Here's to...

Health and happiness.  It's in every wedding toast, every graduation send-off, and every mother's wish for her children.  I've recently been thinking that, for Lila, I'd like to add one more wish.  Not only do I pray for her personal happiness, but I pray she will continue to make others happy, as well.  It's fairly easy for her now.  Everything from a new word to blowing kisses makes those around her happy, especially the grandparents that worship the ground she walks on.  

Aside from the grandparents, Murray and I want other people to like our child.  We try to keep her fairly quiet in restaurants and pick up food off the floor before leaving.  We cross our fingers that she gets a good "report" from the Sunday School teachers at church, and we are trying to instill manners in her early.  When I pop her with the Home Depot paint stick :), it is totally out of love and in hopes that she'll learn wrong from right.  We do these things so that she won't be the child people dread coming.  She won't be the child teachers sigh when seeing her name on the class roster (and, yes, teachers do that).  I want the reputation that precedes her to be one of being a blessing.  

As she grows, I hope Lila realizes that by blessing others, she will in turn become happier herself.  How many times did I hear my dad say, "You reap what you sow."  I pray Lila sows into other people's lives.  I pray she is the friend they can call, the student they can count on, the wife that God wants her to be, and the mother that will love her children as much as I love her.  

So to get off my Mother Teresa soap box, I will end by toasting my daughter.  "Here's to a lifetime of health, happiness, and loving others just as much as you love yourself."