"You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have really lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.”
--Henry Drummond, Canadian Poet--


Rosie and I spent a summer mostly outside--in parks, by pools, by the creek with our shoes caked in mud. This child is unlike any other...she is spirited, spunky, determined, imaginative, and more than just a little bit wild. She wakes in the morning, ties a hot pink feather boa around her waist as her "kitty tail", then insists on eating her cereal without a spoon...lapping up the milk with unabashed delight. She is eccentric...she is fiery...her boldness often contradicts my own quiet nature. We already battle--and she is just four-years-old. Recently, she has decided she will be "living on a bus" when she grows up because then she "can go anywhere in the world". Her companions will be her eight babies, twenty dogs, and three daddies because, as she explains, she "needs a lot of daddies to take care of the dogs while she's driving." (Naturally...) Rosie drives her siblings crazy...can never be alone for more than a few minutes...and doesn't take no for an answer when she truly wants something. Though her stubborn will exasperates me at times and genuinely confuses me at others, I see it as one of her gifts. This is not a girl who will shrink back when someone down the line tries to make her feel small...this is not a girl who will worry about her loud voice because "girls are supposed to be silent and pretty"....this is a girl who knows, instinctively, how to stand up for herself in her rhinestone sneakers. For this--and for so many other reasons...I love her madly.

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