My McKenzie

My McKenzie.  My sweet, pre-teen McKenzie.  The older you get, the more and more I realize how lucky we are to have you.  And to have you as our first.  I was telling someone just today how lucky I feel to have had you set the tone for our family.  You came in sweet, loving, nurturing, calm, thoughtful, observant, and smart... and while your strength in these areas waxes and wanes with the tides of life and challenges, you influence all of us with their purity - especially your younger brothers.

They love you, your brothers.  In fact, you guys are best friends, and I think that largely has to do with how you have treated them throughout the years.  They know you love them.  And I want you to know that I credit a large portion of the unity in our family to you and your example.

Along with being pleased with the example you're setting, I'm also happy that you're my first because of your strength in yourself.  Ever since you were tiny, we knew you had a strong sense of self.  You rarely care whether others will judge your actions, and you choose your path based on what you feel inside.  Your spirits are not easily broken and your strength in yourself never is.

This is good for you.  Because you have a mother who feels like a rough stone rolling down a smooth hill... when I'm still, the path seems easy enough, but when I start moving, I find myself catching all my corners - mistake after mistake - and I bounce, ungracefully, and rather out of control along it.

I'm afraid, my love, that in being my oldest, many of my roughest edges are catching on you.  And I feel guilty and grateful to tears sometimes as I watch you and realize that you. can. handle. it.

I love you.  So very much.  Being a pre-teen can be so hard.  You're fighting with new emotions and I see the frustration in your face when you can't explain how you're feeling or why you're angry.

But you have a safe place here.  You can stomp and eye-roll and slam all the doors you want while you figure it out, and still feel confident that my love is with you, surrounding you all the way through it and carrying you to the other side.

Me, and the rest of the team.

Of course, there will be corrections and lessons, disciplines and advice given to you from time to time because part of my job as a mother is to help you grow into a spectacular adult, and you may have noticed that spectacular adults don't stomp and eye-roll and slam all the doors they want.

But I hope that, before the discipline, you'll feel the support.  That before you hear the lessons, you'll feel the love.

Because we so love you.

Happy 11th birthday, my love!