Katya Rose

Moments ago (or so it seems) the doctor laid a tiny, squirmy baby on my chest and said, “Congratulations, you have a baby girl.”

My daughter.

I never thought I’d have a daughter. And yet, as I held her in that very first moment and looked at her face, somehow I knew her. It was like I had always known her, her face was so familiar to me.

And now, four years later, I’m wondering how it happened so fast?

How did she go from this?

To the smart, witty, mischevious four year old sitting on my couch?

Where did the baby go? The one who’s eyes and cheeks swallowed her face?

To say I adore this little girl is quite the understatement. She’s just awesome. And Lee and I both agree that our time with her has seemed especially fast. We sometimes struggle to remember her as a baby. I think it’s because, as babies go, she may have been the best infant on the planet. She slept 19 hours a day until she was six months old. She ate like a horse (maybe a pony) and she smiled near constantly.

There’s also the fact that she wasn’t a baby for very long.

As soon as she figured out she had the potential for mobility, she took off. By 5 months she was crawling, by 9 and a half months she was walking and by one she was giving me a heart attack by jumping off any and everything in sight.

Before she was two, she was a big sister – a role that she was born to play.

But this contributed to the feeling that somehow she’s just grown up too fast. I feel like I missed it. Even though I relished in her girlness as a baby, now that’s it’s so far removed, I feel like it happened too fast. And now this small person stands before me. How did that happen?

I love having a girl sandwiched between two boys. She brings a bit of sensitivity to the bunch. Not much, of course, because she makes it known she wants to be one of the guys.

I look forward to seeing these relationships grow as they get older – to see the boys protect their sister and Tia look after her brothers.

It’s been one heckova year for Tia. There have been a lot of milestones reached. Most good. Some, ahem, not so good.

And here we are, Feburary 2, and I’m wondering how we got here so fast. Tia pranced into our room at 6:15 this morning and, with her tiny mouth inches from my ear, stage whispered, “Moooom. I’m four now.”