Dear Addison (4 Years, 1 Month Old)

My friend Michelle writes about her daughters, Ellie and Olivia, in intimate detail, recording the wee things they do as they are growing up. She is recording precious memories I know her girls will cherish. They will know what their momma thought and loved and felt when they were tiny. Not many people get to know these things in such detail. I just love reading them and decided I want to write letters to my niece, Addison so she knows how much I love being part of her life and how I think the world of her. So, here we go.

Dear Addison,

Every so often, you will just come up to me and say the 5 sweetest words I ever hear coming from your pretty little lips: I love you, Auntie Mal. They seem random, out of the blue, with no correlation to what is going on in the world around us – at least from my point of view. But, maybe it was perfectly timed in your own head, why you needed to tell me that at that specific point in time. Or maybe not - I may never know, but every time you say those words, it melts my heart. My guess is that you will have that power for the rest of your life. Please use it often.

You turned 4 years old one month ago today and I still tell people I meet I have the smartest and most adorable 3 year old niece. I have decided to start writing you letters so you will know how insanely much I love you and how stinkin’ cute, funny and smart you were at various stages in your life since you won’t remember. Okay, let’s face it, I probably won’t either and I hate thinking I will forget - and probably already have forgotten plenty since June 5^th, 2008.

For more than a year now, you have been creatively filling in the blank in this sentence:

I love you to the _________ and back.

We started with the word moon, as most people do. We did stars and sky and sun. Sometimes, instead of thinking vertically, we will be outside and pick things we could see, closer and then farther away: car, tree, playground, mailbox, etc.  You were very creative sometimes, putting a word in the blank that made absolutely no sense, but made me laugh because I love you to the alien and back was the farthest thing away at that point in time in your brain, or maybe just the silliest.

By the time you are actually reading this, I’m sure you have been told you how crazy big your vocabulary has been since you started talking. Recently, you have been using words like beautiful, amazing and wonderful to describe things. For example, when you opened your My Little Pony figures at your party, you said “Wooooow, she is beautiful” slowly, in awe, as if it was Princess Diana in a ballroom gown.

You are quite dramatic at times, making statements with a big sigh of content like “I have everything I ever want” after your birthday party. 

That’s about the gist of you linguistically at this point in time. Another thing I absolutely love about you is how your motor skills are developing. I bet you’ve seen the video of your first ballet recital, right? If not, make it a priority to watch it. One of my favorite things you do right now is draw. I love watching you draw people since limbs come out of heads and your tongues, oh you should see how you draw tongues. 

You have been able to write your name for a while now. Aside from that, here is what the rest of your writing looks like on one of your birthday invitations you helped with:

Here, you really just decided to go for it:

You can totally wear me out little one, but I cannot even imagine life without you. Thank you for so many smiles and memories. I have lots more to tell you, but figured this is enough for now.

Love you always, forever and without a doubt, 

Auntie Mal