Dear Ella,
How can you be eleven years old? We’ve been talking about (and planning for) your golden birthday for a whole year, but it still blindsided me a bit. You’ve grown leaps and bounds in the last year and I have to do a double take when I look at you sometimes. There have been years when you changed very little — the scales didn’t budge and your little feet squeezed into the same pair of shoes, two summers in a row. Then there was this year — you got so tall and you’re raiding my closet and your face looks less and less like a little girl every day.
I could let myself get overwhelmed, or worry about the teenage years right around the corner, but instead I let myself enjoy these days. With every year you grow, we have more in common. There are fewer things to bicker over and more things to enjoy. You finally appreciate my taste in music (thank goodness), shopping for you (and with you!) is such a joy, and you even eat your vegetables.
You are the sweetest girl when you want to be, feisty when you need to be, and you have one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known. Thank you for being a good friend, for knowing which girl in your class needs extra attention, or which boy needs a little encouragement. Thank you for including your sister, in small and big ways, even when you don’t want to. Thank you for filling your days with good books and beautiful music and for filling ours with the biggest of belly laughs and best pouty face ever. Mothering you has always been hard work, but I wouldn’t trade it for a single thing.
Love you biggest,
Mom
And because you need to see it to believe how much she’s grown, visit our previous birthday letter posts below.
2007
2006
