Sometimes I wish...

I was looking through pictures on facebook today.  Ya know, just wasting passing time.  I saw lots of pictures posted of little girls wearing frilly, cutesy dresses and hair bows.  For a half-a-second, I wished my daughter would wear those clothes.  I always wanted a little girl to dress up and put in fancy, frilly dresses.  Throw her hair up in a ginormous bow and pose her as a princess on her throne.  As a girl, I would play with Barbies and dress up my cabbage patch doll like she was my little girl.  When I found out I was pregnant with a girl, I was so excited for a real life doll.

But Hannah isn't like that.

She prefers jeans to dresses; mud and dirt to tea parties.  I can count on one hand the times she's allowed me to put a bow in her hair.

So I started to feel wishful that Hannah would be different.  That she'd be more like the other girls. More girly, I guess.  

But if she were like other girls, she wouldn't be Hannah.  When I look at her I see rare beauty.  She is confident, funny, sensitive, loving but most of all, she is my baby girl.  

Take another look at those other girls in the pictures.  Some are wearing bows larger than their heads.  Some are wearing super frilly dresses but sitting on the sidelines because they (or their moms) don't want to get the dress dirty.  Parents may spend big bucks on those dresses but not spend any time playing on the floor with their girl.  We see their cute dresses and perfect hair and immediately ooh and ahh over how adorable they are.  What does that teach them?  To get praise and attention, I need to look perfect?  To be a proper girl, I need to never get dirty?  

Hannah may like mud and dirt more than tea parties.  She may like Star Wars more than Barbie movies and shooting video games more than dolls, but she has more heart than any girl I know.  She's always ready to give a hug or word of encouragement.  

She is my little tomboy and I wouldn't have it any other way.