Happy Birthday Tallulah

Dear Tallulah

 

Today you are six.  Quite how you have made it this far is a mystery and sometimes a joy, but I am glad you’re here, and as you provide some of my most interesting, as well as my most agonising moments I hope you stick around for a very long time to come.

 

Six years ago today you came into the world scowling and angry. You are currently downstairs wielding scissors and making floral doormats.  I hope you are less angry now that you have weaponry at your disposal, and I am suitably grateful for the doormats.

 

I am still undecided as to whether you will eventually rule the world or blow it up.  Maybe you will do both.  I do know that you will live your life with a bang and nary a wimper, and that it is most certainly a good thing.  I do not ever worry that you will be trodden upon, taken advantage of, or forced into doing something you do not want to do.  I worry that you will put other people in those situations, but then I’m not their mother’s so I’m not losing too much sleep over it.

 

In six years you have grown from a small dwarfish old lady into the most elegant and beautiful of girls who make people stop on the street and stare at you in awe.  You are glorious.  You look like a cross between a dandelion clock and a flower fairy and you fight like a ninja.  What’s not to love?

 

You are such a contradiction. You love cuddly toys and delicate jewellery, old fashioned floral chintz frocks and sparkly shoes.  You delight in prettiness, and yet you evict all your dolls from your doll’s house to fill it full of your collection of plastic, fighting monsters.  You obsess over Daleks and the Slitheen and you hoard money like the goblins at Gringotts. 

 

You are funny and clever and have the most wonderful turns of phrase. I miss the fact that you no longer seek me out just to solemnly tell me that I ‘must not stab a lamb with a fork’ or that you are: ‘absolutely, completely cross with me andI are not listening.’ I look forward to you explaining things to me in your own inimitable and sometimes amazingly poetic way.  The way you see the world is utterly unique and you find just the right words to express yourself perfectly.  I love that sometimes I am allowed a tiny glimpse into your soul.  It gives me hope.

 

You are a prickly girl, a girl who does not like kisses, but gives the most fearsome knee hugs known to man.  A girl who does not like to share, but who can be incredibly kind and generous.  A girl who does not like to empathise, and yet sometimes just cannot help herself.  You are a puzzle, and one which I take great joy in being allowed to solve, a little bit at a time.

 

Thank you for coming into my life.  When I share my time with you I am always that little bit more alive.  I love you baby.