Sugar and Spice

Angel Daughter Number Four.  My youngest.  My baby.

To me, it is as if she was sprinkled with pixie dust and an extra dose of joy when she was born.  Sent on her way to join her three older sisters for good measure.  Bound and determined to become a part of our family, her daddy's contribution to the spark of this beautiful soul spent seventy two hours patiently in search of the other half of her DNA.  You can hear her daddy describing her determination to the delivery room nurses(with a lot of pride in his little swimmers) in the video following her birth.  She picked up on this recently while watching the video of her birth and with a look of absolute astonishment on her face, she turned to her father and I and proclaimed, "YOU HAD SEX FOR SEVENTY TWO HOURS WHEN YOU MADE ME???"  By the time we were able to stop ourselves from laughing, legend had been born.  And yet the truth is that our littlest Angel Daughter was not exactly planned.  At least the timing was not ours, because we knew that we wanted to have a fourth child, just not right then.  And obviously, since we were doing very little to prevent the possible conception of a baby, this little person was no mistake!  Only a wonderful surprise.  Not a birthday of hers goes by without my thanking God for her wonderful soul's persistence, determination, and strength.  She is absolute proof that sometimes the greatest things in our lives are those which happen on their own time and not the time in which we believe is best.  AD4 is the perfect argument for this.

On February 9, 1994, AD4 made her entrance into the world.  She was quiet at first.  So quiet, in fact, that the doctors went to extra lengths to make her cry.(I hope they didn't pinch her!)  I think she was just taking it all in.  For the first two years of her life, she was known as "the Great Observer" in our family because she intently absorbed everything that was going on around her.  She didn't walk until about fourteen months, but from that day forward, I swear she danced through her days.

Now, at age 17, she is all wide-eyes and black hair with sassy blue bangs.

She is mile long eyelashes and freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks.  I used to tell her that the freckles were spots from where the sun kissed her cheeks.  She is dimples and rose-colored lips.

She is focus and intensity and compassion.  She is rhythm and movement and passion.  She is wise beyond her now, seventeen years, most likely a result of the years she spent observing the way in which everyone else moved throughout the world.  She is kindness and creativity.  She is friendship and deep loyalty, fiercely devoted to those whom she cares about.  She is all that is good about teenagers.

I love this sweet person with an intensity that I could only fathom after having brought four incredible daughters into this increasingly difficult world.  And yet, because of AD4 and because of Angel Daughters Numbers One, Two and Three, I know that goodness can prevail.  I know this because there is so much of it in all four of my daughters.

Happy, happy Birthday, Sunshine.  I pray that your heart doesn't get broken too many times.  I hope that when you break someone else's heart, you will remember how it feels and that you will go easier on them in the knowing.  I know that you will have arguments with your best friends and that you will cry many tears over them.  I hope that you will also find a way to patch things back up.  You will find yourself sighing about how quickly time seems to pass.  You will lose people you love, but you will find a way to keep them close, anyway.  So please.  Take too many pictures(even of people who don't like to stand still or who complain that you are clicking too many).  Laugh too much and too enthusiastically.  Hug long and try not to be the first to let go.  Dance as if the world is your stage.  Cheer for the ones you care about so that everyone else turns around to see who the crazy person is.  Love as if your heart has never been broken.  And never, ever give up.  You have to face the same person in the mirror every single day of your life.  Be happy, my sweet child.  And most importantly, be grateful.

I love you, my seventeen year old Angel girl.