Happy 16th Birthday Regan!

Sixteen years ago, this beautiful soul made us parents for the very first time. She arrived earlier than planned (4 weeks earlier to be exact) and has kept us on our toes ever since. 

She's smart (but terribly unorganized)

She has big emotions (both happy and sad, and sometimes mad)

Can't cook or bake for the life of her

And is fiercly social, easily making friends 

Her love for that little yellow ball runs deep. 
So when she found out her team practice was cancelled on her birthday, in true form, she was devastated. 

Coach Becky to the rescue with a 2-hour private lesson (Coach Becky chases that yellow ball around herself and knows just how passionate Regan is about softball). 

No place else she wanted to spend her birthday

We had to first make a pit stop at the Cambridge DMV so she could take (and somehow pass) her driver's test! We laughed pretty hard when she came back with her tester who proceeded to tell me all of the skills she still needed to work on. And that she had hit a snowbank during parallel parking-whoops. Regan had the biggest smile on her face and I blurted out "wait, did you pass!??!"

Yep, she sure did

Oh sweet baby girl, how in the world has it been 16 years already? I read the following words on a Parenting Teens page, and turned into a sobbing mess. 

You don't actually parent one person, you parent many different people who are all your child. 

There's the newborn, the baby, the toddler, the pre-schooler, the primary aged kid, the pre-teen, the adolescent, the full-blown teen, the young adult and then the adult. they all answer to the same name. They all call you Mum. And you never noticed the inflection point where one of those people turns into the next. 

You never get to properly say goodbye to all the little people who grow up because you don't notice the growing, the changing. Except when Facebook sends you those reminders that invariably make me cry because it's like showing me the face of someone I can never see again. Not in that way. Not at the same age. 

~Mia Freedman~ 

We are holding on for dear life, knowing these next few years are going to fly by. 

To watch the last 16 years in a matter of 4 minutes, enjoy the video below: