Dear Heidi... You are One!

My baby girl...

You are one!

One!

How quickly this year has gone by... how high we have flown on joy, and how low we have delved into the pit, scrabbling for any scrap of hope. Your little one year journey through life has taught me more about the Saviour, about myself, about your amazing Papa, about your strong big sister, about our wonderful family and friends than anything I have ever experienced before.

And this year I have loved getting to know you, little Heidi. So contented. So strong. So happy and cheery. You have wooed every Doctor, Nurse, Play Specialist, Cardiologist and Sonographer. Sometimes I wonder if you are so relaxed because of everything you've had to go through, or if everything you have gone through has made you this way.

Either way. You are precious, beautiful, sweet-natured, determined and our little comedian. Already you put us all in stitches with your funny faces and your choice of first words.

I mean, what child has the word "Rottenmeier"** as one of their first words?? (Pronounced by Heidi "Rottenmah!")

(Too much of your Heidi - book!)

You are saying a  few words now -  Mama, Papa, Ava, Wow, Hase (Bunny) and your continued favourite - "Aaaa-men!". I love coming into your room when you wake up - bleary eyed and rosie-cheeked. You look at me and point forlornly at your bunny (who you have always thrown out of your cot) and say "Hase!" You will not be distracted until I have placed your beloved bunny back in your hands!

One of my favourite things to watch this past year, has been the development of your relationship with your big sister. She adores you, and you her. It warms my heart so much to see you playing together, or chuckling over something "funny"... yes, at times she is a little heavy-handed, but you are so patient and relaxed and just take it all in your stride.

I have loved becoming a Mama to two. This time last year, you were preparing to make your way into the world (you were born in the evening)... and I wondered, if I'm honest, how I could ever love anyone as much as I did your big sister... but do you know what? The moment I saw those chubby little cheeks (yes, you were a full 8lbs 8ozs) and that black tufty hair, my heart was totally yours. Somehow I love you as intensely as your sister without taking any love away from her... a mystery... but a wonderful one.

I am thankful to God every day for the precious gift that you are to us... I am thankful for all that you have taught me, I am thankful you are still here - so full of life, so effervescent, so sparky and funny. And I shudder at what we could have lost, and remember again that life is fragile, and that each day for any of us is a gift.

And so the Lord has been teaching me a life lesson through you, little Heidi. To treasure the little, the everyday, the ordinary. Because those things are the building blocks of a life... they are the little things that make up the daily, the little things we will look back and treasure. The "nothing" moments that together make up the "everything"

The everything. That's what I want you to know.

Because really the "everything" is not a thing; its a person. He's a person. A person who, though I cannot get my head around it, loves you more intensely, more deeply, more perfectly than I do, or ever could. He gave everything up to give you a new heart... a not broken, damaged, inflamed-arteried heart, but a perfect heart that is soft to him, and is full of Jesus. I so long for you to know that, have that.

So as we mark your first birthday, little H, we thank the Father for every day with you, our beautiful baby girl, and thank him for his everylasting faithfulness.

Wir haben dich so lieb, unser Schnucks!

Mama und Papa xxx

** Fraulein Rottenmeier is the horrible Housekeeper in Johanna Spyri's "Heidi"... yesterday I was asking the girls which episode of Heidi they would like to watch... Ava answered the one with Fraulein Rottenmeier, at which point Heidi proceeded, like a parrot, to say "Rottenmah" on repeat about 8 times!)

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Nominations close March 14th.