to twelve with love

Dear my Kate, 

Today you are twelve!  I have been able to love you for twelve entire years! (and dream about you even longer than that).  

I have loved watching you grow this year because I can see more and more how you will be as an adult, but you are still my littlest girl.  You are the giving-est giver I know and you love so freely with every part of yourself.  I can still pick you up and I will try to do so until you are taller than me so forgive me in advance.  

This was a big year - middle school!  You faced sixth grade with every ounce of confidence and bravery that you have.  There’s something weird that happens in middle school - people start to change in weird ways sometimes.  I always tell you that no one peaks during this time which is a good thing.  Usually no one really remembers it fondly either, or maybe even at all, so it’s good to keep that in mind.  In middle school there’s this thing that happens where all the moms suddenly realize you know more than we think you do, yet not nearly enough.  We have to have all sorts of conversations about awkward things and while we don’t love it, we do it because someday you’ll have to be a functioning and well-rounded adult who is capable of making educated decisions.  How weird is it that we have to think about those things when you’re twelve?  Maybe not weird to you, but for me, it seems like just two days ago that your biggest issue was losing your pacifier between the seats in the car.  Just remember that one day when your kid is twelve.

You got a phone this year.  Your brother called me on the first day of school and said, “you know she really needs a phone if she’s going to ride that bus.”  (Sometimes you have three parents).  I wasn’t so sure about the phone deal but I realized how much I loved you having it after I started getting good-bye texts and selfies from you every morning - they made my day!  You rode the bus this year for the first time and I’ll say that it was just as educational as being in the school building, maybe even more.  I have loved hearing about your days after school - what people wear, what teachers say, and the general drama which you avoid but not unlike myself, do enjoy observing from a distance.  One of my favorite parts of the day was seeing you come off that bus in the afternoons and look for me up that hill - I’ll never not love the look when your eyes find mine.  

There’s this other really cool part about you figuring out things that in the world and maybe my most favorite thing about this year - it has made us closer.  I get to talk to you now about big things and I’m discovering more and more how alike we are - and also that we’re different.  I do love the different so much.  We certainly can’t be all alike and it’s so much fun to see your own unique little self emerge.  

I absolutely love spending time with you - even when it’s just to Target or when we sneak off to Starbucks.  I love hearing your ideas and your thoughts because they are so full of detail and so full of potential.  I love watching your creativity emerge when you take on another project or when you have a great idea and then it’s the most magical thing to watch when you make that idea into something real.  Your little mind spins a thousand miles a minute and it’s usually with songs or plans or something fun.  You are my planner and keep me on track with a thousand sticky notes from my grocery list to reminders to do things that you need me to do.  I have never been a list maker but boy, do you love a list.  You check those off and then make more.  You also like me to do all of those things as quickly as possible but you’ve gotten a lot better at waiting.

You remain my girl of adventure and if there’s a trip around the corner, it is your favorite thing.  You are almost as excited about the planning as the actual trip.  Hotels are your favorite, although you’re recent discovery of the Airbnb site is giving the hotel industry a run for their money.  We did a big trip to California this year - we let you and Bailey choose where to go and mostly choose what we did.  In true fashion you had a plan for every day - even checking off all the rides at Disneyland on your map.  Your favorite parts were the beaches, walking with me to the grocery store in our little neighborhood, the swings outside in the backyard of the house we stayed in, touring the movie sets, and well, Disneyland.  You are just as content with the smallest things as you are with the big adventures which is a great way to be - you will learn more and appreciate more that way.  Your least favorite parts were the food choices that the boys made and the Whiskey A Go-Go, but we sure won’t forget Daddy making us go by it a thousand times.  I loved watching you absorb the adventures through your own eyes - you just make life so much fun!  

You had another great year of running too - cross country season was so much fun to watch.  It was your first year to run on the middle school team and even though it makes you nervous, you make it look so easy and you make us so proud every time.  It has to be intimidating to run against so many tall people when you can mostly only see legs, but your little legs sure can move!  I can always find you because you’re the little one with the fierce look on your face.  You’ve proven over and over again that size truly doesn’t matter but popsicles at the end truly do.  I loved watching you with your team and how you cheered each other on.  You and I drove to the state meet immediately after we got off the plane from California and while I could barely stand up, you managed to bring home a trophy.  You earned it for sure - I’ll drive to the end of the earth to see you succeed.  

Martha Kate, your heart remains as big as it always has - it basically fills your whole insides.  You look for ways to make people happy and you absolutely love to gift gifts and to watch people open gifts - even as a baby you parked yourself in front of the presents because you couldn’t wait to see what’s inside.  You know what everyone likes and pay attention to what everyone needs - especially your brother.  You manage to take care of him without him really even knowing which is impressive.  I call you the big little sister.  I sat with you and your teachers this year and listened to them tell me how kind you are.  They told me how hard you work and that you are helpful and look for ways to do things for others and even ask how they are doing.  This made me prouder than any grades you could bring home, although you do bring home good grades and you certainly work hard for them.  

