Harper is ELEVEN.

On May 25 ELEVEN years ago, I was five days overdue with my first baby. I had just finished up a year of teaching at M.D. Anderson, where I taught students with cancer who were hospitalized for an extended time. The husband had just finished his finals for his first year of law school. In a week, we would celebrate our first wedding anniversary. We had known each other for only eighteen months. We were excited about life in general, and especially about the one we were about to welcome. I wondered if labor would ever start. Then it did. I really don't remember much. I know that it doesn't feel like it is even possible that ELEVEN YEARS have passed. And yet, here we are. She is such an interesting, quirky, amazing, little human, and I get to be her mother. Tuesday night when I went to tuck her in, she had just put down her book (The Incredible Invention of Hugo Cabret) and was arranging every stuffed animal she owns on her bed. She carefully tucked her baby bald eagle into his little sleeping bag with all of HIS stuffed animals, and told me she would wake me and the Daddy up promptly at seven so she could open her gifts. She had written out a VERY specific list around three months ago. She got a James Avery birthstone ring (grandparents P), a Kindle cover (grandmother M), diving flippers and new goggles (Helena), a perplexus ball (Hudson), an arrangement of fresh flowers (Hudson and Helena), some Haribo gummies (Hudson and Helena), and a light up jellyfish lamp, some magnetic goo, and an egg splat ball from us.



That picture with the stuffed pumpkin on her head? Yes, she still sleeps with her beloved dough-gi-die. She actually managed to wrestle it on the other day (it is a size 2T) but sadly, I didn't get a picture.