Happy Birthday to my Veronica!!!!



Veronica is 8 now!! What?  Yes, she keeps us on our toes.  I love her so much.
If you don't know this big kid, let me tell you about her.  Veronica is beautiful and smart.  She is independent, since she was a wee baby.  Veronica has always been a self-starter and can figure things out on her own, usually.  I don't know where she got that from, but I'm so glad she has that trait.  I hope she can develop that.  Veronica loves art, she requests reams of paper for birthdays and or Christmas.  She will spend hours and hours with a ream of paper, scissors and tape.  I love that she sees art/potential/treasure in garbage, but it makes for random trash all over the house all the time.  We'll go clothes shopping and she'll be interested in the hangers on the ground or the tags that have fallen off and will create a wonderful toy out of it.  We used to call her the trash collector but have since stopped.  Veronica is really smart, taught herself how to read by 4 and taught herself to swim (although we're still trying to teach her proper technique) all on her own.  I can't take the credit for how smart she is, I should have known since she was a baby.  She gave up on her naps pretty early in life, which was rough on me, but I can understand why now.  She doesn't want to miss anything, she wants to take advantage of her whole day with reading, playing, thinking, talking.  She reads super fast.  One quality that I admire so much about Veronica is that she has so much compassion.  When she was a little girl, one of the babies fell and was bleeding and Veronica felt so bad she just started crying.  She demonstrates this to me a lot and I know that she knows I'm trying my best with her.  I have learned that Veronica is sensitive, serious, thoughtful, copassionate, independent, artistic, genuine, faithful, sincere, creative, loving and the list goes on.  She is the perfect leader for her younger brother and sisters.  I know that the other kids look up to her and think she's so cool, because she is!  I love this 8 year old so much.  I love her so much that it hurts.  She gives me my biggest challenge but she has taught me how to love in a more gentle way so that I can help her.  I wish you the happiest of birthdays Veronica!