(blog post authored by purdywords)
Baby Girl is now three years old. The days that inhabit between ages two and three are tremendous to watch, aren’t they? It’s like viewing a slow motion picture unfolding before your eyes of one joyful life lived in profound newness and exploration of the most plain, yet beautiful moments.
It’s incredible–the simple and complex changes, I mean–that occur in one short year. All of a sudden, I see marvelous, natural progress in my Baby Girl, when I didn’t quite notice the differences before her third birthday last week. Where I once saw a little girl with chubby fingers, a round face and rosy cheeks, I now look with amazement into a delicate faced version of a growing-up girl; eyes replete with wonder, a mind quick to widen with study, a dainty body wanting to stretch beyond its limits.
Her bouncy blonde hair, once a short halo of ringlets that framed her angelic baby face is now a long, flowing cascade of Rapunzel-like lockets falling just shy of the small of her back. From her tiny rosette mouth, she once spoke short staccato words of newness and amazement. Now she speaks a lengthy flow of little girl sentences interrupted only by quick bursts of amazement or emotion, using advanced phrases confidently from the surface of a soft pink pout.
Baby Girl dances around the house playing ballerina fairy and the magical make-believe pixie dust falls around her petite shoulders like snowflakes fluttering through an imaginary winter blue sky. She’s one of those kids who wears her emotions out on her sleeve for all to see; facial expressions truth-telling of what she feels deeply on the inside. And that heart of hers? It’s pure as light and strong as diamonds.
She loves all things sparkly—she’ll ooh and ah over my wedding ring set, spend as much time trying on her bejeweled Cinderella crown, and put just as much effort into chasing rainbows on the surface of the wall in the front hallway or watching the streaming sunlight reflecting off a nearby pond. My girly girl, she is rarely seen without the color pink somewhere on her ensemble, and more than likely in the form of a ballerina’s tutu.
photo credit: purdywords (http://asadsongbetter.com)
Music is her guide and she will stop anywhere, anytime for the sake of a catchy beat. It’s common for Baby Girl to break out in dance, shaking her tiny tush to the beat of a drum, the strum of a guitar, the rise of a lyrical voice. Her shoulders will begin shimmying to and fro, and she’ll start to match her own sweet voice to the song being played overhead. Later, she’ll recall the melody and verse by carrying the tunes as a secret kept inside her heart. (Some nights, I catch her singing herself to sleep.)
Ah, my Baby Girl, my delightful charmer is three years old! I can not believe how fast these few years have flown by. So fast. Too fast. All of these days–all of these lightning-fast days spent as her mother–have been one miraculous adventure after another. More than anything, I hope she continues to find unending reasons to dance, sing, and dream for all the days of her life. That is my lifelong wish for my Baby Girl.
