Five

Sunday was a monumental day for me.

And for Jane.

Sunday was the 5th anniversary of the day I became a Mom ... otherwise known as Jane's birthday in this house.

We've been regaled with plans for her birthday for months now. She's a real planner (I have no idea where that came from).

True to form, my baby started to get sick on her birthday. Of course, this wasn't obvious until that evening when she spent the night screaming every 30 minutes from her bed (turns out she has a raging ear infection).

She insisted on wearing a crown all day and because we had church, I had to improvise on something smaller.

Looking back, I should have seen she was not feeling well.

We had rainbow cake with ponies, as requested.

The only way to manage the requested chocolate rainbow cake.

And "little sgettis" (known as company casserole to my husband's family) with peas and Mom's garlic bread.

He ate more than his brother and sister, which, anyone who knows my older children knows is quite the feat.

She opened presents and played with her cousins, whom she refers to as her best friends.

Beloved dragon named "Flyer", who is friends with her imaginary friend, the dragon "Greta" (apparently they have tea parties together).

Showing her cousin how Flyer growls.

And spent the next day surrounded by her new favorite things.

My Little Pony belt, necklace and figurines. Thankfully the Goths are into My Little Pony as Hot Topic helped satiate my 5-year-old's obsession.

Not the largest birthday in the world, but she loved it and I love her.

It fills my soul that this choice little spirit came to my home and my arms. She is so sweet, loving and kind.

She tells the best stories. Just today, Jane told me how she and I needed to kill Hunda tonight (Hunda is evil and is responsible for all bad and naughty things that happen in the house ... unless Elliot did it), as he previously has been unkillable -- seeing as he is a ghost. Her dragon, Greta, told her Hunda is only a ghost during the day as he fights in his wars. At night, "when he returns to his throne, blood starts to pump into his flat body and he turns into a human". As I shared this story with my husband he asked what our lives would be like if we had a daughter without an imagination. Boring, surely.

Her smile is so large and encompassing (I bless the stars I married a man with incredible dimples). Her laugh is one of the greatest sounds on this earth.

March 3, 2008

March 3, 2009

March 3, 2010

March 3, 2011

March 3, 2012

March 3, 2013

She is my little love. I don't need her birthday to remind me how blessed I am to be her mom. Daily I am reminded how blessed I am the be chosen to be the caretaker of this darling.

"You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out ... Do not trade your birthright as a mother for some bauble of passing value ... The baby you hold in your arms will grow quickly as the sunrise and the sunset of the rushing days." President Gordon B. Hinckley (Nov. 2000)