The First Year

Today we are celebrating our baby girl's first birthday. I can hardly believe a full year has passed since she came into my life and changed my world.

This year has been the most emotional, intense, joyful, frustrating, uplifting, humbling, empowering, love-filled, challenging, beautiful, fulfilling year of my life. Parenthood brings with it a very full range of emotions, all felt more deeply than you ever felt them before. This year has been one like none other. And not only have I been so insanely blessed with such an extraordinary baby girl to call my daughter, but I am lucky enough to have Eric by my side for the whole adventure. I love them both so much, it takes my breath away.

As we have for each of the last eleven months, Eric and I are writing letters to Ellie today, and I'll share those tomorrow. We wanted to take our time and enjoy the day with her before stopping to fully reflect on her first year of life. In the meantime, we have been doing a lot of "remember when?" stuff. We've read back through the birth story, looked at old pictures and videos (many already long forgotten), laughed and reminisced. My heart aches with both joy and gratitude for these happy memories and bittersweet sadness that those days have passed and we'll never get them back. But I can't be sad for long, because the one-year-old I have in my life now is so fantastic, and I can hardly wait to see what tomorrow will bring for her. Watching her grow up is the coolest thing I can imagine.

So for today, please join us in looking back at the year gone by and celebrating our sweet Ellie.

VIDEO: A look back at Ellie's first year 
(Music is Elizabeth Mitchell's "You Are My Sunshine")

Happy birthday, Sunshine. We love you more than we could ever say.