippy cups and have developed a sweet thumb sucking habit when you go to sleep. You can feed yourself pretty well with a spoon also and don’t need your food cut up much at all anymore.
You have grown so much in the past year and your personality has really started to shine. You are the sweetest little girl and I had to catch my breath a few weeks ago when I said, “I love you baby” and you looked at me and said “Love you too”. You had been saying love you when we said it and asked what you say after that but that was the first unprompted one that you had ever said and it made me so very happy. You are a sweet cuddler and I cherish our times together when I rock you and sing two rounds of “Jesus Loves Charlotte” to you before I put you down for nap and bedtime.
We have had to start enforcing some time outs and sometimes we have to explain exactly why we want you to do something before you’ll do it, but you are still such a good girl. But I do want you to know that even when you disobey and throw tantrums and get mad, your Daddy and I still love you with all of our hearts. You are our baby girl. Our firstborn. And we will always love you exactly the same. There is nothing that you can ever do to make us love you any less, and even though I know you will succeed in so much one day, our love is unconditional and won’t change even though we’ll be so proud of you.
We love you so much Charlotte. This second year of your life has been so much fun and we are so thankful that we get the privilege and honor of being your parents. I can’t wait to celebrate your birthday with you tomorrow and start the third year of your life which will be a little crazy for all of us! I can’t wait to watch you become a fabulous big sister and grow into even more of a little girl than you already are.
I love you with my whole heart,
Mommy
