Happy Birthday!!

This adorable little butterball is the darling little hoyden in this post.

She’s the lovable culprit in this post.

We had to wait six years to have her, and by the time we managed to conceive her, I had given up and thought we’d never have another child.  I’d miscarried at 16 weeks four years before she came along, and that experience was so painful I really couldn’t even let myself take joy in my pregnancy.

I worried that something was wrong with the baby, or that I wasn’t really pregnant at all, it was just a phantom pregnancy.  Even when I was in labor and the midwife was telling me to push, I was telling the midwife, “I don’t think it’s a baby.”  Three pushes later, and there was the most wonderful baby in the world and all the sorrow and heart-ache of the years before was just gone.

Her five big sisters were delighted with their new playmate.  She never touched the floor unless she insisted on it, because everybody wanted to hold her and play with her all the time.

She is the smaller tot on her daddy’s shoulders here:

We came to realize that the six year divide between our fifth and sixth children was for the best.  God needed us to wait until there were that many of us over 6 who could help keep her out of trouble and, you know, just *alive* on a daily basis. She was climbing before she could walk and she was walking at 8 months and running at 9 months. By the time she was six she’d climbed the roof, fallen down the well, been chewed on and spat out by a horse, had an accident severing four tendons in two toes, had staples in her head, stitches in her arm, and I don’t know how many other adventures she just didn’t tell me about because medical attention was not required.

She’s still incredibly active, although the fall down the well did cure her of some of her most dare-devilish stunts.  She has to do aerobics every day or she feels awful.  She’s addicted.

She is still a delight and a joy, in fact, even more so now, because I no longer worry about her killing herself in some terrible accident on a daily basis.  She is funny- she competes with her 3 year old nephew for all our best FB statuses.

She is diligent in her school work and her Bible reading.  She is a wonderful auntie to her five nevvies and nieces.   She is a loyal friend.

She is 17 years old today.

We are so blessed and thankful that God trusted us with her.