Kiss Your Miracle

Skylar loves to look in the mirror. She can be full on crying – tears, red-face, the works – but put her in front of a mirror and a smile emerges. I took this picture of her today and a question popped into my head: at what point in a girl’s life does she stop smiling in front of the mirror? Right now Sky is only nine months old. She doesn’t care that she has a bruise on her forehead or a scratch on her cheek (standing is her new skill, but she’s not the best at it yet). She’s never evaluated her weight and decided she’s too thin or too heavy. And I can’t help but think, please baby girl, let me put you in a bubble and keep you just like this – content to be who you are, unaware of society’s artificial standard of beauty.

Things I Love About Skylar Grace

• Everything is fascinating to her. She looks at the world with her eyebrows up, interested in it all.
• the way she waves hello – with her hand backwards, so it looks like she’s waving at herself.
• her sweet baby neck – it’s the softest thing I’ve ever felt and I can’t kiss it enough.
• her eyes – they’re a deep turquoise blue with long, black lashes – just like her daddy’s. I always told him it wasn’t fair for a guy to have such beautiful eyes.
• the way she laughs after she burps.
• When I go get her out of her crib in the morning, she’s so happy to see me I feel like a rock star.
• When she pulls up on something and makes it to her feet (her new skill), she gets this big, proud smile on her face and looks at us, waiting for us to clap and congratulate her. And of course, we do.
• She is a water baby. She can be falling apart, crying and exhausted, but the minute she’s in the tub she’s all smiles again. It makes me excited for the beach and the pool and vacations down the road. She’s never been in a body of water bigger than her baby pool and I can’t wait to see her expression when she’s floating around with me in Lake Michigan this summer.
• When she gets nervous, I’m the one she wants.
• her tiny baby fingers – sometimes careful and sometimes destructive. She’s just figuring out that she’s in control of them.
• the way she loves to run errands. Well, not the car seat part. The shopping part. When she’s the fussiest at home, the answer is a trip to the grocery store. Put her in the cart at Publix and she doesn’t make a sound. She just looks all around her, totally enthralled. I too, love the grocery store (it’s the one place I can walk into and spend a whole bunch of money without guilt – plus, I love food), so it’s perfect.
• her delicious skin -I tell her she’s so yummy I’m going to eat her up for dessert.
• She is my baby, an answer to prayer, and a testimony of God’s goodness.