Bursting Beauty

Your Daddy gave you a blessing today. He took you in his arms, along with four of your uncles, and blessed you with many things. It is one of the simplest, most beautiful things afforded our family: that gift of blessing and ability to hold the priesthood and belonging to a church that holds these ordinances at a high priority.

Tads, my Til, my lovely little baby, my newborn one who holds the world's power in her hands...

You cried while your Dad spoke to you and blessed you. 

We all knew and felt and cried and loved you.

I made a little dress and headband for you on your special day. I spent hours and hours on it. I am not the best seamstress so it was a challenge to try and figure it all out but I thought of you the entire time. With every stitch, I had short flashes in my mind of the way your body looked, your short little neck, the way your legs would surely kick up under the skirt, your arms tucked tightly into the bodice. I stayed up through the middle of the night, sewing, each piece, fixing and tucking. I thought of the way your feathery hair would sweep against the collar.

I thought of the way your tiny body would be clothed in this little dress, only to grow into something even more wonderful and beautiful and powerful, someday a woman. My fourth daughter. With so much potential.

You make my heart sing a chorus of bursting beauty, sounds so wonderful they would be all the proof you ever need that I love you to the end of everything.