Happy Birthday Tallulah

I can’t believe it’s already your birthday again.  It comes around with such alarming regularity and yet always seems to take me by surprise. 

And now you are seven.  It’s been quite a ride to get here my girl.  Some days I wonder if I will make it through another year with you, you are so wild.  When you fix me with those eyes and you get that implacable wrinkle on your forehead I think: ‘This is it. She’s going to kill me stone dead now. Say your goodbyes.’  But somehow we always make it through.  Even though you frighten the bejeezus out of me, I love the fact that you live life so fiercely, with such passion.  Sometimes I wish you would live it next door, and that I could just pop in and visit you, but it’s certainly never dull.

So what’s new for you?

Well, you are now the budding karate queen of Glenfield, and I am so pleased you love it, and that you finally have a place to go where you can legitimately shout and kick people in the shins.  I am thrilled that it also seems to be teaching you other, less murderous qualities, like respect for other people and what they have to offer you, camaraderie and a tentative sense of quiet inside that busy head of yours.

You have less teeth now.  Unlike when you get old, this is a good thing.  You look so cute with your two front teeth missing it will almost be a shame when they grow back.  I am impressed that you are not interested in boys yet. When grandad inspected your teeth and asked you who you’d been kissing, you wrinkled your nose and looked horrified at the thought.  Keep that up a bit longer won’t you? I don’t need any more worry lines just yet.

And your hair.  Your lovely hair that you used to beg not to have cut is now the most adorable bob, and makes you look like the very mischievous girl you are.  I love it. You love it too, and it has not lessened your considerable charm one whit.  You are gorgeous, truly gorgeous and I love the fact that you are growing more and more comfortable in your skin and really enjoying being you instead of fighting it all the time.

You are so clever it takes my breath away.  I enjoy utterly your vision of the world and your sense of your place in it.  I love your ridiculous sense of humour and wonderful comic timing.  I love that you sing to yourself when you are happy, and that I can hear you doing it  in bed in the evenings when I am working.  The stories you write and tell me are a great delight and I hope you keep writing them forever.

In short, you are lovely.  I worry myself sick over you.  I tear myself into knots about your welfare and your spikiness.  I panic that you will always fight the world and find it a loveless place, and yet you are beautiful my ferocious child and you deserve all the joy the world can spare you, and a bit more. You are heart achingly sweet and fascinatingly complicated and my life is richer for having you in it.  I would not change a single, solitary thing about you, not for one moment, not even in your darkest moments.

I hope that in the next year you relax into being you and enjoying who you are even more than you did this year and that you continue to blossom into being the spectacularly perfect girl you are.

I love you baby.

Happy Birthday.

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