Happy Birthday, Beautiful Girl!! I can hardly believe it. You're eight years old! Honestly, it hardly seems possible. Your Dad and I used to look ahead to our future and say, "In x amount of years, Claire will be getting baptized!" It was always years away. Somehow, those years passed so much faster than we thought possible.
Claire Bear, you are an absolute joy. You were born my angel baby, never really fussing or causing a ruckus. You were always such a smiley girl. And you now what? You're still that same angel baby. You hardly ever get in trouble! In fact, I can't remember the last time you were sent to your room for anything. I'm usually on your case to focus and move faster, but never because you've been naughty. Not many mothers can say that! You always wake up with a smile, ready to greet the day. You bring light and happiness every where you go. In fact, I was recently talking to a mother of a girl in your grade. Her daughter has spoken of you often but the mother didn't know you. So she asked another girl in their carpool who is in your class to tell her about you. That little girl said that you were the nicest girl in the whole 2nd grade! You have a gift for loving others and being a very good friend. That gift will continue to bless you and those you come into contact with for the rest of your life.
You are maturing so much, and you're so smart! Your reading and math skills have really taken off in the last few months, and your Dad and I still marvel to hear you read from The Book of Mormon. You love to read, and your favorite book to read right now is your EverAfter High Year Book. I can tell you're not the little girl you used to be, as you finally seem to be leaving your "Hello Kitty" obsession behind. Don't get me wrong, you still love your "Hello Kitty" stuff...it's just not quite as crazy as it used to be. :) You continue to be so talented in all things artistic. You still love to draw, and make lists for anything and everything. But you've recently started to show your talent and interest for music and theater. You've participated in "Singers Company" with Sophie over the last few months and I got to see your performance for the first time a few days ago. You were incredible! And you seemed to just come to life. Your Dad and I want to put you into activities that cultivate those talents.
You have such a strong faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You just seem to understand it, and you trust your Heavenly Father implicitly. I marveled at your maturity when we told you that Luke wasn't going to survive his cancer. I watched you as you came into our bedroom right after he had passed away, and I watched you hold your brother's body and give him kisses and tell him you'd see him soon. You never wept. Not once. Not then, not during the funeral, and as far as I know you haven't wept since. I worried about that for a while. But as I watched you prepare for baptism, and as that gave us more and more opportunities to talk about the gospel and the Plan of Salvation, I realized I had no reason to worry. It wasn't stress or shock that kept you from crying. It was understanding. It was trust. I am at awe of that, and honestly I envy it. You are such a great example to me, Claire. You are so reverent during your church meetings, you sing the hymns (without prompting from your Dad or me), and you soak up and retain gospel knowledge in a way that is beyond your years. You truly are a chosen daughter of God, Claire. I know that you have been preserved to come to earth now when the whole world would desperately need your light. Your Dad and I know, beyond any doubt, that you came to us first for a reason. We both rely on your strength and your steadfastness. Thank you for being you!!
In so many ways you are so different from me, Sweetheart. It used to terrify me and make me worry that we wouldn't be friends. But as you've gotten older, I'm noticing more and more the similarities between us. We both love order and organization. We both love food, and have many of the same tastes. You love to sing to the radio, just like me. And the things that are different between us don't frighten me anymore, because those are all the things about you that I admire most. I hope I can be the kind of mother that you want to be friends with. Because I couldn't want for a better friend than you.
I love you so terribly deeply, Claire. I'm bad at showing it a lot of the time. I worry too much about the housework and my list of to-dos. And I haven't quite figured out how to change that, despite my desire to. I've always been better at writing my feelings than showing them. So as you read this birthday letter, I hope you can feel how much I love you. My sweet baby girl...you made me a mother for the first time. You and your Dad literally made all my dreams come true inside of a year. I remember holding you for the first time and being taken aback by how beautiful you were. I'm still taken aback by how beautiful you are!! And sometimes, in those rare times that you feel cuddly and curl up under my arm I can look down and see those eyelashes and that cute nose and be transported back to that brief time that it was just me and you. That was a special time that you and I shared. And it was unique to us.
Happy Birthday, Claire Bear! Your Dad and I are so proud of the girl you are, and the young woman you are becoming! Stay close to your Savior, and you will continue to become the great woman I know you are destined to be.
Love,
Mom
