Dear Katrina

Hello my little mouse -
I am writing to you as I sit in the hospital with you on the completion of your first month of life, remembering the last time I worried about you was in wonderment of your arrival would ever happen...
When I reached the 36th week in my pregnancy with you, I was overly anxious for you to be born, since that is when your brother graced us with his arrival, (we all were anticipating you coming sooner). I cannot even begin to describe to you the joy and gratefulness that fill my heart this year. Some days I feel like I just might burst with happiness about your impending arrival. To feel you move and roll and kick in my belly is one of the best feelings in the world. Admittedly, I miss it. I will miss knowing you are all mine and knowing you are the only one who has ever heard my heartbeat from the inside. I do think having you in my arms to kiss and snuggle will more than make up for that though. But, I will miss knowing with all confidence you are safe and no one can ever hurt you. I do not fear for you my little mouse, because I know you are a strong, determined, beautiful little girl and God has a plan for you.
We wonder and daydream about how you will grow and change and what you will look like. Will you have that strawberry blond hair that Mommy always dreams of? Will you have baby blues, or green eyes? What will your personality be like? We have so many hopes and dreams for you and we can't wait to see who you are and who you have yet to become.
I can't explain what it felt like after waiting for your birth to look into your sweet little face for the first time and gaze into your eyes and tell you how much I love you. To see you in your Daddy's arms and to see the look on his face when he met his daughter for the first time. To count and kiss your ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes. To feel your skin on my skin, to feed you for the first time, to hold you and to love you. I already love you so much I don't know how my heart could get any fuller.
Daddy and I promise to be good parents. We will always be here for you - to love you, to hug you and to kiss you, to listen to you, to keep you safe and warm, to guide you, to lead you, to teach you, to discipline you, to let you make your mistakes and catch you when you fall, to mend skinned little knees and broken hearts too. We will be your biggest fans and our hearts will be filled with pride at your accomplishments - big and small. I can't promise that we will always be your best friends or that will be the "cool" parents, but we will do the best we can to help you grow up to be the best little girl, and woman you can.
Your family is filled with anticipation as well. Jonathan is especially excited to meet his new baby sister. And although I love them to a fault (your Pop-pop and Grandma) I apologize in advance if the nickname Hurricane sticks with you.
I will always treasure the last weeks feeling you in my belly. I tried not to wish them away, but I was so anxious for your birthday.
You are our miracle, our little mouse, our heart and our soul and I promise that you will be blessed...I knew you long before I ever saw your face. And when I first held you in my arms, I fell in love. Some days I think I know you better than I know myself.
I know the way your hair naturally falls. I know the shape of your eyebrows and the chub of your big toes and the way that nail has a curve to it that makes it hard to trim. I know the gentle curve of your little tush. I know the way your eyes sparkle with your smile. I know the little dimples on your elbows. I know the pink shade of your lips. I usually know what you’re saying, even if no one else does.I know the smell of your breath when you wake up. I know what helps you fall asleep. I know the way you fit so snugly in my arms. I know your tears and what they mean.
Your cooing always makes me smile. You have inspired me to keep going when I felt like giving up. You are my sunshine. You amaze me. You teach me. You have taught me more about what unconditional love is. It’s given me a firsthand glimmer of how God must feel toward us. I am a better person because of you, so thank you.

Please, don’t grow up too fast.

I love you, my mouse.

Years from now I will look at you and think of you less as my little baby, and more as the girl you are. Though your favorite things, I am certain (clouded by your big brothers judgment) will be mud and cars, I will see how you ask me more often to put your hair in ponies, to try to grab my purse or find a lipstick, or to stomp around in a pair of my shoes.
One day I'll blink and realize that you aren't a girl anymore, but a young woman, and I hope that I will be able to be as strong as I always promised I would be if I raised a girl. I promise to be the mother who will help you fit into whatever skin is really yours, and not the one I think you should be.
I promise that if you decide you want to be a cheerleader instead of play basketball, I'll buy you a set of pompoms and get you to every practice, although I may say it would break my heart. I promise that if you decide you don't like science I won't remind you of how you swore when you were two that you were going to be an astronaut when you grow up (and that maybe I'll even breathe a little sigh of relief, because I wasn't a science person either.) And I promise that if you get silly over boys, I won't tease you or tell you that you are too young and that all you really need are wonderful books and a good self-esteem (although really, those are much more important), because I swear I will try to remember that I went through all of the same feelings when I was a teenager too.

But I have bigger promises to make, don't I? Here they go...

I promise that I will make this a world where you can walk down the street without being afraid that someone will hurt you.
I promise to give you a world with real sex education that is appropriate for your age, and that discusses real birth control solutions. And I promise to take you to get condoms and other birth control as necessary. And if you decide that you want to hold off on sex until you are married and really mean it, I will buy you a pony (Okay, not really. Although your father might.). Finally, if something should go terribly wrong despite this and you still become pregnant, I promise to help you decide what is right for you and allow it to be your decision, and to support you completely. I will never, ever, ever let you feel trapped and alone.
I promise to help push society so that when you are older, and entering the workforce, you make the same low entry level wage as any boy also taking the same bad entry level job. And that I will help you so that you can get promoted ahead of him because frankly, sweetie, I know you will be smarter than him, anyway.

But most of all, I promise that I will continue to help create a world where you can be whatever you want to be when you grow up, be that an engineer, a doctor, a politician, or an actress. And if, when you get there, you decide what you want to be is a wife and mom, I won't tell you that it's not enough, because now I realize that those are two roles I never realized I could find so much happiness in, and I do. Because of you.

I love you through and through,
Mom-Mom