four

9/27/05

My niece, Kylie, turned four yesterday.  She had her South Carolina birthday party a couple of weeks ago, where she got her first bike.  She had a small(ish) party in Chilhowie on Friday night, where she got books and clothes and toys and, most excitingly, a soccer goal!

1st b'day, 9/2006

It’s so hard to believe that she’s already four.  It’s one of my very favorite memories and one of the truest blessings of my life that I got to be in the delivery room when Kylie was born.  And now, she plays with Barbies and rides a bike and plays soccer and loves everything about being a girl and is ready to learn how to read and likes to be scared and knows exactly what a scarlet macaw looks like.

2nd birthday, 9/2007

Four years can be both an eternity and can pass in a heartbeat.  It’s hard for me to really remember life before Kylie came around – for me, so many of the big milestones in my life are like that, they so very much alter the very fabric of my life that it’s hard to remember how things were before they happened (my mom’s wreck, my grandparents’ deaths, my gastric bypass surgery, and Kylie being born are all that way).

3rd birthday, 9/2008

I love being around Kylie (and her brother, Colt) for many reasons, but one of, if not my very, favorite reasons is that when we’re all with them – all the grandparents, the great-grandmothers, the aunt, the uncles, all the extended family – you can almost see the unconditional love that streams toward them and the joy they bring to us all seems to bounce off of them and radiate back to us.  Again, so lucky and blessed.

Happy Birthday, Kylie!

4 years old! 9/2009