Turn Around: Happy Birthday to my Princess

August 29, 2007

Where are you going, my little one, little one,
Where are you going, my baby, my own?
Turn around and you're two,
turn around and you're four,
Turn around, you're a young girl going out of my door.
Turn around, turn around,
Turn around, you're a young girl going out of my door.

***

A few years before Laurel was born, Nanci Griffith came out with the album "Other Voices, Other Rooms" which consists entirely of Nanci covering songs written by some of her favorite singer/songwriters. Randy and I both sang our voices hoarse night after night as we walked our babies to sleep. Laurel took a lot longer than Jesse. It was this song that I remember most singing to Laurel, and it seemed that every time I'd look down at her, she'd be staring back with her big brown eyes, studying me. This is only half the song. The other half I'll save for many years from now.

Because today she's 10. Just ten. Still a girl on a swing in a flowered sundress with soft round cheeks and big brown eyes. And already 10. Already thinking about clothes and earrings nearly as much as baby dolls. My little one, 10.