Elena is TEN!

How can I have a ten year old?!!!  It's truly unfathomable but it has been a gift to raise this girl. She is spirited, brilliant, inspiring, inquisitive, energetic and empathetic. She was looking at her baby book on her birthday and found the letter I wrote to her on her first birthday. I don't ever want to forget her words that evening...she said, "mom this letter made me cry from happiness. I have never felt as loved as I did right now reading this letter."   I'm so GLAD I wrote that letter 9 years ago.  Here's my sweet love on the evening before going to watch a play downtown with two of her best friends for her birthday. It was truly magical being under the city lights on that crisp night watching her chatting away with her friends and just seeing her in a different light, older, more mature and delighted to be out in the town with friends. I just knew at that moment that is the beginning of a new phase for her. I don't know what awaits me with adolescence, but I am looking forward to this brand new phase in parenting.