Her Lullabies

My dear daughter turned fifteen last week!  FIFTEEN!!!!  Shocking, I know! She is a lovely young woman finishing her freshman year of High School, with one foot out the door as she contemplates University versus Art School.  Fifteen.  Where did that time go?

I remember her third birthday so vividly.  Well, not the birthday so much, and the pictures of her Minnie Mouse themed party do help bring the memories back.  But I remember the NIGHT of her third birthday. I remember going to bed and lying there, sobbing.  "She's THREE!!!  She's only going to be living with us for FIFTEEN more years!!!!"

And now here we are, at the conversial milepost, where she is fifteen and there are (theoretically) only three years left to her time here at home before she heads out at eighteen to take on the world.

I didn't cry this year.  Maybe because we have many opportunities for higher education near enough that her moving out to attend college is not inevitable.  Maybe because she has grown into such a mature and lovely person, with good sense and good morals, she doesn't appear as vulnerable as a three year old anymore.

My first project on Remember When's Design Team was to use  the On The Go line of papers by Bo Bunny.  There was also some of their gorgeous Vintage Dot paper in my kit.  I wanted to use this "boyish" transportation-themed paper in a non-boyish, non-transportation themed layout--pretty much just for the challenge of it.  I cut this semi-circle out of the "Vroom" paper, eliminating the tiny trucks and airplanes in the design, with the plan to journal on the lined area.  When I placed that on the gorgeous deep blue dot paper I immediately thought of the moon, which led me to the idea of documenting the lullabies I used to sing to Jillian way back when.

All papers by Bo Bunny; Distress Inks in Wild Honey and Broken China;Distress Stain in Picket Fence Distress Markers in Wild Honey and Walnut Stain;  Glimmer Glaze in Saffron; Sakura Gelly Roll Pen in White; Prima Ingvild Bolme Distressing Tool 

Handwritten and fussy cut title

Cut outs mounted to scrap cardboard and applied with pop-dots for dimension

The journaling reads:

We had a lovely bedtime ritual, Jillian.  After a story (or two!) I would sing the same three lullabies every night.  They were all from a CD called Disney Baby Lullaby.  The first was "Dreams are the Flowers (That Bloom in Your Heart)."  You loved the vivid, magical lyrics. The second, "La La Lu," had a "pink cloud" that I would change the color of based on your current favorite.  Finally, "Nighty Night" would round out the ritual.  It was last because it could go on indefinitely, until you'd finally drift into Dreamland.

The funny thing is, when I was looking through our old photo albums to find a picture of her sleeping, she settled in next to me to look on.  There was this photo of her eating a piece of string cheese, and here, lo and behold, here she sat, a dozen plus years later, eating a piece of string cheese as we looked through those pictures together.  Thank you, Blessed Universe!  Thank you for giving me a sign that Jillian is still my little girl, my little sweetie-petite-y, who will sit with her mom and giggle and eat string cheese, even at the age of fifteen!