Reesie

I was cleaning pictures out of my hard drive this morning and I found this picture.

This picture was taken almost a year ago at a friend's princess-themed birthday party. It made my heart ache to think how quickly the past year has gone by. In this picture, Reese is barely two. She will be three in 24 days.

Look at the expression on her little face. She always had that look. It was a look of "I'm not at all sure what is going on and I'm equally unsure about how I feel about it."

She still has that look a lot of the time and she still loves being a princess, but she's much more silly and outgoing than she used to be. She's much more sure of what she likes-and Lord knows she is sure of what she doesn't like. She's just grown so much, physically and emotionally, in the past year.

It doesn't seem possible that she's almost three. I still remember the panic in the delivery room when the doctors thought there was something wrong with her. It feels like yesterday that my heart skipped a beat when I first saw that little pieface and the doctor said she was going to be fine.

It kills me to think how fast kids grow up. When I was younger, I would hear old people (yeah, I thought they were old) say how quickly time goes by and how kids were growing up too fast and I would always think they were nuts. It seemed, back then, that everything took forever. I never thought there would be a point in life where I wanted to stop time. And now, at the ripe old age of 36, it's all I can think about. It's going too fast. I want Reesie to stay this itty bitty, unsure princess forever. Ok, that's not realistic. How about 30 more years? If I can just have her be 3 for the next, oh, 20 or 30 years, then I'll be ready. Ok?