Dear Sophie,

How has it been a year already?

My heart aches because it went so fast. Did I take it all in as much as I could? What did I miss?

This time last year, I went to bed wondering when you were going to make

your appearance into our lives. I didn't have to wait long. The next evening you came.

You were worth the wait.

You have been such a sweet baby and you are such a joy. Did I feel this way about

my other babies this much? I'm sure I did.

"A mother's body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it's own entreaties to body and soul."-Barbara Kingsolver

You are so precious and I find it no coincidence that the first year of your life

is the first time I have really enjoyed being a Mom.

Not long after you were born, and as I rocked you in my arms,

I fondly remember reciting to myself this poem (at least the last part and the shocking house part):

Song for a Fifth Child
Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
hang out the washing and butter the bread,
sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.

Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew
and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo
but I'm playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

So, Happy Birthday to you.

I just love you so much that I can't even stand it! You make me so happy.

One day when you are older and if you chance to read this, unless you have kids of your

own when you do read it, I'm sure you will think me oh so very crazy. Thats ok.

Even though I'm sure you're not my last, I have felt this way about all three of my babies:

"But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through 

your life when there will be no more coming after - oh, that's love by a different name.

She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock my the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)

Much Love Always,

Mommy