I love this kid of mine!  My first.  My experiment.  My love.  My teenager?

Hold up!  I am. not. old enough to have a teenager!  I’m pretty sure I just graduated high school.  Oh, alright … but it sure feels that way!

Well … my ‘baby’ turns 14 today.  14.  Wow.

Please indulge me while I share way too many photos and way too many thoughts and memories of this precious daughter of mine.

Here she is, just over a year old.  This was taken in a small city outside of Rome … Ostia.  She was such a baldy!  I love this photo of her … I love this memory.  She’d been walking for a couple of months, but still rather new at the whole thing.  We’d visited the Vatican city in Rome and she insisted in walking the full length of the ‘city’ … stubborn.  Should’ve been my first clue!

This is Taylor on her second birthday.  I’ll never forget this outfit, or this piece of cheese.  Weird, ain’t it?  The second picture would set par for the rest of my girls.  One nuk in the mouth, one in each hand with a sippy cup tucked under her arm.  I love it.  And I love that I can see each one of my girls in this photo.

Here she is with our new chihuahua puppy … Spike.  To some of you that’ve met him, he now goes by ‘sausage.’  And the other photo of her is up at the lake.

Taylor’s dad and I divorced when she was three.  It hurts my heart just to write that.  I feel like she’s gone through so much already in her short life, that it makes me want to defend and protect her above and beyond normal!

This is Tay in her riding gear … a perfect picture of ‘who’ she is.  Quiet, cute … but oh so sneaky!

And here she is grooming her first {leased} horse, Clover.  This photo reminds me of the first horse show she’d ever competed in.  Her first event was just to walk the horse around the arena … called ‘horsemanship’ … but as she was dressed and all ready to go, standing in line to walk into the arena, she freaked out.  Started crying, saying she couldn’t do it.  Not my finest mothering moment.  Clover’s owner was there and so excited for Clover to be in an event.  We’d driven a ways to get to the show … not to mention I wanted to see her in the show.

I couldn’t talk her into it, and when I saw how badly she was panicking, we found another person to do it for her.  Looking back, it would be the first case {of many to come} of ‘nervous stomach’ for Taylor.

She did go on to compete in a different class that day and did a great job!  It was also a good learning experience for me to settle and listen. to. my. daughter!

First day of second grade with Kirsten and Ana.  Two of the girls in this post.  The girls learned quickly that the teachers liked to split them up.  Seemed like each year one of them would be put into a class by ‘themselves’ while the other three were put in the other class.  Each year the girls would ask, “wonder who it is this year?”

They look so young and innocent here …

These were taken at Taylor’s seventh birthday party … again the girls in this post.  We took a limo bus to the mall for makeovers, then to a mini photoshoot, and finished up with a dance party … good times!

These were from a series of photos taken of her and Piper.  Taylor was eight years old here.  A beauty if I do say so …

Here are photos I had taken of Taylor when she wanted to pursue a modeling career.  Her interest waned, so we never pursued it.  But I got some great photos out of it!  I love this one of her and Ana.  And the one of her in front of the barn is my all-time fav of her.

And here we are with present day Tay!  I saved you a few years there … :)

{photo from front room photography}

I’ve posted about Taylor before {I’ve linked one, but you could also do a search for all the posts I’ve done about her}.  I hold this girl so close to my heart.  She’s a strong person.  I admire the way she picks herself up, dusts herself off and moves on.  I’m also pretty proud of the fact that she seems to know exactly what she wants {so far} and hasn’t faltered in that.

I think it was the end of 5th grade?  She had a mad crush on a boy and through the summer … you know, the kind where you don’t talk or see each other, but the crush is heightened by staring at his yearbook picture all summer?  So when they get back to school in the fall, I ask her about her crush only to learn ‘he has nothing to say … he’s pretty boring.’  Hmm, yep! definitely a quality you want to have in a boy … one that talks.  I felt kind of proud of her at that moment for recognizing that she wouldn’t settle.

And she recently had a boyfriend … kind of her first ‘serious’ one {if you can call it that}, but she was pretty ga-ga for a while.  And I kinda liked this kid too.  It took him a long time to ‘ask her out’ and I respected that.

They went to a movie once {with friends} and I asked if they’d held hands … yeah, they did.  But she didn’t like it.  She’s decided she’s not much of a PDA kinda gal.  Awesome, huh?  :)

I’ll ask her sometimes if she’s had her first kiss.  Or if she’s gone to a dance, if she’d kissed anyone.  Some may frown on that … me asking her or being excited about it.  But come on!  She’s in 8th grade, it’s gonna happen!  Why not be excited about it and share in it and have her excited to share with me, rather than her being afraid to tell me?

Anyway, a day or so after she’d gone to the movie, she texts me and says she has something to tell me … that she knows I’d want to know.  Turns out prince charming kissed her!!  On the cheek!

Turns out he’d also hold her hand in school and sometimes give her a kiss on the cheek at the end of the day.  Excuse me, but this is my kinda boy!

He and Tay would sit for hours on video chat, doing nothing but looking at each other while doing homework … oh, and also ‘chatting’ with a lot of ‘cool’ and ‘lol’ … pretty funny/cute!

So we’re on spring break and they are ‘chatting’ across the wires when she says he doesn’t really talk much, or seem to care much about things.  She found and fell hard for an organization called Island Dog.  She was literally in tears over this organization and immediately posted something on her Facebook and told all her friends about it.  Truth is, I don’t think I’ve seen her have such passion, ever, for a project.

Turns out BF’s response to the whole thing {while she’s in tears over it} … ‘cool.’

BF wasn’t BF for much longer.  The hardest part?  When they got back to school, she was called names by him … ‘princess, spoiled, b#### …’  My heart broke for her … but she made it through.

She’s going through some really hard things at school right now.  We’ve looked at other schools and I’ve honestly thought about homeschooling her.  Ahh, what a difficult thing we have to deal with, just because some kids feel like being cruel and are careless with their words not worrying about what they’re doing to the person on the other end.

Anyway.

Taylor is an awesome kid.  She’s special.  She’s got a great head on her shoulders.  My biggest concern for my children is that they grow up knowing ‘who’ they want to be and that they stay true to that.  For some reason, I was worried about Taylor and that she would do the easy thing.  Be who others wanted her to be so that she’d fit in.  That was my downfall as a kid, and in some ways I find I still struggle with that.

So I guess what I’d like to say is that I couldn’t be prouder of the person that Taylor is becoming.  She’s already been faced with adversity … and although it’s hard and although she wants to hide, most times she faces it straight on with an attitude of What.Eva!

I love this kid.  My firstborn.  My stubborn.  My beautiful.  My love.

Happiest of happy birthdays Tay-Tay … I love you and I couldn’t be prouder that you’re mine!