To the Birthday Girl

 My dearest, Daphne,

Happy birthday, my love.  I hope that, despite the year that we have had, you look back and remember the year you went from 8 to 9 years old as one filled with lots of love. 

You continue to be such a badass.  You have resumed your rock climbing, in a socially distant and mask-wearing environment, and despite my initial pause at leaving you to scale great heights with a group of twenty somethings in charge of your safety, it remains one of the best things for you.  I love nothing more than walking you into the climbing gym and having one of the coaches see you and say "Daphne - what's up" while holding out a fist for fist bump.  While they check you in, they will tell me how you are "killing it" and then describe some insane climb you did during the last session.  I, of course, love it, and love even more that you overhear every word they say and stand a little taller.  Thank you to those young people for inspiring and motivating in a super chill way that speaks to your inner competitive spirit without overwhelming or frustrating you.  I have seen you try to get up a specific path multiple weeks in a row - still not quite able to make a certain jump - and have only seen you smile with each missed attempt.  You don't see it as a failure - you see it as a try where you got a little bit closer.  I have literally seen a couple stop and just watch you scale the wall.  You remain this fairly compact little human with some pretty impressive upper body strength and agility.  As ever, I am proud to be your mama.

You are oh so very smart - basically reading at grade level... in Spanish (like a native speaking 9 year old would read) while reading way above in English.  I LOVE that you constantly have a book open in your room, placed face down to save the page you are on. School seems to come fairly easy, so much so that it almost seems like you don't stress about it much at all.  Until, of course, you get a clunker grade on something (as is bound to happen at some point), when you will come home and then meet me at the door after I get home from work, and not even let me remove my shoes before telling me about the grade like some kind of guilty confession.  Your eyes are huge and while I can see you set your jaw, determined not to cry, I am made oh so aware that you are having to work at this pretty hard, because you HATE feeling like you didn't excel at something.  This will be my challenge (or one of them) with you - teaching you to not beat yourself up - teaching you to not expect perfection, even while always striving to be your best.  Perhaps I am not the best to teach this lesson as I am only now (at almost FORTY) learning to let things go (and I still struggle with it), but because of that, I will work extra hard to try to model grace (with others, and with oneself).

We invested in some bunk beds for your room.  If any single person in this house deserved an investment in the space where they sleep, it was most certainly you.  You LOVE to lay in bed until 10 and would probably happily lounge much later if we didn't force you to join us so we at least get some time with you during daylight hours.  You love to play games, and are really quite a good sport, win or lose, but you are definitely competitive.  You have become a bit more flexible in your diet - basically agreeing at the outset of this crazy time of COVID to at least try whatever we made for dinner, and you have done so and actually eaten more variety with a better attitude then I ever would have expected at this time last year.  Thank you for that.  

You continue to just be... sweet.  A lot of other things too (fearless, brilliant, hilarious, loving, powerful, sly, loud, snuggly, stubborn, beautiful, generous, to name a few), but just... sweet.  You give hugs and say nice things.  You have a good attitude about most everything, and life is just better with you in it.  

I am sorry we couldn't get the bounce house (yet).  I am hopeful the weather will allow it at some point soon and we can do so safely.  You deserve it.

You, my dear, deserve the world.

Happiest of Birthdays, my love.

Love, Mama