Dearest Florence – You’re a Teenager Miss 13!

Dearest Florence,

You’re a teenager my little Miss 13 year old and like I say on all birthdays I’m just not sure how this can have happened so quickly. I mean, thirteen? A teenager! Bit much isn’t it, when I know that it was really only just 13 minutes ago you were born, not YEARS surely?!

Honestly, when you were born Little Miss Florence Ladybird, it was like life suddenly became in colour for me. It wasn’t that I was unhappy before, more that I just didn’t know quite how happy I could be after. You brought the colour, the spark to my flame and you made me know for the first time that life as a Mummy was what I’d been waiting for. You were the most beautiful baby. Everyone said so. Wherever we went! You were TINY and just like a little flower fairy. Everyone fell in love with you and my heart felt like it would explode, I wondered if it might actually and worried I’d never be able to love another the same way. However, for some reason, somehow, my heart doesn’t explode even though the love grows and grows. And even though the love is not shared but multiplied with all your siblings – incredible capacity thats what my heart must have. I’m so lucky to have this love in my life and it was you who brought it first. My special, most wonderful darling first baby!

You are hard working, clever, kind and tenacious as you have always been. You want to please people but you’re no pushover. Your confidence soars, you have friends in all the places you land and you bring so much pleasure to your family who are beyond proud of the girl you have become. ALWAYS doing well at school, ALWAYS with a fabulous report, ALWAYS striving to do even better! You run a little business doing glitter for parties and selling bracelets, you surf (the only sport you really like), you played the lead of Alice in Alice in Wonderland at school and your dancing ability makes me shake my head a little to try and fathom how you got so good at it! You’re so good at languages and the arts, at maths and English too. You’re not terribly happy that you’re talents don’t extend to the sporting playground or the sciences but hey… Who needs netball and chemistry anyway! You are pretty awesome Flobo Baggins. You always have been and at 13 it’s showing even more so!

You always have time for your siblings and friends. You organise yourself so well and are always on time for things (not sure where you get this from but it isn’t me)! And you make us laugh and laugh with your funny performances and skits and conversation. We are so proud of you and we so enjoyed celebrating your thirteenth birthday with you this Christmas holidays. From the party at the start of the break, to your actual day which you have to share with everyone else celebrating a New Year and yet which you never mind doing so! You are pretty darn perfectly gorgeous and, as I wrote in your card, you are as beautiful on the inside as you are the out which should tell everyone all they need to know about the light that shines from within you.

This year in a supermarket a lady came and talked to us to say she just had to say hello and had to mention that she knows you are a “star child”. She said that’s something very special, something to do with the stars (obviously) and that you are very special because of it. Now, I’ve no idea if what she was saying was pure gobbeldy gook in the theory but the things she said… The actual words, well, they all spelled who you are so you never do know!

My little star child Florence, my 13 year old but always my baby! Happy birthday to you my gorgeous!