I have worried how our crazy and unpredictable life has affected you, and I probably always will, but what you have shown me over and over is that you can adapt to pretty much any situation.  You never complain, never ask for anything - unless it’s hot glue or gum - and almost always find a way to find joy and contentment wherever you are.  You also see things in people that other people miss and think about how they must feel - which is the truest definition of empathy and something I certainly couldn’t teach you.  To watch this unfold in spite of all that you have endured is more special than you could ever know.  

You, my girl, are going places.  Inside of you is so much love and goodness and potential and joy, that it can hardly be contained in your fifty six pounds.  There’s a magic in your creativity and I have the best front row seat to watching it unfold.  Your ear for music is clearly your daddy’s.  It’s a gift that I don’t have so I am completely fascinated by it.  You can memorize song lyrics faster than anyone I know and when you sing it sounds like the purest thing to me.  I think because it is the purest thing.  You are so easily pleased - it just doesn’t take much for you to be thrilled which is the most fun thing to watch.  You love M&Ms, Hobby Lobby, Starbucks, not wearing shoes, Target, all kinds of music, hot glue, glitter markers, sticky notes, summer, hotels, and beaches - basically any wide open space that does not confine you.  You don’t like three-quarter sleeves, craft instructions because they’re too confining, when people are sad or upset, dresses with waistbands, socks, winding roads in cars, restaurants that only sell fried chicken, and when things take too long.  You know what you want and you’re willing to work to get it.  When you’re ready, you’re ready and when you’re done, you’re done.  If you don’t like something I can see it all over your face. (You get that honest, by the way).  

It’s also worth mentioning that your twelfth birthday has fallen during a pandemic - for the record and your memory when your older.  What that’s meant for you is that school got out at spring break and that turned into summer and I’ve had you all to myself for the last two months at home.  People say words like social distancing and quarantine and unprecedented a lot.  I think I was supposed to be teaching you but I didn’t - at least not schoolwork.  Instead, you’ve been free to not wear shoes, be creative, cook, make desserts, and play outside as much as you desire.  We’ve ridden bikes, spent a lot of time on the swing, cooked your Nana’s recipes, and you make a craft every single day.  I have gotten the incredible gift of time with you next to me every single day without having to share you with the world.  I know you miss your activities and friends and sleepovers and I wish that for you soon, but I’m soaking up all of the time I can.  So when you’re 52 and you remember the pandemic, just know that’s how I felt.  

Also remember that I booked us a beach house, because we like the same things and we need to get out of here.  

I love you my girl more than you could ever know - right down to your 492 freckles.  Jesus loves you too.  You are the very best I girl I could ever ask for.  

Mommy

fifteen

Fifteen!   

That’s a decade and a half, three full sets of hashmarks, and an “XV” in Roman numerals.  It’s ten fingers and five toes.  It’s 5,478 days.  

It’s also fifteen years of being a mom for me, your mom to be exact.  Ironically, we just finished a decade right before your fifteenth birthday so I’ve spent a little time looking back through pictures of ten years ago and then fifteen years ago, remembering who we were then.  The day you were born will forever mark the day that my life was changed for the better.  Everything I did from that day forward has been for or about you and your sister and I am so thankful.  I have learned what it is to be selfless, what it is to want more for someone else, and how it feels to pray expectantly and sometimes get more and sometimes different answers that I have to trust anyway.   

What a year you have had!  I think it’s funny the places you have ended up when you surely aren’t even trying to.  This year you’ve hung out with NFL players, NBA players, been behind the scenes of the Superbowl, shook hands with professional baseball players, got a personal video from Dak Prescott, sat on the set of the Rich Eisen show, and walked the course with  Justin Thomas .  You’ve been to the beach twice and even checked Los Angeles and Disneyland off of your bucket list.  Your art has ended up on the walls of St. Jude and on some custom designed fancy golf shoes for your buddy, Justin.  Your sweet face made quite a ripple with Chip and Joanna Gaines and they recognized you when they saw you again this year.  You even made it a few seconds on the Today show.  You have also fished and golfed and swam and tubed and kneeboarded and biked and adventured and if nothing else, EATEN your way through the year.  So much eating.  You like good and expensive food and a lot of it.  It’s hard to believe you ate nearly nothing for a year.  

