Dear Sunny and Saint,
I don’t know if you’ll remember much, if any, of your early childhood days and so we take a million photos to capture it. Maybe it’s for you, or maybe it’s for us- the line is blurred. I’ll look through our phones and photo libraries from last week and my heart sinks just a little, because you’re both just a little bigger, faster, smarter…older.
It’s amazing how time makes fools of all of us.
I hope one day you’ll see these pictures and think that your life was beautiful. That Daddy and I created a world full of color and freedom that celebrates the very fiber of your being. I hope as you grow, you don’t define yourselves by your accomplishments but instead by the friends you’ve made, the good deeds you’ve done, and the challenges you’ve met that stretch you. I hope you’ll travel far and come home often, that you’ll want to recreate this american life for your own families someday. I will tell you now that there is no greater compliment than that.
There is something else too, I don’t write out your bad days and moments. You should know there are many, every single day. I don’t take pictures of your terrible days, tantrums, and meltdowns. I don’t express my level of annoyance, my lack of sleep, or the fact that you both gang up on me sometimes. And truthfully I can’t ever remember what we fought about by the end of the day- this is parenting. Should you decide someday to have two fine children like yourselves and you refer back to this part of your story and see smiles and giggles and hugs and think “what gives?” Just know, no one wants to remember the tough stuff and in reality, it really doesn’t matter.
What does matter is you’ve both equally swollen my heart and I have the pictures to prove it.
I hope you feel loved.
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