First Sentence

My kids are slaying me lately.

What I mean is, they are doing the absolute cutest things that makes me want to freeze them at exactly the ages they are now- 5.5 and 4. Earlier in the month, Buddy "won" me a beautiful broach at the Penny Social. A week later...

I was standing at the stove, going about supper preparations, and Rosie comes running into the kitchen. I don't know about the kids in your life, but my kids literally never walk anywhere. Can you imagine how much better shape all of us grown-ups would be in if we did the same? But I digress...

"Mama! I made something for you!" she says, excitedly. I smile because my little miss Rosie, who is not always in the best of moods after a long bus ride and an even longer school day, has transitioned and is now ready to engage. I bend over to look, expecting the usual house, rainbow, stick figures, and, instead, I see clear as day in all capital letters:

I LOVE MOM

My eyes immediately well up. She's come home from school with printed sentences, sure, but this was the very first time I had seen a sentence of hers that she had written at home, unprompted,and completely by herself.

I hugged her tightly and told her how much it meant to me. At that moment, Steve called on his way home from work, and I put him on speaker phone, and the three of us talked about it.

I keep that sentence she wrote in a special place. I never want to lose the first note my daughter ever gave me.