But, mostly you’ve just been the best you that you can be.  You’ve grown the most this year in both height and in so many other ways.  You are nearly eye to eye with me, your shoes are huge, and your pants are constantly too short, but your hair is usually just right.  I absolutely love it all.  You’re just a bigger you with more humor and more personality which is pretty cool and super fun to hang out with.  You also got glasses which somehow ramped up your cool factor and made it even more impossible for me to be mad at you when I look at your face.  It’s funny how I can still see the little you still in the grown up version.  You are an even more astute observer of the world and while people are missing lots of things in life, you don’t miss a thing -  down to the tiniest detail that sets one thing apart from the next or one person apart from everyone else.  You’ve always been like that.  I’ll never forget you walking into preschool when you were three and nonchalantly telling the director that one of her fish was missing out of the tank.  You were the only one that noticed the dead fish in the whole school.  Your same old soul is now in a teenage body which makes you that much more endearing.  Plus the smile.  It’s still the best because we only get the real one when you’re actually pleased or impressed or something is super funny.  

You moved from middle school to high school this year.  I have never been so happy to end something as I was middle school for you because you worked so hard and it was exhausting to both be in and to watch.  (I certainly worked harder in your eighth grade year than in my own).   You walked across that stage at promotion effortlessly and no one would know that you’d caught up three academic years in one year or that one of your legs was made nearly entirely of metal.  I wanted to give a standing ovation for your comeback but I sat still and took a blurry video and then bought you some pancakes, so you’re welcome for that.  I’ll admit that I dreaded the move to high school and after I walked your schedule that first day with all the stairs and all the hallways, I told your daddy we were selling the house and moving to the middle of nowhere.  I think I overreacted a tad but I’m allowed.  I was totally wrong because high school looks pretty good on you.  I’ll be wrong and overreact a lot, so forgive me in advance.  I’m trying hard to be breezy.  I know you’re capable and this is just the beginning of me realizing how little control I actually have, but it’s not the end of me throwing in some wise council that will likely fall on your deaf ears because I’m still your mom and it’s my job. 

You and your sister have taught me how great it is to have big kids this year.  I love hanging with both of you and even though sometimes you pick at each other, it’s usually out of love (mostly).  I love watching you both form your own opinions and develop your own interests and humoring me when I make you do stuff like pick blueberries in the blazing heat for the nostalgia of the situation.  When one of you is not here, even for a night, we miss you like crazy!  You check on each other too and I’m so glad I have you to look after Kate because you do the best job - maybe too good in her eyes, but she’ll get over it.  Keep at it for the rest of her life.  She needs you.  

I loved taking you both to the West Coast this year and seeing things for the first time together.  You knew more about California that all of us - no surprise there - and navigated most of the trip based on what you’ve seen on YouTube, down to the wild goose chase for Hot Chicken in California.  Your need for chicken hardly compares to your daddy’s need to visit where every 80s hair band got their start and I feel sure we will be saying “right by the Whiskey a Go Go” in conversation for a long time.  

Bailey, you are one of a kind for sure.  I knew this from the beginning and so did your Nana - she understood you before anyone else and always told me that you would be just fine when I told her you were stubborn.  She was right, of course.  You are driven and motivated by exactly what you are interested in and will learn everything about whatever that may be.  Currently it’s golf and fishing, and but who knows what it will be next.  You've made me smarter with all the facts I now know on cars and dogs and certainly what can be found on the internet and how to work my phone.  I can only hope that you stumble upon a career that drives you to dig deeper into what you love to benefit someone else.  You never fail to be honest and shoot it straight, even when I don’t really want to hear it.  

I have loved watching you be you this year.  I saw you use what you’ve learned in life more than ever before and push yourself to try new things more than ever too.  I saw you work hard and see what redemption feels like when you did something that was so hard before and it’s much easier now.  It’s the hardest thing to realize you used be able to do something that you can no longer do and the easiest thing to feel sorry for yourself about that.  But, you never do.  You just get out there and get after it and learn it all over again.  There’s a lot of things that you’ve got no choice to face and a lot of times I just want to grab you up and run out of that hospital but you stay so I stay too.  You live an example that makes people forget how much you’ve been through because you work so hard at making it look so easy.  The transformation you have made in just two years is incredible.  You have grown in confidence and in spirit and it’s the most exciting thing to watch.  I have the best front row seat. 

This cancer thing is not what you asked for, and not something you want to discuss so you really don’t and that’s fine.  You don’t really have to.  We see you and you set the bar high for people three times your age.  You face those scans and those surgeries and whatever news comes your way with such tenacity and bravery that we all look like wimps.  You carry a lot in your head and your heart from what you’ve endured and watched other people endure.  As long as you lead with both your head and your heart, you can absolutely do anything.  God gave you exactly what you needed to do exactly what He’s designed you to do. 

I had no idea what these fifteen years would bring to me but you are by far one of my greatest gifts.  It’s an honor to be your mom.  

Happy Birthday!  

Now go study the book and I’ll take you to get your permit.  

Love, 

Mom