On Friday we celebrated Jaelyn's seventh birthday. I have this tradition of keeping a few pictures from every year in a file and then adding new photos and new songs to the slideshow for a birthday slideshow.
It's actually an evolution of a similiar production that I made for brother David back when he was 8?, 9? His slideshow included multiple songs, narration, and a slideshow panorama of his life -- all using a slide-projector and cassette tape.
With Jaelyn's I click and drag a few pictures and a few songs into a file and press play. How bout them computers!
But I digress. My point was that this year I was particularly struck by how much continuity there is to my daughter's expressions, emotions and personality -- just as seen through the pictures.
She is irrepressible, compassionate, creative. She has always loved stories and history and animals and laughing.
The 18+ hours that her birth mother was in labor -- I was fasting. When she was born, I broke fast with macaroni and cheese, it must have been the best option available in our little grad-school-impoverished kitchen. So today is a feast day in the middle of lent, and I'm happy to extend my celebration of Jaelyn's presence in my life at lunch with some leftover Macaroni from her birthday dinner last night -- her meal of choice. Happy Birthday Jaelyn!
